Chapter XXIII: Book XVII: Death--The Winged Precursor--1516-1519

[Greek: Phereis pterugas hôs isôtheis angelois.]

Inscription on the figure of St. John the Baptist.

(Thou hast wings, like unto the angels.)

Spunteranno le ali.--LEONARDO DA VINCI.

(There shall be wings.)

I

In the heart of France, overhanging the Loire, stood the royal castle of Amboise. It was built of stone, mellow in colour as the bloom on a golden plum, which in the pale blues and greens of the fading sunset gleamed soft as a floating cloud. From the square tower the view extended over a forest of primeval oak, beyond the broad meadows flanking the river. In the early summer they were brilliant with poppies invading the azure lines of the flax. Damp mists hung over the valley, dark poplars and silvery willows stood in long rows. It resembled the plain of Lombardy: only the rivers were unlike each other:--the Adda, a torrent, passionate, storm-tossed, young; the Loire, quiet and slow, gliding gently over shallows, wearied and very old.

At the foot of the castle clustered the peaked roofs of the town, slated, black, smooth and shining in the sun, and among them massive brick chimneys. The streets, narrow, winding, and sunless, belonged to the Middle Ages. Everywhere, under all cornices and along all water-pipes, at the angles of the windows, door-frames, lintels, were small stone figures--jolly friars with flagons, rosaries and wooden sandals, grave doctors of theology, thrifty citizens with fat purses hugged to their breasts. The same types were to be seen to-day walking the city streets; all here was _bourgeois_, prosperous, conventional, pious, and cold.

When the king came to Amboise for the hunting, the little town changed its aspect. The streets grew noisy with the baying of dogs, the champing of horses, the blare of trumpets. Music resounded nightly from the palace, and its walls shone red with the flaring of torches. The king gone, silence descended again upon the streets, the palace was like an abode of the dead; no human step nor voice, save at mass-time on Sundays, and in the spring evenings when the children sang the old song of St. Denis under apple-trees which showered rosy petals on their heads. Night fell, the song was hushed, the children went away, and again there was silence; such silence as made audible the measured beat of the clock over the gate of the Horloge Tower, and the cry of the wild swans far away on the sand-banks of the Loire.

Half a league from the castle, on the road to the Mill of St. Thomas, was a small château called Cloux, once the residence of the royal armourer. It was surrounded partly by a high wall, partly by a stream; in front of the house was a meadow, and a tangle of willows, alders, and hazel bushes descending to the river. The pink walls of the château were sharply defined against a background of chestnuts and elms; the windows and doors ornamented by a dog-tooth moulding in yellow Touraine stone. It was a small building with a high-pitched slatted roof; a tiny chapel on the right of the main entrance, and an octagonal tower, in which was a winding-stair, made it resemble a villa. Rebuilt forty years earlier, the outside was still new, cheerful, and inviting.

This little château Francis I. assigned as lodging to Leonardo da Vinci.

II

The king received the artist with cordiality, and talked long with him of his works, past and future, respectfully saluting him as 'father' and 'teacher.'

Leonardo proposed to remodel the castle of Amboise, also to construct an immense canal, which, converting the barren marshes into a luxuriant garden, should connect the Loire and the Saône at Macon, and thus open a new route from Northern Europe to the Mediterranean. In this wise he thought to benefit a foreign country by those gifts of knowledge which his fatherland had contemned. The king was pleased by the project, and at once Leonardo set out to explore the locality, studying the soil of the Sologne near Romorantin, the tributaries of the Loire and the Cher, the level of the waters, the topography of the whole district.

One day he visited Loches, a small town to the south of Amboise, where was the castle in which Ludovico Il Moro, Duke of Lombardy, had been incarcerated for eight years. The old warden told Leonardo how Il Moro had once made his escape, by hiding in a cart loaded with straw; not knowing the roads, however, he had lost his way in the forest, and next day had been easily recaptured. His last years had been spent in pious meditation, in prayer, and in the study of Dante's _Commedia_, the only book he had been allowed to bring out of Italy. At fifty he was a feeble wrinkled old man; only at rare intervals did his eyes flash, when rumours reached him of grave political changes. He died in May 1508 after a short illness.

The warden told further how Ludovico had, a few months before his death, devised a pastime for himself; had begged for brushes and paints and had decorated the walls and arches of his prison. Leonardo found traces of his work on the damp and mouldy plaster; involved patterns, stripes and bars; stars and crosses; red on a white, yellow on a blue ground; in the middle, the helmeted head of a warrior, probably himself, thus inscribed in broken French, '_Je porte en prison pour ma devise que je m'arme de pacience par force de peines que l'on me fait porter._'

Another sentence ran all round the ceiling; it began with huge letters: '_Celui qui_,' then, space failing, continued in characters small and cramped, '_net pas contan_.' Reading these piteous inscriptions and looking at the clumsy drawings, Leonardo remembered how Il Moro had smiled admiringly on the swans in the moat of the fortress at Milan. 'Perhaps,' thought he, 'the love of beauty which is certainly in his soul will justify him before the tribunal of the Most High.'

Meditating on the fall of the hapless duke, he remembered also what he had been told of the fate of another of his patrons, Cæsar Borgia. Julius II. had treacherously handed Cæsar over to his enemies, who had carried him to Spain and confined him in the tower of Medina del Campo. Daring and ingenious, he escaped by means of a rope let down from his prison window. The jailers had time to sever the rope; he fell and was seriously hurt, but none the less crawled to the horse provided by an accomplice, and rode away. He went to Pampeluna to the court of his brother-in-law, the King of Navarre, where he took service as a condottiere.

Consternation spread through Italy; the pope trembled; and ten thousand ducats were set upon the head of the fugitive. On a wintry night of 1507 in an encounter with the French mercenaries under Beaumont, Cæsar was deserted by his followers, and driven into the dry bed of a river, where, like an animal at bay, he defended himself with desperate courage. At last he fell, pierced by twenty wounds. The mercenaries tore the splendid trappings from the dead warrior, and left him naked where he had fallen. Later, when the Navarrese came to seek him they knew him not; only Juanito, his little page, recognised his lord by reason of his great love for him; and flinging himself on the corpse he embraced it sobbing. Beautiful was the dead face, upturned to the heavens; and it seemed he had died even as he had lived, fearless, and without knowledge of remorse. Madonna Lucrezia, Duchess of Ferrara, wept ever for her brother; and when she died they found a hair shirt chafing her tender body. And Cæsar's youthful widow, Charlotte d'Albret, who in the few days she had been with him had come to love him as a very Griselda, having learned of his death, retired to perpetual seclusion in the castle of La Motte Feuillée, buried in the heart of a forest, where only winds rustled the dry leaves; nor used to leave her chamber, hung with perpetual mourning, save to distribute alms, imploring pensioners to pray for the soul of Cæsar.

And likewise the duke's subjects in Romagna, husbandmen and half-savage shepherds from the valleys of the Apennine, kept most grateful memory of him. Long they refused to believe him dead, but waited for him as a god who should some day return and establish justice in the land, cast down the tyrants, and defend the poor. Beggars who wandered from village to village chanted 'the woeful lament for the Duca Valentino,' in which was the line--

'Fe' cose estreme, ma senza misura.'

Thus Leonardo mused on these two men, Ludovico and Cesare, whose lives had been signalled by great events, yet had passed away like shadows, leaving no trace. And he felt, after all, that his own life, spent in lofty contemplation, had been at least as fruitful.

Thus thinking, he ceased to murmur at the untowardness of Fate.

III

Like the majority of Leonardo's projects, the making of the Sologne canal ended in nothing. Timorous counsellors persuaded Francis of the impracticability of the enterprise. His Majesty grew cold, was disenchanted, and soon forgot all about it; Leonardo found that the King of France was no more to be relied upon than Il Moro, Soderini, or Leo X. He resolved to abandon all hope of enriching mankind by the treasures of his knowledge, and to retire for the rest of his life into solitude.

In the spring of 1517 he returned to Cloux, sick of fever contracted in the marshes of the Sologne. He recovered partially, and by the summer season had strength sufficient to leave his room, and leaning on Francesco's arm to walk daily as far as to the woods. Here he would sit in the shadow of the trees, his pupil at his feet. Sometimes Francesco read to him; sometimes he was content merely to enjoy the sights and sounds of peaceful nature, gazing at the sky, the leaves, the stones, the grasses, the golden moss on the huge tree-trunks, as if bidding them all a last farewell. A sorrowful presentiment, a great pity for the Master oppressed Francesco's heart. Silently he would touch Leonardo's hand with his lips; and then feel that trembling hand laid upon his head in a mournful caress, which deepened his sense of a coming doom.

At this time the Master began a strange picture.

Sheltered by overhanging rocks, in a cool shadow among flowering grasses, sat a god; he was long-haired and fair as a woman, but languid and pale; his head crowned with vine-leaves, a spotted skin round his loins, a thyrsus in his hand. He sat with legs crossed and seemed to be listening, a hinting smile on his lips, his finger pointed in the direction whence came the sound, perhaps the song of Mænads, perhaps the voice of great Pan, that thrilling sound from which all living things must flee.

In Boltraffio's casket Leonardo had found an amethyst gem, doubtless a gift from Monna Cassandra, with an engraving of Dionysus. There were also stray leaves from Euripides' tragedy, the _Bacchæ_, translated from the Greek and copied out by Giovanni. Many times had Leonardo read these fragments; amongst them the address of Pentheus to the unknown god.

'Ha! of thy form thou art not ill-favoured, stranger,
For woman's tempting!
No wrestler thou, as show thy flowing locks
Down thy cheek floating, fraught with all desire;
And white from heedful tendance is thy skin,
Smit by no sunshafts, but made wan by shade,
While thou dost hunt desire with beauty's lure.'

And the chorus of Bacchantes, answering the impious king, extol Dionysus as 'the most terrible, the most beneficent of gods, who giveth to mortals the drunkenness of ecstasy.'

On the same page, side by side with the verses from Euripides, Giovanni had copied verses from the Bible.

Leaving his Bacchus unfinished, Leonardo began another picture, still more strange, of St. John the Baptist. He worked at it more continuously and more rapidly than was his wont, as if feeling that his days were numbered, that his strength was every day declining, and that now or never he must give expression to that mystery which all his life he had hidden from men,--even from himself.

Soon the picture was sufficiently advanced for the conception to be clear. The background was dark, recalling the gloom of that cavern he had once described to Monna Lisa as the occasion both of curiosity and of fear. Yet the dimness was not impenetrable, but blent with light, melting into it as smoke dissolves into sunlight, as distant music vibrates away into silence. And between the darkness and the perfect light appeared what at first seemed a phantom, but presently snowed more distinct than life itself; the face and figure of a naked youth, womanish, seductively beautiful, recalling the words of Pentheus.

But instead of the leopard's skin he wore a garment of camel's hair; instead of the thrysus he carried a cross. Smiling, with bent head, as if listening, all expectation, all curiosity, yet half afraid, he pointed with one hand to the cross, with the other to himself, and on his lips the words seemed to tremble:--

'There cometh one after me whose shoe's-latchet I am not worthy to unloose.'

IV

After a tedious morning spent in touching for the king's evil, Francis I. felt a desire for something beautiful to divert his mind from the spectacle of deformity and sickness. He resolved to visit Leonardo's studio. Accordingly, with a few attendants, he presented himself at Cloux.

All day the painter had worked at his Baptist. His room was large and cold, with a brick floor and a high-raftered ceiling. The last slanting rays of the sun streamed in through the narrow window; and Leonardo was hastening to finish his day's task before the coming on of twilight. When he heard voices and footsteps under the window, he said to Melzi:--

'I admit no one. Say I am ill.'

Francesco went out obediently to stop the intruders; but seeing the king he bowed respectfully and threw open the doors. Leonardo had barely time to cover the portrait of La Gioconda; this he always did if he expected strangers.

Francis entered; he was richly but gaudily dressed, with excess of jewellery and gold trimmings. He was twenty-four years of age, well built, tall and strong, majestic, and of agreeable manners. Yet there was something displeasing in his face, something at once sensual and sly, suggestive of a satyr.

He refused to allow Leonardo to kneel, bowed respectfully himself, and even embraced the aged painter.

'It is long since we saw each other, Maître Léonard,' he said. 'How is your health? Do you paint much? Have you done many new pictures? What is that one?' and he pointed to the curtained Monna Lisa.

'An old portrait, sire, which your Majesty has already seen.'

'Let me see it again. The oftener one sees your pictures the more one admires them.'

The painter hesitated, but to his annoyance a courtier removed the veil, and La Gioconda was revealed.

The king, throwing himself on a chair, gazed long without a word. 'Marvellous!' he exclaimed at last. 'That is the fairest woman I ever saw! Who is she?'

'Madonna Lisa, wife of a Florentine citizen.'

'Did you paint it lately?'

'Ten years ago.'

'Is she still beautiful?'

'Sire, she is dead.'

'Maître Léonard da Vinci,' said Saint Gelais, the court poet, 'worked five years at yon portrait, and has left it unfinished--so at least he avers.'

'Unfinished?' cried the king. 'I pray you, what does it lack? She seems alive--on the point to speak. You are enviable, Maître Léonard! Five years with that woman! Had she not died, I trow, you would not have finished it yet.' He laughed, and the resemblance to a satyr increased. It never occurred to him that Monna Lisa might have been a faithful wife.

'I see, sir, you have a pretty taste in women,' resumed His Majesty gaily. 'What shoulders! what a bosom! And one may guess at further beauties!'

Leonardo remained silent; he grew pale, and his eyes were fixed on the ground.

'To paint such a likeness,' continued the king, ''tis not enough to be an artist; you must fathom all the secrets of a woman's heart, that labyrinth, that tangle, impossible to the devil himself. Yon lady seems modest; she folds her hands like a nun; but wait a bit; guess what is in her heart.

'Souvent femme varie
Bien fol qui s'y fie!'

Leonard stepped aside, as if to move another picture to the light, and Saint Gelais whispered scandal to his master concerning Leonardo's supposed tastes in matters of the heart.

Francis seemed surprised, but shrugged his shoulders indulgently, and turned to an unfinished cartoon on an easel near the portrait.

'What is this?'

'Bacchus, methinks,' said the poet, pointing to the thyrsus.

'And this?'

'It would seem, Bacchus again,' said Saint Gelais.

'The hair and the breast are like a girl,' said the king; 'it has the same smile as La Gioconda.'

'A hermaphrodite then,' returned the poet; and repeated Plato's fable of the original men-women, and the origin of the passion of Love. 'Maître Léonard would fain restore the primitive type,' he concluded mockingly.

Francis turned to the painter.

'Resolve our doubts, Master,' he said; 'is it Bacchus or a hermaphrodite?'

'Sire,' said Leonardo, reddening, 'it is St. John the Baptist.'

The king shook his head in bewilderment. This mixture of the sacred and the profane seemed blasphemous to him, yet rather attractive. Not that the blasphemy mattered; every one knows that painters have queer fancies!

'I will buy both pictures,' he said; 'the Bacchus--I mean the Baptist, and Lisa la Gioconda. What is the price?'

'Your Majesty,' began the painter, embarrassed, 'they are not yet finished.'

'Tut, man! St. John you can finish at once, and as for Lisa, I will not have her touched. I want her with me at once, hear you? Tell me the price, and fear not. I will not try to cheapen her.'

What was Leonardo to say to this frivolous coarse man? How explain what the portrait was to its painter, and why no price could induce him to give it up?

'You will not speak? Then I will name a price myself. Three thousand crowns? How say you? 'Tis not enough? Three and a half?'

'Sire,' implored the artist, his voice shaking; 'I can assure you----'

'Well! well! Maître Léonard, four thousand?'

A murmur of astonishment came from the courtiers. Not Lorenzo de' Medici himself had ever set such a price upon a picture. Leonardo raised his eyes in unutterable confusion. He was ready to fall on his knees, to beg as men beg for their lives, that he might not be robbed of La Gioconda. Francis took his embarrassment for gratitude, rose to leave, and as a farewell, again embraced the painter.

'Then that's settled. Four thousand crowns, and the money is ready for you when you choose. To-morrow I shall send for her. Make yourself easy. I will hang her with such honour as shall content you. I know her value! I will preserve her for posterity!'

When the king had gone, Leonardo sank into a chair, looking at his picture, scarce believing what had happened. Absurd, childish devices suggested themselves to him: he would hide the portrait; he would refuse to give it up, though threatened with capital punishment. He would send Melzi to Italy with it--nay, he would flee himself.

Night fell. Francesco looked several times into the room, but did not venture to speak. Leonardo still sat before Monna Lisa, his face pale and rigid as that of a corpse. At midnight he went into Francesco's room.

'Get up. We must go to the castle. I have to see the king.'

'Master, it is late. You are weary. You have not the strength. Let us wait for the morrow.'

'No, it must be now. Light me the lantern, and come with me. If you will not, I will go alone.'

Francesco rose and dressed himself, and they went together to the castle.

V

The walk took a quarter of an hour; the path was steep and badly paved. Leonardo moved slowly, leaning on the young man's arm. It was a warm and starless night, black as the pit. The boughs of the trees swayed painfully under the gusts of wind. There were lights in the castle windows, and music made itself heard. The king was supping late with a small company, and amusing himself by making the young ladies of the court drink from a silver cup chased with obscene figures. Among these ladies was his sister Marguerite, called 'The Pearl of Pearls,' and celebrated for her beauty and erudition. 'The art of pleasing was more important to her than daily bread,' so said her admirers. At heart, however, she was indifferent to all except her brother, to whom she was devotedly attached. His weaknesses seemed to her charms, his vices strength, his faun's mask the countenance of Apollo. For him she declared herself ready not merely to scatter the ashes of her body to the wind, but to sell her immortal soul. Francis abused her affection, for he made use of her not only in difficulties and dangers, but also in his amorous adventures.

Leonardo's coming was announced; and Francis, having sent for him to the supper-room, advanced with his sister to greet him. The cavaliers and court-ladies watched the artist's entry with glances half respectful, half contemptuous. The tall old man, with the long hair, the melancholy face, the nervous manner, seemed to have dropped from an alien sphere, and sent a chill through the company as if he had come out of a snowstorm.

'Ah! Maître Léonard!' cried the king with his customary cordiality, 'you are a rare guest. What shall we offer you? You eat no flesh, I know; but you will partake of sweetmeats and fruit?'

'I thank your Majesty. Sire, you will excuse me; I am fain to speak a few words with your Majesty.'

Francis led him aside, and asked if Marguerite might be present.

'I venture to hope that her Highness will intercede for me,' said Leonardo with a bow. Then he spread out his hands to the sovereign. 'I come, sire, about my picture, which your Majesty has desired to buy--the portrait of Monna Lisa.'

'Had we not agreed upon the price?' asked the king.

'I come not about money,' said Leonardo.

'Then what is the matter?'

The painter felt again that to speak of La Gioconda to this indifferent affable young monarch was impossible. Nevertheless he forced himself to say:--

'Sire, be merciful to me. Do not take this portrait from me. It shall be yours; I ask no money for it. Only leave it with me till--my death.'

He paused, looking entreatingly at Marguerite.

The king shrugged his shoulders and frowned.

'Sire!' said the young lady, 'grant the prayer of Maître Léonard. He deserves it! Be compassionate!'

'What, Madame Marguerite, are you on his side? A plot, I declare, a plot! a plot!'

Laying her hand on her brother's shoulder, she whispered:--'Do you not see? He still loves her!'

'But she is dead!'

'Do men never love the dead? You said yourself she lived in her portrait! Leave him his memorial of her. Do not afflict the old man!'

Francis had a dim recollection of having somewhere heard of eternal unions of soul, of fidelity, of love that had no grossness in it. He felt inspired by magnanimity.

'You have a sweet intercessor, Maître Léonard. Be of good cheer. I will do as you ask; only remember the picture belongs to me, and you shall receive the money at once.'

Something wistful and plaintive in Leonardo's eyes touched the king, and he tapped him good-naturedly.

'Fear not! I give you my word! None shall part you from your Lisa!'

Marguerite smiled and her eyes shone. She gave her hand to the painter, who kissed it fervently and in silence.

The band struck up and dancing began. No one thought any more of the uncourtly guest, who had come in like a shadow and vanished again into the starless night.

VI

As soon as the king went away the usual quiet settled upon Amboise. Leonardo worked on at his St. John, but as the picture advanced it became more difficult, and his progress was less rapid. Sometimes in the twilight he would lift the veil from the portrait of Monna Lisa, gaze long at it, and then at St. John, which stood beside it. Apparently he was comparing the two pictures. Francesco, watching breathlessly, fancied at those times that the expression of the two faces, the woman's and the youth's, mysteriously changed; they stood out from the canvas like apparitions, and under the fixed gaze of the painter lived with a supernatural life. St. John grew like Monna Lisa, and like Leonardo himself, even as a son resembles his parents.

Meantime the Master's health was declining. Melzi begged him to rest and leave his work, but this he resolutely refused to do. One day, in the autumn of 1518, he was greatly indisposed. He desisted earlier than usual from his work, and asked Francesco to help him to his bedroom. The winding stair was steep, and often of late he had been unable to ascend it without assistance. So Francesco supported him, and he went up slowly, halting frequently to recover his breath. Suddenly he staggered and fell into the young man's arms. Francesco called the old servant Battista Villanis. Together they lifted the Master and carried him to his bedroom.

He lay six weeks in bed, refusing all medical advice according to his wont. His right side was paralysed, his right arm useless. The winter found him better, but his recovery was slow. He was ambidextrous, but required both hands at once for his work. With the left he drew, with the right he painted; and he maintained that it was this division of labour which had given him superiority over other painters. He feared now that painting had become impossible to him. In the early days of December he rose from his bed, and before long came downstairs to his painting-room, but did not resume his work.

One day at the hour of siesta, Francesco, not finding him in the upper rooms, cautiously opened the studio door and looked in. Of late Leonardo had been increasingly disinclined to society; he spent many hours alone, and would allow no one to enter unbidden. Francesco, peeping now through the half-opened door, saw him standing before the picture of St. John, and trying to paint with his disabled hand. His face was distorted by the anguish of effort, the corners of his mouth drooped, the brows were contracted, and the strands of grey hair, falling over his forehead, were bathed in sweat. His fingers would not obey him, and the brush shook in the hands of the great Master as in the hand of a clumsy beginner. With bated breath Francesco watched this last struggle between the living spirit and the dying body.

VII

That year the winter was very severe. Drifting ice broke the bridges of the Loire, people were frozen on the roads, wolves came into the suburbs of the town, and prowled even under the windows of the château. One morning Francesco found a half-frozen swallow on the verandah and carried it to Leonardo, who revived it with the warmth of his breath, and established it in a cage near the fire, meaning to restore it to liberty in the spring. The Master no longer attempted to paint, and had hidden the unfinished picture with his brushes and paints in the darkest corner of the studio. The days went by in idleness. Sometimes the notary visited them and talked of the harvests, the salt tax, and the comparative merits of Languedoc and Limousin sheep. Sometimes Francesco's confessor came, Fra Guglielmo, an Italian by birth, but long settled at Amboise, a simple pleasant old man, who could tell stories about the Florence of his youth which made Leonardo laugh.

The early twilight came on, and the visitors took their departure. Then for hours at a time Leonardo would pace up and down the room, occasionally glancing at Astro. Now more than ever the cripple seemed to him a living reproach, the mockery of the one great aim of his life, the making of wings for men. Astro sat in a corner, his feet drawn up under him, winding long strips of linen on a stick, whittling sticks, carving tops, or with his eyes blinking he would rock himself slowly and, smiling, sing his unchanging song:--

'Cucurlu! Curlu!
Eagles and cranes,
Up they flew!'

At last it became quite dark, and silence descended upon the house. Out of doors the boughs of the old trees creaked and roared in the storm, and the roar was like the voice of malignant giants. The eerie howling of wolves was heard in the outskirts of the forest. Francesco piled logs on the fire, and Leonardo sat down beside it. The young man played on the lute and could sing very pleasantly. He tried to dispel the Master's melancholy by his music; once he sang him an old song composed by Lorenzo Il Magnifico for the 'Mask of Bacchus and Ariadne,' a favourite with Leonardo, who had known it in his youth:--

'Quant' è bella giovinezza
Ma sen fugge tuttavia?
Chi vuol esser lieto, sia;
Di doman non v'è certezza.'

The Master listened, greatly moved; he remembered the summer night, the dark shadows, the brilliant moonlight in the lonely street, the sounds of the lute from the marble loggia, the same tender love-song. And he remembered, too, his thoughts of La Gioconda. Francesco, sitting at the old man's feet, looked up and saw that tears were falling from the fading eyes.

Sometimes Leonardo would read over his old diaries, and occasionally he still wrote in them, but of the subject which now chiefly occupied his thoughts--Death.

'Thou see'st that thy hope and thy desire to return to thy native land, and to thy old life, is like the desire of the moth for the flame, and that Man (who, ceaseless in desire, joyous in impatience, ever awaits a new spring, and thinketh that his desire is slow in its fulfilment) does not know that he expecteth but his own destruction and his end. But this expectation is the quintessence of nature, the soul of the elements, and finding itself in the soul of man, it is the desire to return from the body unto Him who made it.'

'In nature nothing exists but Force and Movement; and force is the volition of happiness, the eternal striving of the universe after final equilibrium and the Prime Mover.'

'Every part desires to be united with its whole that it may escape imperfection.'

'As the day well spent gives pleasant dreams, life well lived shall give a happy death.'

'Every evil leaves bitterness in the memory, except the greatest evil, which is death, for it destroys the memory together with the life.'

'When I thought I was learning to live, I was but learning how to die.'

'The outward necessity of nature corresponds with the outward necessity of reason: everything is reasonable, all is good, because all is necessary.'

Thus his reason justified death, the will of the Prime Mover; yet in the depth of his heart something rebelled.

Once he dreamed that he awoke in a coffin buried alive under the earth, and with desperate resolution and panting for breath he strove to raise the lid of his prison.

Next morning he told Francesco of his desire that he should lie unburied till the first signs of decomposition should show themselves. He still loved life with a blind unreasoning love, still clung to it and dreaded death as a black pit into which that day or the next he would fall with a cry of the utmost terror. All the consolations of reason, all he had said of divine necessity and the will of the Prime Mover, vanished like smoke before this shrinking of the flesh. He would have relinquished his immortality for one ray of earthly sunshine, one waft of the spring, for the perfume of expanding leaves, for a bunch of yellow flowers from the Monte Albano, where he had been a happy child.

At night, when he could not sleep, Francesco would read to him from the Gospels. Never had they seemed to him so new, so rare in excellence, so little understood of men. Some sayings, as he thought out their meaning, deepened for him like wells.

"Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God." Was this indeed the answer to the question of his whole life, 'Shall not men have wings?'

"And having ended all his temptation, the devil departed from him _for a season_." What did that mean? When did the devil return to him again?

Words which might have seemed to him full of the greatest error, contrary to experience and natural law, still did not repel him.

'If ye have faith as a grain of mustard-seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place, and it shall remove.'

He had always thought that the final knowledge and the final faith would lead by different paths to the same goal, the blending of outward and inward necessity, the will of man and the will of God. Yet was not the sting of the words in the fact that _to have faith_, even as a grain of mustard-seed, was more difficult than to see the mountain remove unto yonder place?

But there was a saying of Christ's still more enigmatical: "I thank thee, Father, that thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes." How reconcile this with the injunction, "Be ye wise as serpents"?

And, again, "Consider the lilies of the field, they toil not neither do they spin. Take no thought saying what shall we eat or what shall we drink, for after all these things do the Gentiles seek, and your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things."

Leonardo recalled his discoveries and inventions, the machines for giving men power over nature, and asked himself:--

'Is all this care for the body--what shall we eat and what shall we drink, and the like--is it mammon worship? Is there nothing in human toil, in knowledge, but the mere profit? Is knowledge like Martha, who is careful and troubled about many things, but not about the one thing needful? Is love like Mary, who has chosen the good part and sitteth at the Master's feet?'

He knew by experience the temptations inseparable from knowledge.

It seemed to the dying man that he was already face to face with the black, the dreadful pit, into which, if not to-day then to-morrow, he too must fall with a last despairing cry:--

'My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?'

VIII

Sometimes of a morning, when he looked through the frosted windows at the deep snow, the grey sky, the frozen water, he thought the winter would never end. But in February there came a breath of warmth. Drops trickled noisily from the icicles at the sunny side of the houses, the sparrows twittered, and the trees were girt with dark circles where the snow had melted, the buds swelled, and patches of blue sky were seen among the clouds. Francesco placed his master's chair in a sunny window, and for hours the old man would sit quite still with bent head, his wasted hands resting upon his knees. The swallow which had been rescued from the first frost now flew and circled about the room, perched on Leonardo's shoulder, and allowed herself to be handled and kissed on the head. Suddenly she would start up and again fly round the ceiling with impatient cries as if scenting the spring. He followed every turn of her lithe body, every movement of her pinions. The old idea of wings for men stirred within him.

One day he opened a large chest which contained his manuscript-books, stray drawings and sketches, chiefly mechanical, jottings from his two hundred 'Books of Nature.' All his life he had been meaning to bring order into this chaos, to sort the fragments and unite them in one whole, one great 'Book of the Universe.' He knew that among them were ideas and discoveries which could materially shorten the labours of those men who were to come after him. He knew also that he had delayed too long, that it was now too late, that all his sowing would fail of fruit, that all his scientific material would perish like the _Cenacolo_, the Colossus, the 'Battle of Anghiari.' And this, because in science as in art he had only desired with a wingless desire, had begun and not finished, had accomplished nothing. He foresaw that men would seek what he had found, would discover what he had already discovered, would walk in his paths, in his very steps; but would pass him by, would forget him as though he had never lived. In the chest he found a small manuscript-book, yellow with age, and entitled 'Birds.' Of late years he had scarcely occupied himself with the flying-machine, though he still often thought of it. To-day, watching the flight of his tame swallow, a new idea had come to him, a new design had perfected itself in his mind, and he determined to make a last attempt, indulging the last vain hope that by the finally successful making of wings for men the whole labour of his life would be justified.

He entered on this new task with the same resolution, with the same feverish haste which he had expended on the St. John. Ceasing to brood over death, conquering his weakness, forgetting his food and his sleep, he sat for whole days and nights over his calculations and his drawings. Francesco watching him sometimes feared this was not work but the delirium of a sick mind. With increasing alarm he noticed how the Master's face became distorted under the desperate effort of will, under the violent desire for the impossible--which men may not seek with impunity.

The week went by and Francesco never left him, not even to sleep. But a night came when deadly weariness overcame the youth; he threw himself on a chair by the fire and dozed. The morning came grey through the window, the swallow wakened and chirruped. Leonardo was still sitting at his work-table, a pen in his hand; he was greatly bent, his head almost touching the paper. Suddenly he trembled strangely, the pen dropped and his head fell. He made an effort to rise, tried to call Francesco, but could make no sound. Heavily and helplessly he rolled with his whole weight upon the table and overturned it. Melzi, awakened by the crash, sprang to his feet, to find the Master lying on the floor, his candle extinguished, his papers scattered, the terrified swallow flapping her wings against the rafters overhead. He realised that this was a second stroke.

For some days Leonardo lay unconscious, making occasional mutterings, always of mathematics. When he came to himself he at once asked for his sketches of the flying-machine.

'Nay, Master. Ask of me anything else, but I cannot let you work till you have mended somewhat,' replied Francesco.

'Where have you put my sketches?' he demanded, angrily.

'I have locked them in the attic.'

'Give me the key.'

'Nay, Master, what can you do with the key?'

'Give it me this instant.'

Francesco hesitated; the invalid's eyes flashed with wrath. Not to excite him, the young man gave the key. Leonardo hid it under his pillow and seemed satisfied. His recovery after this was more rapid than could have been hoped. In the beginning of April he was able again to play chess with Fra Guglielmo.

One night Francesco, sleeping on his customary bench by the Master's side, started up in alarm, for he could not hear Leonardo's usually heavy breathing. The night-light had been extinguished; he relit it hastily, and found the invalid's bed empty; he waked Villanis and they visited all the rooms on that floor, but Leonardo was not there. Francesco was going downstairs, when he remembered the sketches hidden in the attic. He hastened thither and found the door unlocked. Leonardo, half-dressed, was seated on the floor before an old box, which he was using as a table. By the light of a tallow candle he was writing, while he muttered rapidly as if delirious. His glowing eyes, his matted hair, his brows violently contracted, his sunken helpless mouth, his whole appearance was so strange and alarming to Francesco that for a few minutes he dared not enter.

Suddenly Leonardo snatched up a pencil and drew it across a page of figures so violently that it broke. Then he looked round, saw his pupil, rose and tottered towards him.

'I told you, Francesco,' he said quickly and bitterly, 'that I should soon make an end. Now I have finished. So have no fear, I shall not work any more. 'Tis enough. I have grown old and dull; more dull than Astro. I know nothing at all. What I have known I forget. Is it for me to think of wings? To the devil even with the wings!'

And seizing his papers furiously he tore and trampled them.

From that day his health grew worse. He returned to his bed, and Melzi foresaw that he would not again rise from it. Sometimes for whole days he lay in a trance.

Francesco was devout, and whatever the Church taught he believed without question. Alone of Leonardo's pupils he had not fallen under the influence of those 'fatal spells'; that 'evil eye' attributed to the Master. Though Leonardo did not observe the Church ceremonials, his young companion divined by the instinct of love that he was not impious. The lad did not try to penetrate further into the great man's opinions. Now, however, the thought that he might die unabsolved from errors, perhaps from heresies, was torture to the pious youth. He was afraid to address the Master on the subject, but he would have given his life to save him.

One evening Leonardo, seeing his anxious face, asked him what were his thoughts. Francesco answered with some embarrassment.

'Fra Guglielmo came this morning and wanted to see you. I told him it was impossible----'

The Master looked at his young attendant and saw alarm, entreaty, hope on his face.

'Francesco, this was not what you were thinking. Why will you not tell me?'

The pupil was silent, his eyes downcast. Leonardo understood; he turned away and frowned. He had always wished to die as he had lived, in complete liberty; in the truth, so far as he knew it. But he had compassion on Francesco. Could he, in these last hours of his life, embitter a simple heart, bring offences once more upon one of these 'little ones'?

He looked again at his pupil; laid his wasted hand on the lad's hand and said with a quiet smile:--

'My son, send to Fra Guglielmo and bid him come to-morrow. I wish to confess and to communicate. Send also for Maître Guillaume.'

Francesco did not answer--he kissed Leonardo's hand in passionate gratitude.

IX

The next morning, Saturday in Passion Week, April 23rd, Maître Guillaume the notary came, and Leonardo imparted to him his last wishes. He bequeathed four hundred florins to his brothers in token of reconciliation; to Francesco Melzi he left his books, scientific apparatus, machines, manuscripts, and the remainder of the salary due to him from the royal treasury; to Battista Villanis, his household furniture, and the half of the vineyard outside the walls of Milan; the other half he left to his pupil Andrea Salaino. Maturina was to have a dress of good black cloth, a cloth cap trimmed with fur, and two ducats. Melzi was named executor, and the ordering of the funeral was entrusted to him. Francesco was solicitous that all should be arranged in a manner to contradict popular slanders, and make it clear that the Master had died a true son of the Catholic Church. Leonardo assented to all he proposed.

Presently Fra Guglielmo came with the Holy Viaticum, and Leonardo made his confession and received the Sacrament 'according to the rites of the Church'; 'in all humility and submission to the will of God,' as the monk afterwards told Francesco; adding that whatever might be said against the Master he would be justified by the words of the Lord, 'Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God.' All day he suffered from breathlessness, but he survived the night, and on the morning of Easter Sunday seemed a little easier.

Francesco opened the window. Pigeons were flying in the blue air, and the rustle of their flight mingled with the chime of the Easter bells.

The dying man no longer heard nor saw what was passing around him. He imagined great weights falling and rolling on him and crushing him. With an effort he freed himself and was flying upward on gigantic wings. Again the weights fell, again he conquered them, and so on, again and again. And each time the weight was heavier, the struggle to overcome it more desperate; till at last he gave up the attempt, crying aloud a despairing cry.

He resigned himself to defeat. And then immediately he realised that the weights and the wings, the falling and the flight were all one; 'above' and 'below' were the same, and he was borne along on the waves of eternal motion gently as in a mother's arms.

For some days longer his body lived, but he never recovered consciousness. On the morning of May 2nd Francesco and Fra Guglielmo noticed that his breathing had grown feebler. The monk read the prayers for the dying; a little later, and the young man had closed his eyes.

The face of the dead man changed but little; it wore the expression, so frequent in his lifetime, of profound and quiet attention.

The windows were widely opened, and Francesco and the two old servants were performing the last offices for the corpse. Suddenly the tame swallow, which of late had been forgotten, flew into the room, circled over the dead man, and settled at last upon his folded hands.

He was buried at the monastery of St. Florentine, but the exact site of his grave is unknown.

Writing to Florence to the Master's brothers Francesco thus expressed himself:--

'I cannot tell the grief occasioned to me by the death of him who was more to me than a father. Long as I live I shall mourn him. He loved me with a great and tender love. The whole world will grieve for the loss of a man whose like Nature herself will not create again.

'May the Almighty God grant him everlasting peace!'