The Romance of Leonardo Da Vinci

Front matter

N THIS CLASSIC NOVEL OF THE REN- AISSANCE, dominated by Leonardo da Vinci, painter, poet, sculptor, en-

gineer, Merejkowski has written the most colorful, lusty and romantic of all historical novels. The book is a gorgeous pageant of the Middle Ages, full of pomp and magnificence, and is written with pulsing beauty, crisp humor and undeniable authenticity.

From the first moment when, under a dark and moonless sky and by the light of smoking, crackling pitch torches, the White She-Demon is uncovered, through to the stark, macabre Witches Sabbath of the end, the book is vividly alive, swiftpaced, and completely gripping.

BOOK ONE The White She-Demon I

N FLORENCE, THE WAREHOUSES OF THE GUILD of Dyers were situated side by side with the Ca- Wf |nonica of Or San Michele.

»,,| The clumsy additions, coops, uneven abutments on rickety props, clung to the houses, _|their tiled roofs meeting so closely up above that all that was left of the sky was a narrow crack, and, even in the daytime, it was dark in the street. Near the entrances to the shops, upon cross-pieces, hung samples of foreign woollen stuffs, dyed in Florence. In the gutter in the middle of the street, which was paved with flat cobbles, swirled multicoloured liquids, poured out of the dyeing vats. Over the doors of the more important fondachi, or mercers’ shops, could be seen shields with thecoat of armsof the Calimala, the Guild of the Dyers: on a field scarlet an eagle of gold upon a round bale of white wool.

Messer Cipriano Buonaccorsi, arich Florentine merchant anda Consul of the noble art of the Calimala, was sitting in one of the fondachi surrounded by commercial records and thick account books.

In the cold light of a March day, amid the exhalations of dampness wafted up from the cellars cumbered up with goods, the old man shivered and wrapped himself closely in his coat of squirrel fur,—much worn and out-at-the-elbows. A goose quill was stuck behind his ear, and with his weak, near-sighted, but all-seeing eyes, he was looking over, with seeming negligence but in reality with attentiveness, the parchment leaves of an enormous book, its pages divided lengthwise and across into sections; Credit to the left, Dedit to the right. The entries of goods were made in an even, round hand, all in capitals, without any dots or commas, with Roman numerals,—by no means Arabic, which were deemed a flighty innovation, unseemly for business rec~ ords. On the first page, in large letters, was written:

IN THE NAME OF OUR LORD FESUS CHRIST AND THE EVER VIRGIN MARY THIS ACCOMPT BOOK IS BEGUN IN THE YEAR OF OUR LORD MCCCCXCIV.

Leonardo da Vinci , BODE

Having finished checking the latest entries, and after painstakingly correcting an error in the number of measures of long cayenne peppers, ginger from Mecca, and bundles of chicory, taken as security for woollen goods, Messer Cipriano witha tired air leaned back in his chair, closed his eyes, and fell to planning a business letter, which he had to despatch to his chief clerk at the wool fair in Montpellier, in France.

Someone entered the shop. The old man, opening his eyes, saw a tenant farmer of his, Grillo, who rented some tilth and vineyards from him at his villa of San Gervasio, at the foot of the mountains, in the valley of Mugnone.

Grillo was bowing, holding a basket of eggs, neatly nested in straw. Dangling at his belt, with their small combs downward, and their legs trussed, were two live cockerels.

“Ah, Grillo!” said Buonaccorsi, with his wonted amiability, which he used both for the great and the humble alike. “How doth the Lord treat thee? ’Twould seem this will be a friendly spring.”

“Even the spring bringeth no joy to us who are old, Messer Cipriano: our bones ache grievously—a-crying for the grave.—Here be some eggs and cockerels for your lordship against the radiant holiday,” he added, after a short silence.

Grillo, with a sly kindliness, puckered up his greenish eyes, the fine sunburned wrinkles gathering about them,—such wrinkles as are to be seen in people used to sun and wind. Buonaccorsi, having thanked the old man, fell to business.

“Well, now, are the labourers ready on the farm? Will we succeed in finishing before daylight?”

Grillo sighed heavily and became lost in thought, leaning on his stick.

“All is in readiness, and there are labourers enough. Only here is something of which I would inform you, messer,—would it not be better to bide our time?”

“Thou thyself, old man, didst say but the other day that it was impossible to wait,—someone might get wind of it before us.”

“That may be so, well enough, but still, a body is afraid. ’Tis a sin! These be holy days, and lenten, whereas our business is none of the Cleanést.eac 2?

“Ah, well, I shall take the sin upon my soul. Have no fear, I shall not give thee away. The only thing is,—shall we find aught?”

“Howelse! There be all the favourable omens. Our sires and grandsires knew of the mound behind the mill at the Wet Glen. Little phantom-fires run at night over San Giovanni. Then, too, it must be said, —we have a lot of this here rubbish. They do say, now, that when they were digging a well the other day in the vineyard at Marignola they dragged a whole devil out of the clay. . . .”

“Whatever are you saying? A whole devil?”

“Of copper, with horns. His legs were rough, like a goat’s—with hoofs at the ends of them. And his little muzzle was gay,—just like he was a-laughing; a-dancing on one leg, he was, and a-snapping of his fingers. Grown all green from age, he was, and all over with moss.”

“What was done with him?”

“They melted him into a bell for the new chapel of the Archangel Michele.”

Messer Cipriano became well-nigh wroth.

“Why hast thou told me naught of this before, Grillo?”

“You were going away to Siena on business.”

“Well, thou couldst have written me. I would have sent someone. I would have come myself,—nor would I have spared any sum; ten bells would I have moulded for them. Fools! A bell,—out of a dancing Faun;mayhaptheworkoftheancientHellenicsculptorScopas. . . .”

“Yea, verily,—they were fools. Only, may it please you, be not wroth, Messer Cipriano. For punished they are, even as it is,—ever since the time of the hanging of the new bell, for two years running, the worms have been eating the apples and cherries in the orchards, and the olives have failed. And the sound of the bell is ill.”

“But wherein is it ill?”

“How shall I tell you? It hath no real sound. It doth not gladden the heart. It just simply gibbers somewhat or other, that hath no meaning. You know how it is yourself,—what sort of a bell can a body expect to get out of a devil! Messer, I say it not to anger your lordship,—but the priest may, after all, be in the right: out of all these unclean things that are dug up no good can come. Here a body must carry the matter out with care, and keep his eyes open,—guarding himself with the cross and with prayer, for strong is the devil and cunning, the son of adog,—he will crawl in at one ear and out th’ other! Take, for instance, even this marble hand that Zacciello dug up last year at the Mill Mound,—the Foul One did lead us astray, and we did but gain misfortune from it,—God forbid, ’tis frightful even torecallit....

“Tell me Grillo,—how did you find it?”

“The matter fell out in autumn, on the eve of St. Martin’s Day. We had sat down to supper, and the housewife had just put on the table a dish of bread mash, when a farm hand runs into the room,— my gossip’s nephew, Zacciello. Now, I must tell you, I had left him that nightin the field, by the Mill Mound, touproot an olive stump,— I wanted to plant that place with hemp. ‘Master, eh master? mumbles Zacciello, all out of his wits; he’s all shivering, and his teeth all a-chatter, ‘The Lord be with thee, lad!’ “There’s an ill hap,’ says he, ‘going on in the field, there’s a dead man clambering out from under the stump. If ye believeit not, go, look for yourselves.’ We took lanthorns and went.

“It had grown dark. The crescent moon had come up from behind the grove. Then we see the stump,—alongside there is upturned earth, and something white glimmering in it. I bend down and look, —there’s a hand sticking up out of the earth, white, and the fingers beautiful, slender, like those of city maids. ‘Ah, a fit take thee,’ thinks I, ‘what devil’s doings be these?’ I lower the lanthorn into the pit, so as to have a better look all around it,—when the hand starts stirring, beckoning me with its dainty fingers. After that I could not hold out any more; I began shouting, and my legs gave way from under me. But Monna Bonda, the gammer,—we count her a knowing one, a sorceress and a midwife, a spry old woman, even though an ancient,—she up and says: ‘Whatever are ye feared of, ye fools, can ye not see the hand is nor living nor dead, but of stone” She grabbed hold of it, gave a jerk, and pulled it out of the ground, like a turnip. At the joint, above the wrist, the hand was broken off. ‘Granny,’ I yell to her, ‘oh, granny, leave it be, touch it not, let us bury it in the ground, fast as we can, or else, like as not, we may but gain misfortune with it.’ ‘No,’ says she, ‘that would not be right; the best thing, now, is to bring it first to the church, to the priest, that he may read an exorcism over it.’ She fooled me, did the old woman: she never took the hand to the priest, but put it in her chest which she kept in a corner, where she had all sorts of odds and ends, —bits of rag, ointments, herbs and vials. I railed at her to give the hand up, but Monna Bonda had gotten her back up. And since that time gammer has taken to working wonder cures. If someone gets a yr, Ty, ee ene Leonardo da Vinci toothache,—she will but touch the cheek with the idol’s hand, and the swelling goes down. It has helped in fever, in belly-ache, in the falling sickness. If a cow be in torment, and can not drop her calf, gammer will put the stone hand upon her belly; the cow will let out a moo, and, lo and behold ye,—there’s the little calf, already stirring in the straw.

“The fame of it started going around the neighbouring settlements. The old woman took in a lot of money at that time. Only no good came of it. The priest, Father Faustino, would give me no peace: if I went to church, he would reproach me at sermon before everybody, calling mea son of perdition, a servant of the devil; threatening to complain to the bishop, and deprive me of the Holy Sacrament. The urchins ran after me on the street, pointing their fingers at me: “There goes Grillo; Grillo himself is a sorcerer, and his gammer is a witch; both sold their souls to the devil.’ Would you believe it, even at night I had no rest: I dreamt of the marble hand all the time— it seemed to steal up on me, taking me softly, oh, so softly by the neck, as though it were caressing me, with its long, clammy fingers and then, suddenly, it would seize me so hard, squeezing my gullet and choking me,—I’d want to cry out and could not.

“Eh, thinks I, ’tis an evil jest. One morning I got up before it was light, and when gammer went out over the dew in the meadows to pick grasses, I broke the lock of the chest, took the hand, and carried it off to you,—though the rag-picker Lotto was giving me ten soldi, whereas from you I got but eight. But we would not spare even our life for your lordship, let alone two so/di,—may the Lord send you good days, and to Madonna Angelica, and your little children, and your grandchildren.”

“Yes, judging by all thou tellest me, Grillo, we shall find somewhat at the Mill Mound,” Cipriano pronounced meditatively.

“We will, never fear,” continued the old man, again sighing deeply, “only what if Father Faustino gets wind of it? If he but should, he would rake me over the coals good and plenty, as well as interfere with you,—he’d stir up the country-folk, nor let us finish the work. Ah, well, God is gracious. Only do you not also forsake me, my benefactor,—put in a word for me before the judge.”

“Dost thou mean the piece of land that the miller would get away p?? from thee!

“Just so, messer. The miller is a skinflint and a cheat. He knows where the devil has his tail. I had made the judge the gift of a heifer, d’you see, and so had he,—but one that was heavy with calf. During the litigation she ups and drops her calf. He had gone me one better, the scoundrel. So I fear me the judge may somehow decide in his favour, because the heifer, for my sins, calved a bullock. Do you now defend me, father of mine! ’Tis only for your lordship that I am trying so hard at the Mound of the Mill,—nor would I take such a sin upon my soul for anyone else. . . .”

“Set your mind at ease, Grillo. The judge is a crony of mine, and I shall take care of thee. And now go. They shall feed thee and treat thee to wine in the kitchen. This night we shall both ride to San Gervasio.”

The old man, making a low bow, thanked him and departed, while Messer Cipriano withdrew to his little workroom next the shop, where none had permission to enter.

Here, asin a museum, marbles and bronzes were set and hung about the wall. Ancient coins and medals were set off to their best advantage oncloth-covered boards. Fragmentsof statues, as yetunassorted, were lying in boxes. Through his multitudinous mercantile agencies he acquired antiquities from every source where they could be found, —from Athens, Smyrna, and Halicarnassus; from Cyprus, Leukosia, and Rhodes; from the depths of Egypt and of Asia Minor.

Having surveyed his treasures, the Consul of Calimala again plunged into austere, weighty thoughts about customs duties on wool, and, having considered everything thoroughly, he began composing the letter to his trusted agent in Montpellier.

II

Ar the same time, in the depth of the warehouse, where the bales of goods, piled up to the ceiling, were seen even during the day only by a small hanging lamp glimmering before a Madonna, three young men were conversing: Doffo, Antonio, and Giovanni. Doffo, a clerk of Messer Buonaccorsi, red-haired, pug-nosed, and good-naturedly gay, was inscribing in a book the number of ells of measured cloth. Antonio da Vinci, a youth of elderly looks, with glassy, ichthyal eyes, with stubbornly unruly strands of thin black hair, was dexterously measuring the stuffs with the canna,—a Florentine linear measure. Giovanni Beltraffio—a timid and retiring Milanese youth eb

Pee ee aes Leonardo da Vinci of nineteen, a student of painting, whose big grey eyes were innocent and mournful, and whose face bore an expression of vacillation —was seated cross-legged on a bale already checked, attentively listening.

“There, brethren, that’s what we have come to,” Antonio was saying, in a low and malevolent voice; “they have taken to digging up pagan deities out of the ground!

“Scotch wool, with nap, brown, thirty ells, six palms, eight inches,” he added, turning to Doffo, who entered the figures in the stock record. Then, having folded the measured bolt, Antonio threw it, angrily but deftly, so that it fell exactly in the place intended, and, elevating his index finger with the air of a prophet, imitating Fra Girolamo Savonarola, he exclaimed:

“Gladius Dei super terram cito et velociter! To St. John at Patmos came a vision: an Angel ‘laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent, which is the Devil,’ and bound him a thousand years, and cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him up, and set a seal upon him, that he should deceive the nations no more till the thousand years should be fulfilled;! to the full time, and over. Now Satan is getting free from his dungeon. The thousand years have come to an end. False gods, forerunners, and the servants of Antichrist are coming out of the ground, out from under the seal of the Angel, that they may seduce the nations. Woe to them that dwell on the earth and on the sea! . . . Yellow Brabant wool, smooth—seventeen ells, four palms, nine inches.”

“How think ye, then, Antonio,” asked Giovanni with a timid and avid curiosity, “do all these portents bear witness?”

“Yea, yea,—not otherwise. Be on your guard! The time is near. And now they digup not only the ancient gods, but create new ones in the image of the ancient. The sculptors and painters of today serve Moloch,—the Devil, that is. Out of the Church of the Lord they make the Temple of Satan. Upon the holy images, in the guise of martyrs and saints, they depict unclean gods, before whom they prostrate themselves: instead of John the Precursor,—Bacchus; instead of the Mother of God,—Venus the wanton Whore. Such pictures ought to be burned and their ashes cast to the winds!”

In the dull eyes of the pious clerk a malevolent fire sprang up.

Giovanni kept his peace, not daring to contradict, contracting his thin, childlike eyebrows in a helpless effort of thought.

“Antonio,” hespokeatlast,“I have heard that your cousin, Leonardo da Vinci, accepts pupils in his atelier occasionally. I have been wanting for along time . . .”

“Tf you would,” Antonio cut him short, “if you would send your soul to perdition,—go to Messer Leonardo.” :

“How? Why?”

“Even though he be my cousin, and older than I by twenty years, still the Scripture sayeth: Thou shalt turn away from a heretic, after a first admonition, and a second. Messer Leonardo is a heretic and a godless man. His mind is darkened by a Satanic pride. Through the medium of mathematics and black magic he thinks to penetrate the mysteries of nature. . . .”

And, lifting up his eyes to heaven, he quoted the words of Savonarola’s latest sermon:

“*The wisdom of this age is madness before the Lord. Full well we know these learned men: they shall all come to the dwelling-place of Satan!”

“But have you heard, Antonio,” continued Giovanni, still more timidly, ‘‘that Messer Leonardo is now here, in Florence? He has just arrived from Milan.”

“What for?”

“The Duke has sent him, to find out if it be not possible to purchase certain of the pictures which belonged to the late Lorenzo the Magnificent.”

“Tf he be here, then he here be,—’tis all one to me,”’ Antonio cut him short, applying himself with still greater assiduity to measuring the cloth with the canna.

The churches began their evensong. Doffo stretched himself with pleasure and slammed the book shut. Work was over; the shops were closing up. Giovanni went out into the street. Between the wet roofs was a grey sky with the barely perceptible pink shading of evening. A fine drizzle was falling through the windless air.

Suddenly from an open window ina neighbouring alley came a song:

Oh mountain maids, oh lovely shepherd girls.

The voice was a young and a resonant one. Giovanni surmised, by the even sound of a pedal, that it was a spinster singing at her spinning wheel.

8 |

ONE - Leonardo da Vinci

He lost himself in listening, recalled that it was the time of spring, and felt his heart beat from inexplicable emotion and pensiveness.

“Nanna! Nanna! Wherever art thou at, thou devil’s wench? Art thou grown deaf, or what? Come to supper! The macaroni will grow cold.”

Wooden shoon,—zoccoli,—clattered sprightlily over a brick floor, —and everything grew quiet.

Giovanni continued standing for a long while, gazing at the empty window, and in his ears rang the vernal refrain like the trills of a distant shepherd’s pipe: O vaghe montanine e pastorelle.

Then, sighing softly, he entered the house of the Consul of Calimala, and by a steep staircase with rotted, shaky railings, bored through and through by worms, went up into a large room which served as a library, where, bent over a writing stand, sat one Giorgio Merulla, the court chronicler of the Duke of Milan.

Merutra hadcome to Florence at the order of his lord, for the purchase of rare works from the library of Lorenzo de Medici, and, as always, had stopped at the house of his friend, as great a lover of antiquities as himself,—Messer Cipriano Buonaccorsi. With Giovanni Beltraffio the learned historian had become acquainted by chance ata hostelry on the road from Milan, and, under the pretence that he, Merulla, stood in need of a good scribe, and that Giovanni wrote

_a beautiful and clear hand, had taken him along into Cipriano’s house.

When Giovannientered theroom, Merulla waspainstakingly looking over a tattered book, which looked like a church missal or psalter. He was carefully passing a moist sponge over its thin parchment, of the finest, made from the skin of a still-born Hibernian lamb; some of the lines he erased with a pumice stone, smoothing them down with a knife blade and a polishing iron, then inspected them again, lifting them up to the light.

“Ye little darlings!’ he was muttering under his breath, spluttering in his joyous emotion. “Come, come now, ye poor little things

—come out into God’s daylight. . . . But,—how long you are, how beautiful!”

He snapped two fingers and, momentarily desisting from his labours, lifted up his little bald head, with its bloated face, its gentle, mobile wrinkles, its purple livid nose, and little leaden eyes, full of life and irrepressible gaiety. Alongside, on the window sill, stood a clay pitcher and a mug. The scholar poured out some wine for himself, drained it, grunted, and was about to plunge once more into his work, when he caught sight of Giovanni.

“Good day, my little friar!’ the old man greeted him jocosely—he dubbed Giovanni thus for his modesty. “I have grown weary for thee. ‘Wherever did he go to?’ thinks I. What if, of all things, he hath fallen in love? There be fine little girls in Florence, now. ’Tis no sin to fall in love. But then, I am not losing time in vain, either. Thou hast never seen such an amusing thing in all thy born days, probably. Wouldst have me show it to thee? Or better not,—for thou mayst blab of it. For I have bought it from a Jew, an old-clothesman, for a copper,—found it among rubbish. Oh, well, come what may,—to thee alone!”

He beckoned to him with his finger:

“Here, here, to the light!”

And he pointed to the page, covered with crowded, angular letters of church script. These were acathisti, prayers, psalms, with enormous, clumsy notes for singing.

Then he took the book from him, opened it at another page, raised it up to the light almost on a level with his eyes,—and Giovanni noted that wherever Merulla had scraped off the churchly letters, other lines had appeared, almost imperceptible, the colourless impressions of ancient writing, depressions in the parchment,—not letters, but mere wraiths of long vanished letters, wan and gentle.

“What? See, see,—dost see them?”’ Merulla reiterated with exultation. “There they are, the darlings! I told thee, little friar, twas a pleasant thing!”

“What is this? From what work?” asked Giovanni.

“Tknow not myself, as yet. Fragments from anoldanthology,’twould seem. And mayhap they are even new, as yet unknown to the world, treasures of the Hellenic muse. But then, if it were not for me, they would never have even seen God’s daylight! They would lie to the end of time under antiphonies and penitential psalms. . . .”

To | o

Deana sh Pe ONE - Leonardo da Vinci

And Merulla explained to him, how some medieval monkish transcriber, desirous of utilizing the precious parchment, had scraped off the ancient pagan lines and had inscribed new ones over them.

The sun, without rending the rain-veil, but merely glimmering through, filled the room with its fading rosy reflection, and caused the intensified impressions, the shadows of the ancient letters, to stand out still more clearly.

“See, see,—the dead are coming out of their graves!” Merulla was repeating, enraptured. ““A hymn to the Olympians, ’twould seem. Here, look, one can read the first lines!”

And he translated for him from the Greek:

Glory to thee, Bacchus, benignant, splendidly crowned with clusters, Glory, to thee, far-darting Phebus, silver-crescented, awesome, God of the beautiful locks, slayer of the sons of Niobe.

“And here, too,isa hymn to Venus, whom thou dost dread so, little friar! Only ’tis difficult to make it out. . . .”

Glory to thee, golden-limbed mother, Aphrodite, Joyance of gods and of mortals. . . .

The stanza ended abruptly, disappearing under the church script.

Giovanni lowered the book, and the impressions of the letters paled, the depressions became effaced, sunk in the even yellowness of the parchment,—the shadows had disappeared. Only the distinct, fat, black letters of the monastery missal were visible, and the enormous, clumsy pothooks of the notes of the penitential psalm:

Give ear to my prayer, O God; attend unto me and hear me: I mourn in my complaint, and make a noise; my heart is sore pained within me; and the terrors of death are fallen upon me.?

The rosy glow expired, and the room began to grow dark. Merulla poured some wine out of the pitcher, drained it, and offered some to his companion.

“Well, brother, here is to my health. Vinum super omnia bonum diligamus!”

Giovanni declined.

“Well, then, God be with thee. I shall drink for thee. But why art thou so cast down to-day, little friar,—just as though someone had dowsed thee? Or has that holier-than-thou Antonio again scared thee

[ xz

Leonardo da Vinci — - s00x with prophecies? Out upon them, Giovanni,—really, now—out upon them! And why do they croak so, the bigots?—be damned to them! Confess,—didst speak with Antonio?”

nL did.”

“Whereof?”’

“Of Antichrist and Messer Leonardo da Vinci. . . .”

“Well, thereitis! Why, thatisall thou dostrave about, this Leonardo. Has he bewitched thee, or what? Listen, brother, throw all that nonsense out of thy head. Do thou stay as my secretary,— I shall quickly make a man of mark of thee; I shall teach thee Latin, make thee a jurist, an orator, or a poet laureate; thou shalt wax rich, and become renowned. Well, now, what is painting? Even the philosopiiae Seneca dubbed it a 2s unworthy of a freeman. Look upon the painters,—all ignorant folk and uncouth. . . .”

“T have heard,” retorted Giovanni, “that Messer Leonardoisa great man of learning.”

“Man of learning? Guess again! Why, he can not even read Latin; he confuses Cicero with Quintilian; and as for Greek,—he hath not as muchasa sniff of it. What a man of learning thou hast found! ’Tis enough to make anyone laugh.”

“They dosay,” Beltraffio would not be downed, “‘that he is inventing wondrous machines, and that his observations of nature . . .”

“Machines, observations! Well, brother, thou wilt not go far with that. In my Beauties of the Latin Tongue there be gathered more than two thousand of new, most elegant turns of speech. And dost thou know what that has cost me? . . . But to fit intricate little wheels in mechanical thingamajigs, to watch how the birds fly in the sky, how the grasses in the field grow,—that is not learning, but pastime and play for children! . . .”

The old man was silent for a space; his face became sterner. Taking his companion by the hand, he uttered with quiet solemnity:

“Listen, Giovanni, and store it up in thy mind. Our masters are the ancient Greeks and Romans. They have accomplished all that man can accomplish on this earth. As for us, all that is left us is te follow in their footsteps, and emulate them. For it is said: no pupil is greater than his master.”

He took a sip of wine, looked straight into Giovanni’s eyes with a merry slyness, and suddenly his soft wrinkles spread into a broad smile:

12 |

Saat Leonardo da Vinci

“Eh, youth, youth! I look upon thee, little friar, and am filled with envy. A spring bud,—that’s what thou art! He drinketh not wine; he runneth away from women. A quiet fellow and a peaceful one,— but there is an imp within. For I see right through thee. Bide a while, my fine fellow, and the imp will out. Thou art a sad dog thyself, but one feels gay in thy company. Thou art now, Giovanni, like unto this book. See—on the surface there be psalms of repentance, but under them a hymn to Aphrodite!”

“It has grown dark, Messer Giorgio. Is it not time to light a light?”

“Wait—it does not matter. I love to wag my tongue a bitin the twilight,—to recall my youth. . . .”

His tongue was growing heavier, his speech was becoming disjointed.

“T know, my dear friend,” he continued, “that thou art looking at me and thinking: He has gotten drunk, the old dotard, and is grinding out nonsense. But still, I have somewhat here, after all!”