II

Meantime, in the hinder-part of the warehouse, heaped with bales, and lighted only by the glimmer of a lamp before the image of the Madonna, three lads, Dolfo, Antonio, and Giovanni were gossiping together. Dolfo, Messer Buonaccorsi's clerk, a red-haired, snub-nosed, good-natured youth, was entering the number of ells of cloth which Antonio da Vinci, old for his years, with glassy eyes and thin, rough, black locks, was rapidly measuring with the Florentine measure, called a canna: Giovanni Boltraffio, a student of painting from Milan, a big boy of nineteen, but shy and awkward, with innocent, sad, grey eyes, and an irresolute expression, was sitting cross-legged on a made-up bale, and listening with all his ears.

'This is what we have come to,' cried Antonio excitedly; 'digging heathen gods out of the ground!' Then he added, dictating to Dolfo, 'of brown Scotch faced-cloth, 32 braccia,[1] 6 fingers, 8 nails.' Then, having folded the measured piece, he threw it into its place, and raising his finger with the gesture of a menacing prophet, in imitation of Fra Girolamo Savonarola, he cried, 'Gladius Dei super terram cito et velociter! In the island of Patmos San Giovanni had a vision: he saw the angel lay hold on the dragon, that old serpent, which is the Devil, and bind 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-day Satan has been released from his prison; to-day the thousand years are at an end; the false gods, forerunners and followers of Antichrist, are creeping forth from under the seal of the angel back into the world for the temptation of men! Woe to those who live on the earth or on the sea!—Of thin, yellow, Brabant cloth, 17 braccia, 4 fingers, 9 nails!'

'How think you, then, Antonio?' asked Giovanni, with alarmed and eager interest; 'all these signs bear witness——'

'Ay, ay! You see, the hour has come. Not alone are they digging up the old gods, but they are creating new ones in their likeness. Painters and sculptors alike weary themselves in the service of Moloch—that is, the Devil. They turn the House of God into the temple of Satan; in the sacred pictures, under the guise of martyrs and saints, they paint the gods of uncleanness, and to these the people pray; in place of John the Baptist they give us Bacchus; for the holy Mother of God we get the shameless Venus. The pictures should be burned with fire, and their ashes strewn upon the wind!'

Suppressed fire flashed from the dull, dark eyes of the zealous clerk; and Giovanni, not daring a retort, held his peace. His delicate, childlike eyebrows contracted under the stress of thought. At last, however, he said: 'Antonio, they tell me Messer Leonardo, your kinsman, takes scholars into his painting-room. I have long wished——'

Antonio frowned and interrupted him. 'If you would lose your soul, Giovanni, then go to Messer Leonardo!'

'What? Why?'

'Though he be my near kinsman, and though he have lived twenty years longer than I, nevertheless in the Scripture it is written: "From an heretic, after the first and second admonition, turn thou away." Leonardo is a heretic and an infidel. His mind is darkened by Satanic pride; he seeks to penetrate into the mysteries of nature by steeping himself in mathematics and black magic.' Then, raising his eyes to heaven, he repeated from Savonarola's latest discourse: '"The wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. We know them, these learned men; they all go to the house of the devil."'

'And have you heard, Antonio,' persisted Giovanni, still shyly, 'that Messer Leonardo is here in Florence? He has even now arrived from Milan.'

'For what purpose?'

'The duke has sent him to buy, if possible, pictures from the galleries of the late Lorenzo the Magnificent.'

'Well, if he be here, then here he is. 'Tis of no moment to me,' said Antonio, turning away; and he proceeded to measure a length of green cloth with his canna.

From the church, bells rang out the call to vespers, and Dolfo stretched himself and clapped-to the ledger with an air of relief; for this day work was over, and the shops and the warehouses were shutting.

Giovanni stepped into the street. A narrow strip of grey sky, faintly tinged with the roseate of evening, showed between the humid roofs: a fine rain fell through the windless air. Suddenly from a window in a neighbouring alley was wafted a song:—

'O vaghe montanine pastorelle

Donde venite si leggiadre e belle?'

(O shepherd-girls so fair,

Say from what mountain air

Light-footed have ye strayed?)

The voice was resonant and young: from the measured beat of the treadle Giovanni guessed at a loom, and at a girl singing as she threw the shuttle. He listened with vague enjoyment, and remembered that the spring had come, and felt his heart swelling with strange emotions of tenderness and melancholy.

'Nanna! Nanna! Where hast thou got to, thou little devil? What hath happened to thine ears? Haste thee! The vermicelli grows cold.' After which there was a swift clapping of wooden pattens across the floor, and then silence.

Giovanni stood long, his eyes on the window, the gay song echoing in his ears like the far-off beatings of some shepherd's pipe—

'O vaghe montanine pastorelle——'

Then sighing softly to himself he entered the house of the Master of the Calimala, and mounting the winding stair, with its worm-eaten banisters, he presented himself in the great room, which served as a library, and in which, bending over a desk, was Giorgio Merula, the historiographer of the Court of the Duke of Milan.