III
It snowed all night, and in the morning the guide refused to continue the journey, the weather being in his opinion not fit even for a dog to go out in. Leonardo was forced to remain at the inn. He amused himself trying a self-turning roasting-spit which he had invented.
'With this mechanism,' he expounded to the astonished onlookers, 'the cook need have no fear of burning the meat, for the action of the fire remains even. With increase of heat it turns faster, that is all.'
It would seem that the success of his flying-machine could hardly have afforded him greater pleasure than the perfection of this cooking engine.
In the same room Messer Niccolò was explaining to certain young artillery sergeants an infallible system, based on abstract mathematics, for winning at dice—'circumventing,' as he called it, 'the caprices of the strumpet Fortune.' Every time he tried to give a practical illustration of its value, he lost, greatly to his own astonishment and to the amusement of his audience. The conclusion of the game was unexpected and not entirely to Messer Niccolò's glory. It revealed that his pouch was empty, and that he could not meet his losses.
Late that evening there arrived another guest, with a great array of servants, pages, grooms, jesters, negroes, animals, boxes, and chests. It was the elegant Venetian courtesan, the magnifica meretrice, Lena Griffi, who had been so nearly despoiled by Savonarola's 'youthful inquisitors.' Two years ago, following the example of many of her sisterhood, the repentant Magdalen had cut her hair and shut herself up in a convent. This was, however, merely an artifice to raise her price in the city tariff of courtesans, drawn up for the use of strangers. From the monastic chrysalis she had emerged like a butterfly awakened to a new and more splendid life. Very soon the mammola veneziana had risen to great celebrity, and had fashioned for herself, according to the usage of the principal courtesans, a fine genealogical-tree, by which it appeared that she was the daughter of Cardinal Ascanio Sforza, brother of Ludovico, Duke of Milan. She became the mistress of an old and doting cardinal, whose infirmities were palliated by his wealth, and was now journeying to Fano, where her elderly lover was attached to Cæsar Borgia's camp. The host could not refuse admission to so exalted a personage. He accommodated her suite by turning out certain Ancona merchants from a fair-sized bedroom, housing them in the forge, and promising them a reduction in their bill. Similar treatment he proposed for Messer Niccolò and his room-mates, the French captains, in order to provide a chamber for the lady herself.
Messer Niccolò, however, protested, and grew very angry, asking the landlord if he had lost his reason, if he knew with whom he was speaking? if it were not unheard-of insolence to insult respectable people for the pleasing of the first jade tumbled in out of the street? Here intervened the hostess, a masterful lady who, in the words of the proverb, had not 'pawned her tongue to a Jew'; she suggested that before making so much noise he had better pay the bill for himself, his servant, and his three horses; and also return the four ducats lent him last Friday by her husband. And she added, in a stage whisper, that she wished a bad Easter to all the adventurers and beggars who swarmed on the high roads, and, pretending to be great ones, lived at free quarters and mocked at honest people. No doubt there was some applicability in all this, for Messer Niccolò was reduced to silence, and seemed considering how he could retire with the best grace from his position. Meantime servants were already removing his goods, and Madonna Lena's monkey was grimacing at him, and jumping over the table among his papers and great leather books, the Decades of Livy and Plutarch's Lives.
Leonardo now approached and said, raising his berretto:—
'Messere, if it would please you to share my room, I shall account it an honour, if your worship will permit me to render so slight a service.'
Niccolò seemed astonished, and even confused; recovering himself, however, he accepted the offer with suitable thanks. Leonardo took him to his room, and assigned him the best place. The more he looked at this strange man the more attractive and interesting did he seem to him. He presently learned his name: He was Machiavelli, secretary to the Council of Ten in the Florentine Republic.
Three months earlier the astute and vigilant Signoria had sent Machiavelli to make a treaty with Cæsar Borgia. The latter had proposed a defensive alliance against their common enemies, Bentivoglio, the Vitelli, and the Orsini; but the Florentines, fearing the duke too much to desire either his friendship or his enmity, had commanded their envoy to meet his propositions merely with diplomatic and ambiguous expressions of goodwill, and secretly to obtain free passage for their traders through the duke's territory along the shores of the Adriatic, a matter of no small importance to their commerce.
Leonardo also disclosed his name and rank; and soon he and his new friend were conversing with that ease and mutual confidence occasionally natural to persons of opposite character, and habitually solitary and meditative.
'Messere,' burst out Niccolò, and his candour was not unattractive, 'I know you by repute as a great painter; but I warn you I have no knowledge of painting, nor am I even fond of it. Of course you may respond, as did Dante to the street mocker who offered him a fig, "I wouldn't change one of mine for twenty of yours!" but I confess I am more interested in having learnt from the duke that you are an expert in military science. How important that is! Civil greatness is founded upon war, and depends on the regular army. I am writing a book on monarchies and republics, wherein I shall discuss the natural laws which govern the life, growth, decline, and death of every state, just like a mathematician discussing the laws of number, or a natural philosopher physics. Hitherto, sir, all who have written about the state——'
Here he stopped, and chid himself with a good-humoured smile.
'Forgive me, Messere, I am taking a mean advantage. It may be that policy interests you as little as painting interests me?'
'Not so,' said Leonardo. 'I tell you candidly I don't affect statecraft, because such talk is apt to be idle. But your opinions are so new and surprising, that, believe me, I am thrice happy to learn.'
'Beware, Messer Leonardo,' said the other; 'these matters are my hobby-horse. I will go without bread, if I may but talk upon politics with a man of understanding. The mischief is, to find the man of understanding! Our great ones think of naught but the price of wool and of silk, while I' (he smiled bitterly) 'am made of neither.'
Leonardo reassured him, and added, in order to keep the conversation going:—
'You have said, Messere, that politics should be an exact science founded upon mathematics, like mechanics, which finds its certainty in the observation and experience of nature. Did I understand you aright?'
'Perfectly!' cried Machiavelli, frowning, and looking into space beyond his companion's head, with that air of a far-sighted bird habitual to him. 'I desire to reveal a new thing to men about human affairs. The Laws of nature, which are outside man's will, outside good and evil, are the laws which guide the life of every society. All former writers on this subject have dealt with the good and the bad, the noble and the base. I do not concern myself with governments which ought to be, nor with what seems to be, but with that which really is. I inquire into the nature of the great bodies, known as republics and monarchies, and I commit myself neither to praise nor to blame, like a mathematician or an anatomist. I will tell men the truth, even if they burn me for it, as they burned Fra Girolamo. For the task is dangerous.'
Leonardo smiled, observing Machiavelli's excitement, and thought: 'With what passion he praises dispassionateness!'
'Messer Niccolò,' he said aloud, 'if you succeed according to your intentions, you will have done more than Euclid or Archimedes.'
Leonardo was struck by the unconventionality of what he had heard. He remembered how, thirteen years earlier, he had himself written on the margin of certain anatomical sketches:—
'May the Most High assist me to study the nature of human beings, their temperaments and habits, even as here I have studied their internal organs!'