IV

The morning mists were rising, and the watch-fires already dying down. The courtyard was crowded with cannon, ammunition, camp equipage, stable provender and refuse. All around were movable booths and cooking-spits, empty barrels serving as card-tables, hogsheads of wine, barrows of provisions; great noises of laughter, curses, quarrelings in many tongues, blasphemies, drunken shoutings and songs. At times an interval of sudden stillness when officers of rank passed. At times drums beat and brazen trumpets gave signal to the Rhenish and Suabian lanzknechts, or Alpine horns were blown from the walls by mercenaries from the Free Cantons of Uri and Unterwalden.

Making his way through the crowd of men and things, Leonardo reached the centre of the square and found that the Colossus, the happy labour for years of his maturest art, was still intact. The great duke, conqueror of Lombardy, Francesco Attendolo Sforza, with his bald head, in form like that of some Roman emperor, and his expression of leonine cruelty and vulpine cunning, erect as ever, still sat his huge plunging charger and trampled on his foe.

A great crowd of archers of various nationalities surrounded the statue, disputing each in his own language, and gesticulating. Leonardo gathered that a contest was imminent between a French and a German marksman, who, after drinking four tankards of wine were to shoot at a distance of fifty paces at the birthmark on the cheek of the great Sforza. The paces were measured; lots were drawn as to who should shoot first; the wine was poured out. The German drank the fill of a tankard without drawing breath, another, and another, and another. Then he took his aim, bent the bow, launched his arrow, and missed the mark. The arrow grazed the cheek, and took off the tip of the left ear, but did no further damage. It was now the turn of the Frenchman. He had brought his arbalist to his shoulder, when a commotion arose among the onlookers. The crowd divided, making space for the procession of a knight and his escort of resplendent followers. He rode past, not heeding the marksmen.

'Who is that?' inquired Leonardo.

'Monseigneur de la Trémouille.'

'Then I am in time,' thought the artist; 'I must pursue him and make supplication.'

Nevertheless he actually stood motionless where he was; oppressed by an inability, a paralysis of the will, that would have hindered the stirring of a finger had his very life been in danger. Repugnance, shame, seized him at the thought of pushing his way through the crowd that he might, like Fra Luca Pacioli, run after and pull at the skirts of a person of quality. The Gascon shot his arrow; it whizzed through the air, hit the mark, and penetrated deeply into the mole on Francesco's cheek.

'Bigorre! Bigorre! Montjoie! Saint Denis!' shouted the soldiers, throwing their caps into the air, 'Vive la France!' The noisy crowd again encircled the Colossus, the jargon of many tongues broke forth anew; a fresh match was arranged, and again arrows whistled on the air and wounded the great Duke. Leonardo could not move. Inconceivable as it may seem, rooted to the spot as in some hideous dream, he watched the slow destruction of the work of the six best years of his life; of perhaps the greatest monument of the sculptor's art since the days of Phidias and Praxiteles. Under a hail of bullets, arrows, and even stones, the brittle clay was broken off in lumps or resolved into dust; the supports were laid bare. The Colossus had become an immense iron skeleton.

The sun streamed out from behind a bank of clouds. Nothing remained but the headless body of a man, the trunk of a horse, the fragment of a sceptre, and the inscription on the pedestal. 'Behold a god!' Just then the commandant of the French troops, the old Marshal Gian Giacomo Trivulzio, rode up. He looked at the place of the Colossus, stopped in sheer astonishment, looked again, shading his eyes from the sun; then turned to his attendants and asked—

'In the name of God, what has taken place?'

'Monseigneur,' replied a lieutenant. 'Captain Cockburn gave permission to his cross-bowmen——'

'The Sforza monument! the work of Leonardo da Vinci—I made a target for the archers of Gascony!' cried the marshal, and he rushed at the men, who, intent on their work of destruction, had not observed his displeasure; seized a Frenchman by the collar and flung him to the ground, rating him soundly. In his fury the old general had become quite purple.

'Monseigneur,' stammered the soldier, struggling to his knees, shaking with fright, 'Monseigneur, we did not know! Captain Cockburn had said——'

'To hell with your Captain Cockburn! I'll hang every man jack of you!'

He flourished his sword and would have wounded some one had not Leonardo caught his wrist with such force that the brazen sword-hilt was bent.

Trivulzio stared at the stranger in dire amazement while struggling to free himself.

'Who is this man?' he exclaimed indignantly, and the artist himself replied:—

'Leonardo da Vinci.'

'And how do you dare——' began the old marshal, still beside himself, but meeting the clear unfaltering gaze of the eyes fixed upon him, he broke off. 'Eh? you are Leonardo?' he said. 'I pray you loose my arm—you have crushed the hilt.'

'Monseigneur,' said Leonardo, 'I beseech you.—Pardon these poor fools!'

The marshal again stared in amazement; then smiled, and shook his head.

'A strange fellow! What? You entreat for them?'

'If your Excellence hangs every mother's son among them, what will it profit me? They knew not what they did.'

The old man became thoughtful, then his face cleared, and his small intelligent eyes shone with good nature.

'Hark ye, Messer Leonardo! There is one thing passes me. How could you stand there stock-still, looking on? Why did you not complain to me? or to Monseigneur de la Trémouille? He must have passed by within an hour!'

Leonardo looked down and reddened. 'I was not in time,' he stammered, 'I——I don't know Monsieur de la Trémouille.'

''Tis a misfortune,' said the old man; and surveying the ruin, he exclaimed with great vehemence, 'I would have given a hundred of my best troopers for your Colossus!'

On his way home, Leonardo crossed the bridge just under Bramante's loggia, the scene of his last interview with the Duke. Pages and grooms were chasing the swans which were so dear to Il Moro; and the poor creatures unable to escape from the moat, fluttered and screamed in agonies. The water was flecked with down and snowy feathers; here and there on its blackness floated a white blood-stained body. One newly-wounded bird stretched its graceful neck in the convulsions of death, uttering piercing cries and flapping its weakening wings, as if in a last vain effort for flight. Leonardo averted his eyes and hurried away.