IX

Next morning Leonardo, with Astro carrying sketch-books, paint-boxes and brushes, was on his way to the monastery for a day's work on the figure of the Saviour. He stopped in the courtyard to speak to Nastasio, who was busily grooming a grey mare.

'Bravo!' said the master, 'and how is Giannino to-day?' Giannino was his favourite horse.

'Giannino is all right,' answered the groom, 'but the piebald is lame.'

'The piebald?' said Leonardo, vexed; 'and since when?'

'Since four days agone,' replied Nastasio surlily; and without looking at his master, he continued curry-combing the mare's hindquarters with such energy that she changed her feet.

Leonardo, however, wished to see the piebald, and the groom took him to the stable. When Giovanni Boltraffio, a few minutes later, came to the courtyard fountain for his morning wash, he heard the master talking in loud piercing tones almost feminine in their shrillness, which he used in rare passions of sudden, violent, but not dangerous anger.

'Tell me this instant, you fool, you drunken ape, tell me who bade you summon the horse-leech?'

'I pray you, Messere, could a sick horse be left without a leech?'

'A pretty leech! Think you, fool, that stinking plaster——'

''Tis not so much a plaster as a charm. You are not learned in these matters, and that is why you are so wroth.'

'The devil take you and your charms together! How could that ignoramus cure anything when he knows naught of the structure of the body, and has never heard the name of anatomy?'

'Anatomy, forsooth!' said Nastasio, raising lazy contemptuous eyes to his master.

'Ass!' shouted the latter; 'take yourself off out of my service!'

The groom did not move an eyelash.

'I was on the stroke of leaving you on my own account. Your Excellency owes me three months' wages; and as regards the oats, 'tis no fault of mine. Marco gives me no money for oats.'

'What's the meaning of all this? Once I issue my orders——'

Nastasio shrugged his shoulders and returned to his grooming of the grey mare, working violently as if venting his spleen on the dumb animal.

Meantime Giovanni, amused by the altercation, was smiling as he scrubbed his face with a coarse towel.

'Shall we set out, Master?' asked Astro, wearied by the delay.

'Wait,' replied Leonardo; 'I must ask Marco about the oats. I would know how much truth is in the words of this scoundrel.'

And he returned to the house, Giovanni following him. Marco was in the studio, working as usual by rule and with mathematical accuracy, perspiring and panting as if he were rolling a weight uphill. His closely compressed lips, the disorder of his red hair, his red fat ineffectual fingers, seemed to say, 'Patience and perseverance will conquer all things.'

'Marco! Is it true you give out no money for the horses' oats?'

'Of a surety it is true.'

'How is that, friend?' exclaimed the painter, his look having already become timorous before the stern face of him who was steward of the household. 'I bade you, Marco, take heed to remember the oats. Have you forgotten?'

'No, I have not forgotten; but there is no money.'

'I guessed as much. There is always this lack of money. None the less, Marco, I ask you, can horses live without oats?'

Marco threw his brush away angrily. And Giovanni noticed how the master and the scholar seemed to have changed places.

'Hearken, Master!' said Marco. 'You bade me take charge of the housekeeping, and not trouble you. Why do you yourself re-open the matter?'

'Marco!' said Leonardo, with gentle reproach, ''twas but a week ago that I gave you thirty florins.'

'Thirty florins! Pr'ythee count it up. Of this thirty, four were a loan to Pacioli, two to that eternal sponge, Messer Galeotto Sacrobosco; five went to the body-snatchers for your anatomy studies; three for mending the glass and the stoves in the hot room for your reptiles and fishes; and six golden ducats went for that spotted devil——'

'Do you mean the camelopard?'

'Precisely; the camelopard. We have nothing to eat ourselves, but we feed that cursed beast. And whether we feed him or not, 'tis clear that he will die.'

'Never mind, Marco,' said Leonardo gently; 'if he die I will dissect him. The neck vertebræ of these animals are very curious.'

'The neck vertebræ! Oh, Master! Master! if you had not all these fancies for horses, and corpses, and giraffes, and fish, and every sort of beast, we might live as lords, asking alms of no one. Is not daily bread better than caprices?'

'Bread? Have I ever asked for anything better than bread? Oh, I know very well, Marco, you would like to see the death of all my creatures, though they cost me so much trouble and expense to obtain. They are indispensable to me—more so than you can imagine. You want to have everything your own way.'

Helpless injury trembled in the voice of the Master; and Marco maintained a sulky silence.

'But what is to become of us?' continued Leonardo. 'Already a famine of oats? We were never in such straits before.'

'We have always been in straits,' said Marco, 'and we always shall be. What can you expect? For a year we have not had a quattrino from the Duke. Messer Ambrogio Ferrari says daily, "to-morrow! to-morrow!" and to my thinking he but mocks us.'

'Mocks us! Well, I will show him how to mock at me! I will complain to the Duke! I will give that scurvy piece, Ambrogio, a lesson he shall not forget! the Lord send him an evil Easter!'

Marco made a vague gesture, as if to say it was not Leonardo who would teach lessons to the Duke's treasurer. Then an expression of kindness and love came over his hard features, and he added soothingly:—

'No, no, Master, let it be! God is merciful, and we shall get along in some fashion. If you really take it to heart, I will find the money even for your oats.'

And Marco reflected that he could use some of his own money, a little hoard he had been making for his mother.

'The oats are not the major question,' said Leonardo, sinking wearily on a chair, and defending his eyes as if from a cruel wind. 'Hearken, friend, there is a thing I have not yet told you; next month I shall absolutely require eighty ducats, which I have had on loan. There is no need to stare at me with those eyes, Marco.'

'Of whom had you the loan?'

'Of the money-changer, Arnoldo—'

'Of Arnoldo! Oh, Master! what have you done? Don't you know he is worse than any infidel or any Jew? Why did you not tell me at once?'

Leonardo hung his head.

'I wanted the money—be not so wroth, Marco!' he said; and added piteously, 'Bring the reckonings, perhaps we shall be able to devise something.'

Marco was convinced they could devise nothing; however, finding absolute obedience the best way of influencing the Master, he fetched the account-books. Leonardo's brow contracted in a look of disgust, and he watched the opening of the too familiar green volume with the air of one looking into a gaping wound; then together they plunged into calculations, and it was wonder and pity to see the great mathematician making the blunders of a child in the additions and the subtractions. Now and then he suddenly remembered some mislaid account of a thousand ducats, sought it, fumbled in cases and boxes, and dusty piles of papers, but found in its place trifling and useless memoranda written in his own hand, such, for instance, as that one of Salaino's cloak:—

Silver brocade,Livre15soldi4
Crimson velvet for trimming,"9"0
Braid,"0"9
Buttons,"0"12

He tore them angrily, and blushing and swearing threw them under the table.

Giovanni, seeing on the great man's face these marks of human weakness, murmured to himself:—

'A new Hermes Trismegistus halved with a new Prometheus? Nay, neither god nor Titan, but a simple mortal like the rest of us! And to think that I feared him! the poor kind soul!'