VI

Pointing to Leonardo, the Countess Cecilia whispered to the Duke, who called up the artist, and begged him to take part in the discussion.

'Be kind,' insisted the countess. 'Do it for my sake——'

'Lay aside your bashfulness,' said Ludovico, 'and tell us something entertaining. Speak to us of your observations upon nature. Do we not know that your brain is always stuffed with chimeras?'

'Your Excellency must excuse me. Madonna Cecilia, I would gladly please a lady, but, truly, I cannot——'

Leonardo was not feigning. He was neither able nor willing to speak before a crowd. An insuperable barrier seemed to lie between his thought and his word, as if speech must either exaggerate or be inadequate to the sense, modify or vitiate it. In his note-books he continually cancelled, erased, corrected, and revised; in conversation he stammered, lost the thread, sought for words and could not find them. He called both orators and authors 'babblers,' but in secret he envied them. The frequent glibness of insignificant persons was a wonder and an annoyance to him.

'That God should give such men such skill!' he would say, with a kind of ingenuous admiration.

However, the more firmly Leonardo declined the task offered him, so much the more did the ladies insist.

'We beseech you, Messere! We all pray you with one voice. Tell us, tell us something entertaining!'

'Tell us how men are to fly!' suggested Madonna Fiordiligi.

'Nay, but speak to us of sorcery!' cried Madonna Ermellina; 'something of black magic! 'Tis so interesting, this necromancy. Explain to us how they raise the dead men from their graves!'

'I assure you, Madonna, I have never raised any dead person from his grave.'

'Then take some other theme, so it be terrible, and have no savour of mathematics.'

Leonardo was always hard put to it to refuse a beggar, and he could only repeat with embarrassment:—

'Truly, Madonna, I am incapable——'

But Ermellina interrupted him, clapping her hands.

'He consents! He consents! Silence for Messer Leonardo! Listen ye all!'

'Eh? Who? What?' asked the dean of the theological faculty, who was deaf, and somewhat fallen into dotage.

''Tis Leonardo!' shouted his neighbour into his ear.

'Leonardo Pisano, the mathematical professor?'

'No, Leonardo da Vinci himself.'

'Is he doctor or master?'

'No, nor even bachelor. Leonardo, the painter of the Cenacolo.'

'Is he going to speak of painting?'

'It seems he will speak of natural science.'

'Are the painters so learned? I have never heard of this Leonardo. What has he written?'

'Nothing that I know of.'

'Nay,' said another, ''tis certain that he writes, for they say he uses his left hand, and produces a caligraphy proper only to himself, which none can read.'

'Which none can read? With his left hand?' said the old dean.

'I take it, gentlemen, this speech will be some jest; an interlude to entertain the Duke and the ladies.'

'Very like 'twill be ridiculous. We shall see.'

'Just so, just so. 'Tis necessary to amuse the folk of the court. And painters are witty fellows enough. Buffalmacco, now—they said he was a perfect jester. Well, let us see what this Leonardo is good for.'

And the old man polished his spectacles, the better to enjoy the comedy.

Leonardo was still looking supplicatingly at the Duke, but though smiling, Ludovico was determined; and the Countess Cecilia menaced the hesitant with her finger.

'If I refuse I shall offend them,' thought the artist; 'and very soon I shall be requiring bronze for the Cavallo. Well, I will say the first thing that comes into my head, just to be quit of the business.'

And with desperate resolution he mounted the tribune and threw a glance upon the learned assembly. Then, blushing and stammering like a boy who does not know his lesson, he began:—

'I must warn you, gentlemen, I am not prepared.... 'Tis to please the Duke. I would say—I mean—in fine, I will speak to you about shells.'

And he told of petrified marine animals, the imprints of coral, and water-plants found on hills and in valleys far removed from the sea, evidence of how the face of the earth has been changing from time immemorial. There, where now are hills and dry land, once was the ocean. Water, the mover of Nature, her 'charioteer,' creates and destroys the very mountains; the shores gradually remove into the centre of the sea, and the inland seas lay bare their beds, traversed by some river which ever hurries towards the sea, scoring for itself a deep channel. Thus the Po, which now rushes across the dried-up lake of Lombardy, will eventually score itself a deep channel across the dried-up Adriatic; and the Nile, when the Mediterranean has become a country of hills and plains like Egypt and Libya, will empty itself into the Atlantic Ocean beyond the Pillars of Hercules.

'I am convinced,' said Leonardo in conclusion, 'that the study of petrified plants and animals, which we have hitherto neglected, will lay the foundation of a new science of our earth; of its past, and of its future.'

Notwithstanding the awkwardness of his delivery, Leonardo's ideas were so clear and precise, his faith in knowledge was so sure, all he had said was so unlike the Pythagorean ravings of the previous disputant, and the dry bones of logic in the mouths of the learned doctors, that when he stopped speaking a stupor of amazement was seen on the faces of the audience. Were they to laugh or to applaud? Was this talk of a new science the vain chatter of a presumptuous fool?

'Truly, my Leonardo,' said the Duke condescendingly, as if speaking to a child, 'it would be famous fun if the Adriatic were to dry up and leave our enemies, the Venetians, stranded like crabs on a sandbank.'

At this they all laughed, well pleased to be told the line they were to take, for courtiers are ever weathercocks turned by the wind. Messer Gabriele Pirovano, the Rector of the University of Pavia, an old gentleman with silver hair, fine manners, and a dignified but somewhat foolish face, thus delivered himself, reflecting in his smile the condescending kindness of the Duke:—

'Messer Leonardo, the information you have given us is very interesting; but were it not perhaps simpler to explain the origin of these little shells, as a charming (we might even say poetic) but wholly accidental freak of nature, rather than as the foundation of an entire new science? Or, as others have done before us, we might account for their presence by the catastrophe of the universal Deluge.'

'Oh, the Deluge!' said Leonardo, who had conquered his shyness and now spoke with a freedom which to many appeared excessive and even irreverent; 'I know that explanation, but it won't do at all. Judge for yourself, Messer Gabriele. According to the man who measured it, the level of the waters of the flood exceeded by ten cubits the tops of the highest mountains. The shells would have settled on the summits, not on the sides or the feet of the mountains, nor within caverns; and, withal, they would have settled at haphazard according to the pleasure of the waters, and not everywhere at the same level, not in consecutive layers, as we find by observation. And further, here is a wondrous thing. We find collected together all those creatures which are used to live in societies, such as oysters, cuttlefish, molluscs; while those which are used to be solitary are scattered singly in their fossil state just as we find their descendants now on the seashore. I myself have often noted the position of these petrified shells in Tuscany and in Lombardy and in Piedmont. And if you tell me 'twas not the waves carried them, but that of themselves they gradually rose in crowds above the water as it grew higher, that, too, is easily refuted, for a shellfish is as slow a beast as a snail. It floats not, but crawls with its valves over sand and stones, and the furthest it can go in a day's hard journeying is some three or four arm-lengths. How then, Messer Gabriele, would you explain, that in the forty days of the flood's duration, your shellfish could creep the two hundred and fifty miles which divide the hills of Monferrato from the shores of the Adriatic? Only he who, despising experiment and observation, judges of Nature from books, can maintain such an argument; not he who has had the curiosity to see with his own eyes those things of which he speaks.'

An uncomfortable silence followed; all felt that the Rector's reply had been a trifle weak. Then the court astrologer, Ambrogio da Rosate, a great favourite of the Duke's, advanced another explanation based on Pliny's natural history; which was that the petrified shapes which looked like marine animals had been formed in the interior of the earth by the magic working of the stars.

At the word magic, a resigned smile played over Leonardo's lips. 'Then, Messer Ambrogio,' he replied, 'how would you explain the fact that the stars in the one place should make animals not only of many kinds but of various ages? (for the age of shells can be ascertained no less than the age of horns or of trees). What say you to finding some of these shells entire, some broken, some mixed with sand, mud, the claws of crabs, fish-bones, and rubble, such as you may see any day on the seashore; and the delicate imprint of leaves on the rocks of the highest mountains, and marine weeds clinging to the shells, petrified and blended into one lump with them? From the working of the stars, say you? If this is to be our reasoning, Messere, then in all Nature there will be no phenomenon for which you cannot account by the starry influences, and all science outside astrology is useless.'

Here an old Doctor of scholastic interposed, saying that the dispute was irregular.

'For,' he exclaimed, 'either this question of fossils belongs to a vulgar, mechanical science, alien to metaphysic, and hence not to be discussed in an assembly met to contend solely about philosophical questions, or it verily pertains to the true, the sublime science of dialectic; in which case it must be discussed according to the laws of dialectic, which alone allows theory to ascend to the sphere of pure speculation.'

'I understand you, Messere,' said Leonardo patiently; 'I have thought of what you say. But the alternative is not as you state it.'

'Not as I state it?' cried the veteran smiling angrily, 'not as I state it? Then, sir, pray let us hear how you propose to state it!'

'Nay, nay; I had no wish to offend. In fine, I spoke but of shells. I think—nay, Messere, but there is no vulgar science, nor is there sublime science. There is but one science; that which is based upon the experience of the senses.'

'The experience of the senses? Then where would you put the metaphysic of Aristotle, of Plato, of Plotinus, and of all the ancient philosophers who speculated upon God, upon the soul, and upon the essences? Would you say of all this——?'

'That it is not science,' replied Leonardo calmly. 'I recognise the greatness of the ancients, but not in that respect. In science they mistook the road. They wished to learn what was beyond the reach of knowledge, and what was within their reach they despised. They led men astray for many ages. Discussing matters which admit not of proof, it is impossible for men to agree; the less so if they would make up for the lack of proof by vehemence of clamour. He who truly knows has no occasion to shout. The voice of truth is unique; and when it has spoken, all the noise of dispute must be hushed. If the cries continue, it means that the truth has not yet been found. Do we need mathematical dispute as to whether twice three be six or five? or whether the angles of a triangle be or be not equal to two right angles? In these instances doth not contradiction cease in the presence of truth? and is not truth to be enjoyed as it never can be enjoyed in sophistical and imaginary sciences?'

Leonardo would have spoken further, but after a glance at the face of his opponent he became silent.

'Ah!' said the doctor of scholastic, ironically, 'I thought we should arrive at an agreement! You and I were certain to understand one another! But one thing I do not understand. Pardon the ignorance of an old man! If our knowledge of God and of a future life, not being confirmed by the testimony of our senses, but by the testimony of Holy Writ——'

'I spoke not of this,' interrupted Leonardo; 'I leave out of the dispute the books inspired by God, for they are of the substance of supreme truth.'

He was not allowed to continue; uproar ensued. Some shouted, some laughed; some, springing from their chairs, turned wrathful faces on him, while others, shrugging their shoulders, left the assembly.

'Make an end! Make an end!'

'But, gentlemen, permit me to reply——'

'There is no occasion for reply.'

'When things are stated contrary to sense——'

'I desire to speak!'

'Plato and Aristotle!' ...

'Not worth a rotten egg!'

'But I ask, shall this be permitted? The truth of our Holy Mother Church——'

'Heresy! Heresy! Atheism!'

Leonardo remained silent, his face calm and sad. He was alone among these men who believed themselves the servants of knowledge, and he saw the impassable gulf which separated him from them. He was displeased, not with his opponents, but with himself for having broken his accustomed silence, and become entangled in an argument; for having conceived (in defiance of experience) that it were possible to reveal the truth unto men, or that they were able to receive it.

As for the Duke, though he had long lost the thread of the argument, he continued to follow the disputation with delight.

'Good! Really good!' he applauded, rubbing his hands. 'Madonna Cecilia, will they not, think you, presently come to blows? Look at that old fellow, shaking all over, brandishing his cap, clenching his fists! And the little black one behind him, foaming at the mouth! And all about a few fossil shells! Fine madmen, these scholars! kittle cattle! And our Leonardo, who pretended to be possessed by a dumb devil!'

And they laughed, watching the scientific duel as if it were a cock-fight.

'I shall have to save my Leonardo,' said Il Moro at last, 'or these red-capped folk will claw him.'

And he rose and passed through the crowd of infuriated philosophers, who suddenly were hushed into silence as they made way for him. Soothing oil had been poured upon stormy waves; one smile from the prince sufficed for the reconciliation of metaphysics and natural science. He closed the discussion by a courteous invitation to supper.

'I am glad,' he said with his usual gaiety, 'that the Adriatic is not yet dry; because I trust that its oysters, which I have had cooked for your entertainment, may give rise to less contention than the shells of Messer Leonardo.'