VIII
The night was moonlit, serene, and warm; from the conflagration sullen flames still glowed, and smoky spirals still rose into the sky.
The crowd increased as he drew nearer to the centre of the town. The blue rays of the moon, the scarlet glare of the torches, illuminated faces haggard with excitement, seamed with anxiety, and played on the white banner with the scarlet cross which had been used by the ancient Milanese Commune, on lantern-poles, arquebuses, pistols, clubs, halberts, scythes, pitchforks, stakes, all pressed into service against the foreigner. The people swarmed like ants, the tocsin pealed, the guns roared. From the fortress the French were firing down the street, and their boast was that they would not leave one stone upon another within the city walls. Louder than the bells, more piercing than the booming of the cannon, rose the incessant yell of the citizens: 'Death to the French! Death to the foreigners! Down with the king! Viva Il Moro!'
To Leonardo it gave the impression of a wild and hideous dream. Near the eastern gate, a drummer from Picardy, a boy of sixteen, was being hanged, Mascarello the goldsmith playing the part of executioner. Flinging the rope round the lad's neck, and tapping him lightly on the head, he cried with ribald solemnity:—
'In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, we dub this servant of God, this Frenchman, Saltamacchia, Knight of the Hempen Necklace.'
'Amen!' responded the crowd.
The little drummer, ill understanding his danger, half smiling, blinking his eyes like a child about to cry, shrank into himself, twisting his neck that he might ease the noose. Then suddenly, as if awaking from a lethargy, he turned his beautiful but white and trembling face to the crowd, and would have attempted entreaty. His voice was drowned by howls and derisive laughter, and he gave up the attempt, holding his peace with the forlorn air of a resigned and innocent victim, and kissing a little cross, the gift of his mother or sister, which he had worn on a blue ribbon round his neck. Then Mascarello swung him into the void, with the jeer: 'Courage, Knight of the Necklace! Show us how you dance the French gaillard!'
And, mid the laughter of the crowd, the child's body shuddered horribly, and was convulsed in the spasms of death, as if indeed it were dancing.
Leonardo walked on, and presently he saw a woman, dressed in rags, kneeling before a miserable half-ruined hovel, and stretching out thin bare arms to the passers-by.
'Help; Help! Help!' she cried incessantly.
Corbolo the shoemaker, running up, asked what ailed her.
'My baby! My baby! He was sleeping, so pretty in his little bed! He has fallen through the floor! Perhaps he is still alive! Oh, save him! Try and save him! Help!'
Just then a cannon-ball, rending the air with a shriek, struck the roof of the hovel. The beams cracked, dust rose in a column, the roof fell, the walls crumbled, and the woman was for ever silenced.
Again Leonardo moved on, and presently he reached the Palazzo del Comune. Here, in front of the Loggia degli Osii, an university student was haranguing the crowd, descanting on the ancient glory of the Milanese, and exhorting the people to annihilate all tyrants, and establish the reign of equality. His hearers, however, seemed hard of persuasion.
'Citizens!' he cried, brandishing the knife which on ordinary occasions served him for mending pens, slicing sausages, and cutting his sweetheart's name on the bark of trees, but which now he had christened 'the Poniard of Nemesis,' 'Citizens! the hour has come in which we must die for Liberty! We will wash our hands in the blood of the tyrants; in their breasts we will plunge this Poniard of Nemesis. Viva la Repubblica!'
'Folly!' cried voices from the audience. 'We know the wine of your vintage! We know the liberty you would give us, you spy, traitor, dog of a Frenchman! To the devil with you and your republic! Viva Il Moro! Death to all enemies of the duke!'
The orator continued to prate, enforcing his doctrine by instances from Cicero and Tacitus, but the mob overthrew his bench, knocked him down and beat him, shouting:—
'Here's for your Liberty! Here's for your Republic! Here's for inflaming fools against their legitimate ruler!'
Leonardo stood for a minute in the Piazza dell' Arengo to admire the imposing pile of the cathedral—that marble forest of pinnacles and towers, fantastic in the double light, blue rays of the moon and crimson flare of torches. In front of the archbishop's palace the press was so great that there was scarce standing-room, and from the centre of the throng came groans and ferocious howls.
'What has happened?' asked the painter of an old workman, whose gentle dignified face was blanched with horror.
'Who can understand? They themselves know neither what they want nor what they do. They are accusing Messer Jacopo Crotta of selling poisoned flour, and of being a French spy! O Dio! Dio! It is a lie! But they fall on the first man they meet, and listen to none! 'Tis horrible, 'tis most horrible! Lord Jesus, have mercy on us, wretched sinners!'
Just then Gorgoglio the glass-blower detached himself from the dense pack of human bodies, holding aloft a bloody human head stuck on a pole; and Farfannicchio, the madcap of the streets, danced round it, screaming and yelling.
'Down with the traitors! down with the foreigners! Death to the devils of Frenchmen!'
'A furore populi, libera nos, Domine!' murmured the old workman, crossing himself.
From the castle came an incessant sound of trumpets, drums, explosions of cannon, crackling of guns, cries of soldiers. The monster bombard, called by the French Margot la Folle, and by the Germans die tolle Grete, was fired; the earth shook, it seemed that the whole town must crash into ruins. The bomb fell beyond the Borgonuovo, and set fire to a house; pillars of flame rose into the quiet moonlit sky, and the piazza was lit with a crimson glare. The people hurried hither and thither, jostling, pushing, trampling each other like black shadows, like living phantoms.
Leonardo stood watching the wild scene, noting every detail, his mind preoccupied. The fiery glow, the voices of the crowd, the pealing of the bells, the boom of the guns, all brought back his discovery. Imagination pictured the waves of sound, the waves of light swelling tranquilly, circling outwards like the ripple on water where a stone has fallen, intersecting each other without mingling or confusion, each keeping its own centre in the point of its origin. Great gladness filled his soul as he thought that never at any time could men interrupt the harmonious play of these ordered waves, nor the mechanical law which rules them, the unchanging fiat of their creator, the rule of divine justice, making the angle of incidence equal to the angle of reflection.
In his soul re-echoed—
'O wondrous justice of thee, thou Prime Mover! No force hast thou permitted to lack the order and the quality of its necessary effect!'
In the frenzied crowd, the soul of the artist preserved the eternal calm of contemplation; even as the blue rays of the moon shone with heavenly effulgence supreme over glare of torches and flames of conflagration and war.
On a certain morning in February 1500, Ludovico Sforza, Il Moro, re-entered Milan by the Porta Nuova. Leonardo had started the previous night for Vaprio, his friend Melzi's villa.