Before this figure da Vinci, tall, comely, a rapt look on his beardless, keen-cut features, the solemnity of the riddle in his eyes, stood one morning, his forefinger to his lip, and pondered—pondered. His model for the Christ stood at his shoulder.
“Ho, Lucio!” he said suddenly, like a man awakening; “you suggest it is thus; and perhaps it is thus. How, then, to elude the riddle which eludes me?”
“Why not paint me so, Master, with my lids down?”
Leonardo glanced quickly at the speaker; then, raising his left hand with the brushes and the pallet in it, selected here and there and began to work. Presently, as he modelled with deft fingers, half-murmured fragments of speech came from him.
“What is thine age, Lucio? I forget.”
“Yet under twenty-five, Master.”
“Why, a miracle, Lucio! The bloom of thee; the round chin of thee; the golden dusky wings of thy hair! What ensures such youth in manhood? Innocence? A mother’s love? Art thou very innocent, Lucio?”
“Who can be wholly innocent, Master, with the stain of that original sin in him?”
“True. Yet, for all that, a good son, a pious son. Show me thine eyes again. Ah, the shy revealing! Art afraid it will out—the answer to the riddle?”
“No, Master.”