'Leonardo the sorcerer! Leonardo the heretic! the infidel!'
Corbolo timidly undertook the defence.
'Friends, I have heard say that Leonardo is a good man, who does ill to none, and is compassionate not only of men but of the meanest animals.'
'Speak not foolishly, Corbolo!'
'Hold your tongue. How can a sorcerer be good?'
'My sons! my sons!' declaimed Fra Timoteo, 'there shall be a day when men shall praise the great deceiver, him who walketh in darkness, saying of him, "He is kind, he is just, he is good"; for his face shall be like unto the face of the Christ, and he shall have a voice comforting and pleasant like the voice of a singing woman. And many shall be led astray by his wily kindness. And by the four winds of heaven he shall call together tribes and nations, as a partridge with a deceiving cry calls into her nest the brood of another. Be watchful, O brethren! Behold the angel of darkness, the prince of this world, who is called Antichrist, cometh in human shape. Be watchful, I say, because this Florentine, this Leonardo, is the precursor and the servant of Antichrist.'
''Tis true!' cried Gorgoglio (who, however, had never before even heard of Leonardo); 'they say he has sold his soul to the devil, and has signed the covenant with his blood.'
'Holy Mother of God, have mercy upon us!' babbled Barbaccia the fruit-woman. 'Stamma, the wench at the hangman's who does charing at the prison, told me that this Leonardo (Heaven defend me from speaking his name after dusk) wrests the bodies from the gallows—cuts them up—takes out their bowels——'
'You know not what you speak,' said Corbolo; ''tis a matter of science, and called Anatomy.'
'They say he has made a contrivance to fly in the air on bird's wings,' observed Mascarello the goldsmith.