Leonardo sat down by the hobgoblin cripples, ordered wine to be brought, served it to them himself, questioned them kindly, told them absurd stories to make them laugh. At first they were restive and suspicious, not understanding why they had been brought in. But when he related an anecdote about a dead Jew, whom his compatriots, to evade the law forbidding the burial of Hebrews within the confines of Bologna, had cut in pieces, pickled, spiced, and sent to Venice where he was eaten by a Florentine Christian, the Little Spider was like to burst with laughter. Soon all three were tipsy, and laughing and talking and making the most horrible faces. I was disgusted and looked away; but Leonardo watched them with deep and eager curiosity; and when their hideousness had reached its height, took out his sketch-book and drew with the same delighted attention that he had lavished on the smile of the Virgin.
In the evening he showed me a whole collection of caricatures; grotesques not only of men but also of beasts—terrible shapes, like those which haunt sick men in their delirium, the human and the bestial compounded to make one shudder. The muzzle of a porcupine, its quills bristling, its under lip pendent, loose, and thin as a rag, displaying in a human grin two long white teeth like almonds; an old woman, her nose spread and hairy, and scarce bigger than a mole, her lips monstrously thick, like those squat and viscid fungi which grow out of withered trunks.
Cesare da Sesto tells me that sometimes the Master, having met some monstrosity in the street, will follow it for a whole day. Great deformity, he says, is as rare as great beauty; only mediocrity is negligible.
Marco d'Oggionno works like an ox, and carries out all the teacher's rules; the more he tries the less is his success. He is endowed with an invincible constancy. He thinks patience and labour shall possess all things; nor doth he despair of some day becoming a great painter.
He takes also, more than any of us, rare delight in the master's inventions. One of these days he carried his note-book to the Piazza del Broletto, and according to the Master's system he made the required indexed notes of those faces which struck him chiefly in the crowd. But on reaching home he could in no wise translate his notes into a living face. Likewise did he fail in the use of Leonardo's spoon for measuring out colour. His shadows remain thick and unnatural, just as his faces are wooden and devoid of all charm. Marco accounts for this by some small failure in his obedience to the rules. Cesare da Sesto ridicules him.
'This most excellent Marco,' he says, 'is a martyr in the cause of science. His example shows that all these measures and rules be worth nothing. To know how infants are born does not suffice to beget one. Leonardo deceiveth himself and others; he teaches one thing and performs another. When he paints he follows no rule save that of inspiration; yet he is not content to be a great artist, but would be a man of science also. I fear lest, coursing two hares, he run down neither.'
It may be that in this mockery of Cesare's there is a modicum of truth; but no love for the Master. Leonardo hearkens to him, praises his intelligence, and never is wroth with him.