'Then,' asked Cesare with his accustomed ironic smile, 'how happed it that Lucifer, prince of the cherubim, and renowned for wisdom, was moved by wisdom not to humility, but to pride that cast him into hell?'
Leonardo did not answer at once; presently he told us this fable.
'Once a drop of water aspired to reach the sky. Winged by fire, it rose up in fine steam. But mounted on high it met air still finer and very cold, and the fire deserted it. Then it shivered and grew heavy, and, its presumption changing into terror, fell as rain. And cast down from heaven it fell upon the earth, and was drunk up by dryness; and for long time it was shut up in prison underground, and there did penance for its sin.'
He added no more, but I thought I understood.
The longer I live with him the less I know him. To-day he has again been playing like a child. And such strange pranks! Before going to bed I was sitting in my chamber reading my favourite book, The Little Flowers of Saint Francis, when suddenly a cry rang through the house from our old woman, the kind and faithful Maturina—
'Fire! Help! Help! Fire!'
I rushed out. An appallingly thick white smoke filled the Master's studio. He was there himself, standing among clouds like some ancient magi, and illumined by unearthly blue flames. His face was merry, and he looked jovially at the pale and terrified Maturina, and at Marco, who had rushed in with two buckets of water, to empty over the drawings and manuscripts strewing the table. Leonardo, however, stopped him, saying it was all a jest. Smoke and flames came from a heated brazier containing a powder of frankincense and resin. I cannot say which took the greater pleasure in the joke, Leonardo or the little scamp, that jackanapes Jacopo. Only a good man could laugh as does Leonardo! I swear it is not true what Cesare says of him! The Master set down in his note-book the effect produced by terror upon Maturina's wrinkles.
He speaks scarce at all of women. Once, however, he said that men maltreat them even as they do their beasts. He ridicules the platonic love which is the fashion; and when a certain youth read to him a peevish sonnet in the manner of Petrarch, he replied in three lines, about Petrarch's loving Laura merely to season his own daily food.