To-night a crowd of people demanding the Holy Nail surrounded our house, crying, 'Sorcerer! infidel! poisoner! Antichrist!' Amused, Leonardo listened to the howl of the mob, and when Marco would have discharged his arquebus at them, it was the Master who restrained him.
The Master did not change from his impenetrable serenity, and when I fell at his feet supplicating a word, a single word, to dispel my doubts—and I swear by God I should have believed him—he would not or could not speak.
Little Jacopo, stealing out, evaded the crowd, and having met the guard of the captain of justice, led them to the house: and at the instant when the doors were giving way under the weight and the blows of the crowd, soldiers took them in the rear, and the rioters scattered. Jacopo is wounded, struck on the head by a stone, and like to die.
To-day I assisted in the cathedral at the Feast of the most Holy Nail. At the moment recommended by the astrologers it was raised on high. Leonardo's machine acted without a hitch: neither rope nor pulley was visible. Through clouds of incense the round casket with the crystal sides and the golden rays in which the nail was set, rose of itself like the rising sun. 'Twas a triumph of mechanics! The choir sang:—
'Confixa clavis viscera
Tendens manus vestigia
Redemptionis gratia,
Hic immolata est Hostia.'