'Be good enough to expound me this apophthegm,' said a toothless old man with venomous smile, and eyes dull and troubled as those of a sucking babe; a great doctor of scholastics, who thoroughly understood the confounding of opponents by subtle distinctions (quidditas et habitus) which nobody could understand.
Alone and thoughtful as was his custom, Leonardo was listening, and now and then his lips curled.
VI
Pointing to Leonardo, the Countess Cecilia whispered to the Duke, who called up the artist, and begged him to take part in the discussion.
'Be kind,' insisted the countess. 'Do it for my sake——'
'Lay aside your bashfulness,' said Ludovico, 'and tell us something entertaining. Speak to us of your observations upon nature. Do we not know that your brain is always stuffed with chimeras?'
'Your Excellency must excuse me. Madonna Cecilia, I would gladly please a lady, but, truly, I cannot——'
Leonardo was not feigning. He was neither able nor willing to speak before a crowd. An insuperable barrier seemed to lie between his thought and his word, as if speech must either exaggerate or be inadequate to the sense, modify or vitiate it. In his note-books he continually cancelled, erased, corrected, and revised; in conversation he stammered, lost the thread, sought for words and could not find them. He called both orators and authors 'babblers,' but in secret he envied them. The frequent glibness of insignificant persons was a wonder and an annoyance to him.
'That God should give such men such skill!' he would say, with a kind of ingenuous admiration.