One November evening, after a day spent in soliciting the munificent Gaspare Visconti, and Arnoldo the usurer, and in coming to terms with the hangman—who demanded payment for two corpses (used by the artist for studies), threatening in default to denounce the purchaser to the Holy Inquisition—Leonardo came home greatly wearied and out of heart. Having dried his clothes by the kitchen fire, and received the key of his workshop from Astro, he was proceeding thither when he was surprised by the sound of voices behind the door.
'What?' he said, 'is it not locked? Can it be thieves?'
Recognising the tones of his pupils, Giovanni and Cesare, he suspected them of prying into his private papers. About to throw open the door, he was arrested by a vivid imagination of their confusion, and the wide eyes of terror with which they would greet him. He felt ashamed for them, and went away, walking on tiptoe as if himself the culprit; presently he called from the studio:—
'Astro! Astro! Bring me a light! Where have you all got to? Andrea! Marco! Giovanni! Cesare!'
The voices in his room were silenced, some glass thing fell with a crash, there was a shutting of windows. Leonardo still hesitated, unable to resolve upon entry. In his heart was not so much anger as disgust.
His suspicions were not amiss. Having entered by the courtyard window, Giovanni and Cesare had searched his drawers and opened his papers, drawings, and diaries. Boltraffio, very pale, held a mirror, and Cesare read the master's inverted writing:—
'Laude del Sole. I cannot but blame Epicurus, who maintained that the sun's magnitude is no other than it seemeth. Socrates astounds me, who, depreciating so great a light, calls it but a molten stone. And would I had vocables strong enough to confound those who prefer the apotheosis of man to the apotheosis of the sun!'
'Shall we pass on?' asked Cesare.
'Read to the end,' said Giovanni.
'Those who worship men for gods,' continued the reader, 'are greatly in error; for man, though he were of the magnitude of the earth, would appear smaller than the smallest star, a scarce visible spot upon the universe; and seeing, further, that men in their sepulture are subject to putridity and decay—'