And Giovanni tried to see his companion's face, but the other turned away.

'Now, I see with joy, Cesare, that you also love him! Yes, you love him, you who wish to hate him; you love him perhaps better than do I!'

'Did you imagine anything else?' replied Cesare, slowly turning to his companion a pale moved face; 'and yet I would indeed be glad to hate him, but instead I must love him, for he has done, in the 'Last Supper,' what no one has ever done, what perhaps he himself does not understand so well as I—I, his most mortal enemy.' And Cesare laughed a forced laugh. 'How odd is the human heart!' he went on. 'I will confess the truth, Giovanni; perhaps I love him less to-day than I did at the time you have alluded to.'

'Why so, Cesare?'

'Perchance because I value my own individuality. To be lowest among the lowest—yes, better that than to be but a member of his body, a toe of his foot! Let Marco find contentment in ladles for the measuring out of paint, and rules for the proportions of noses. I should like to ask with which of these Leonardo made that countenance of Christ! True, he does his best to teach us, poor chickens, to fly like eagles from the eagles' nest; for he is compassionate, and sorry for us, as he is sorry for the blind pups in the yard, or for a lame horse, or for the criminal whom he accompanies to execution that he may watch his dying convulsions. Like the sun, he shines upon everything. Only, see you, my friend, each man hath his own fancy; you may like to be the worm which, in St. Francis' fashion, Leonardo lifts from the highway and sets on a green twig; I'd sooner be crushed by him!'

'Then, Cesare, if you feel thus, why do you not leave him?'

'And you—why do you not leave him? You have burnt your wings like a moth in a candle, and still you flutter round the flame. Perchance I also am fain to burn myself in that flame. Yet, maybe, one hope remains to me!'

'What hope?'

'A foolish hope. The dream of a madman! Yet I often dwell upon it. The hope that one day a man shall arise, unlike him, yet his equal; not Perugino, nor Borgognone, nor Botticelli, nor the great Mantegna—Leonardo surpasses all these; but another, one who is still unknown, reserved for a later day. I would fain see the glory of this new one immense! I would fain look in the face of Messer Leonardo and remind him that even a spared worm like me can prefer another to him, can be pleased in the humiliation of his pride; for, Giovanni, he is proud as Lucifer, in spite of his lamb-like meekness and his universal charity.'

He broke off abruptly, and Giovanni felt his hand tremble.