Just then Leonardo checked his horse and fixed his eyes on a young falcon circling slowly and easily in the air above its quarry—some duck or heron in the reeds of the Mugnone's bank. Presently, with a short cry, it dropped headlong, like a stone, swooping down from the height and disappearing behind the trees. Leonardo had followed it with his gaze, not losing a single turn, a movement, a flap of the strong wings; then he took his note-book from his girdle and jotted down the result of his observation.
Boltraffio noticed that he held the pencil in his left hand; and remembered strange tales he had heard of his writing in a mysterious reversed hand only to be read in a mirror, from right to left, as men write in the East. Some said he wrote thus to make an enigma of his wicked heretical opinions about nature and about God.
'Now or never!' Giovanni was saying to himself; but all at once Antonio's harsh words flashed across his mind: '"Go to him if you would lose your soul: he is a sinner and an atheist."'
Smiling, Leonardo drew his attention to an almond-tree, on the crest of a bare, wind-swept hill, very small, very feeble, very solitary, yet already hopeful and joyous, and decking itself with pale blossoms, which gleamed and glistened against the azure of the sunlit sky.
Boltraffio could not admire it, for his heart was heavy and perplexed. Then Leonardo, as if guessing at his disquietude, spoke gentle words which the young man remembered long afterwards.
'If you wish to be an artist, put away all grief and care from your mind, save that for art itself. Let your soul be as a mirror reflecting all objects, all colours, all movements, but itself remaining ever clear and unmoved.'
They passed in through the gates of Florence.