At this moment there was a great knock at the street door, then a noise of voices and steps, and then a rap at the door of the studio.
'What devil comes at this hour?' growled Astro. 'A pox on him! Who is there? You won't see the Master. He has gone away from Milan.'
'Tis I, Astro—Luca Pacioli, the mathematician! Open, open, for God's sake!'
The smith opened and let the friar enter. His face was blanched with terror. Leonardo asked him hurriedly what had happened.
'To me, Messer Leonardo, nought—or leastways of that I will speak later. I come from the castle. Oh, Messer Leonardo! The Gascon bowmen—in fact the French—I saw it with my own eyes! They are destroying your Cavallo. Let us run! Let us run!'
'Soft!' said the painter, though he also had paled. 'What shall we do by running?'
'But you cannot sit here with folded hands while your masterpiece is perishing? I have a recommendation to Monsieur de la Trémouille. We must implore him——'
'We are too late.'
'No, no! there is still time! We can run by the garden, through the hedge. If we but make haste!'
Dragged along by the monk, Leonardo set forth for the castle. On the way Fra Luca told him of his own misadventure. The lanzknechts had plundered the cellar of the Canonica of San Simpliciano, where he dwelt; and being drunken, had wrought havoc through the house; and in Fra Luca's cell, having chanced on certain geometrical models made in crystal, had taken them for instruments of magic, and smashed them to atoms.