In his soul re-echoed—
'O wondrous justice of thee, thou Prime Mover! No force hast thou permitted to lack the order and the quality of its necessary effect!'
In the frenzied crowd, the soul of the artist preserved the eternal calm of contemplation; even as the blue rays of the moon shone with heavenly effulgence supreme over glare of torches and flames of conflagration and war.
On a certain morning in February 1500, Ludovico Sforza, Il Moro, re-entered Milan by the Porta Nuova. Leonardo had started the previous night for Vaprio, his friend Melzi's villa.
IX
Girolamo Melzi had once belonged to the court of the Sforzas, but on the death of his young wife in 1494 he had retired to his lonely villa at the foot of the Alps, a few hours' journey from Milan. Far from the noise of the world, he lived the life of a philosopher, gardening with his own hands, and devoting himself to music and to the study of the occult sciences. Some said he was an adept in black magic, accustomed to call up the shade of his lost wife from the lower world. The mathematician, Fra Luca Pacioli, and Sacrobosco, the alchemist, often visited him, and whole nights were spent in argument about Plato's ideas, and the laws of the Pythagorean numbers which governed the music of the spheres. But Melzi found his chief pleasure in the visits of Leonardo, which were not infrequent, as the works on the Martesana Canal often brought him to the vicinity.
Vaprio was situated on the left bank of the Adda; and the canal, skirting the villa garden, ran for a certain distance parallel to the river, the course of which was just here obstructed by rapids. All day the roar of the cataract made itself heard, loud as the billows of the sea surf. Free, wild, storm-tossed, untamed by man, the Adda hurled its green waves between winding precipitous banks of yellow sandstone. By its side, the same cold, green, mountain water swam noiselessly by within the straight-drawn confines of the canal; smooth as a mirror, calm, slow, submissive and subdued. The contrast delighted Leonardo, and seemed to him of pregnant meaning. Which of the two streams was the more beautiful—the Martesana, his own creation, the work of human intelligence and will, or its elder sister, the foaming Adda, savage, threatening, superb in its untrammelled freedom? He understood each, sympathised with each, and loved them with equal love.
From the upper terrace of the villa garden was a wide prospect of the immense Lombard plain, one vast and smiling garden. In the summer the fields were rank with verdure; hay scented the air; the wheat and the maize grew so tall as to overtop the vines; ears of corn kissed the pears and the apples, the cherries and the plums. The hills of Como rose dark towards the north; above them towered the first spurs of the Alps; higher still the snow-clad summits glowed in the sunset gold.