'No end,' cried the boy, and Leonardo felt the trembling of the little hand within his own. The child's face had grown pale.
'Then where—where,' he said slowly, 'where is Paradise, Messer Leonardo, and the angels, and the saints, and the Madonna, and God the Father who sits upon the throne with God the Son and the Holy Spirit?'
The teacher would have liked to answer that God was everywhere; in the grain of sand no less than in the celestial globe; in the hearts of men no less than in the outside universe. But fearing to disturb the simple faith of the little one he held his peace.
With the first budding of the trees, the painter and the child spent whole days together in the garden or in the neighbouring woods watching the reviving of life in the vegetable world. Sometimes Leonardo would draw a flower or tree, trying to seize the living likeness as in the portrait of a man; that unique particular aspect of his model which would never be repeated. He taught Francesco how the rings seen in the wood of the trunk reveal the age of the tree; and how the thickness of each ring shows the amount of moisture in the year when it was formed; how the core of the trunk is always on the southern side, which has had the most of the sun's heat. He told how in the spring-time the sap, gathering between the inner green of the trunk and the outer bark, thickens and expands and bursts the bark; how, if a branch is cut, the vital power draws an abundance of nutritive juices to the wounded place, so that the bark thickens and the wound is healed; yet its mark remains because the abundance of the nutritive juices has been too great, and has overflowed and made lumps and knots. Always he spoke of nature dryly and with apparent frigidity, seeking only scientific accuracy. With passionless exactitude he defined the tender details of the action of the spring upon the life of plants, as he would have spoken of the performance of a machine. He showed from abstract mathematics the wonderful laws which shape the needles of pine-trees and the facets of crystals. Yet for all his coldness and impartiality, the child discerned his love for all living things, for the withered leaf no less than for the mighty boughs which spread suppliant arms to their great lord, the sun. At times, in the depth of the forest, he would pause and note smilingly how under last year's withered leaves still hanging on the branches, green shoots were sprouting to oust them from their place; how the bee, weak from her winter torpor, could scarce crawl into the snowdrop's cup. In the great stillness Francesco could hear the beating of his friend's iron heart; timidly he would raise his eyes to the Master. The sun shining athwart the branches lit up his long curling hair, flowing beard, and overhanging brows, and surrounded his head with a halo: he seemed like Pan himself who listens to the growing of the grass, the murmuring of spring below the earth, the mystical forces of awakening life. To Leonardo all things lived. The world was one great body, like the body of man, who himself is a little world. In the dewdrops he saw the similitude of the watery sphere which surrounds the earth. The cataracts of the Adda near Trezzo gave him occasion to study the cascades and whirlpools of rivers which he compared to the twisting of a woman's curls. Mysterious resemblances attracted him, concords in nature's harmony like voices answering each other from distant worlds. Inquiring into the origin of the rainbow, he noted that the same prismatic colour is seen in the plumage of birds, precious stones, in the scum on stagnant water, in old dulled glass. In the patterns on frosted window-panes, he found a resemblance to living leaves and flowers, as if nature in this world of frozen crystal had seen prophetic visions of the coming spring. At times he felt himself drawing near new realms of knowledge, perhaps to be entered only by men of ages to come. He used to say about the attractive powers of amber:—
'I see not the mode by which the human mind shall apprehend the mystery. These powers of the magnet and the amber are among those occult forces which are as yet unrevealed.'
And further—
'The world is full of countless possibilities of which yet there has been no experience.'
One day, a certain Messer Guidotto Prestinari, a poet from Bergamo, came to the villa. Offended with Leonardo, who did not sufficiently praise his verses, he began a discussion on the comparative excellence of poetry and painting. Leonardo spoke little, but the fury with which Messer Guidotto assailed his art at last amused him and he said, half jesting:—
'Painting is higher than poetry, inasmuch as it reproduces the eternal works of God and not human inventions, to which the poets, at least of our day, are too apt to confine themselves. They depict not, but describe, borrowing all they have and trading with each other's wares. They but put together and combine the refuse of knowledge. They may be compared to the receivers of stolen goods....'
Fra Luca, Messer Galeotto, and Melzi himself cried out; but Leonardo had now warmed to the subject and cried:—