'Messere, if it would please you to share my room, I shall account it an honour, if your worship will permit me to render so slight a service.'

Niccolò seemed astonished, and even confused; recovering himself, however, he accepted the offer with suitable thanks. Leonardo took him to his room, and assigned him the best place. The more he looked at this strange man the more attractive and interesting did he seem to him. He presently learned his name: He was Machiavelli, secretary to the Council of Ten in the Florentine Republic.

Three months earlier the astute and vigilant Signoria had sent Machiavelli to make a treaty with Cæsar Borgia. The latter had proposed a defensive alliance against their common enemies, Bentivoglio, the Vitelli, and the Orsini; but the Florentines, fearing the duke too much to desire either his friendship or his enmity, had commanded their envoy to meet his propositions merely with diplomatic and ambiguous expressions of goodwill, and secretly to obtain free passage for their traders through the duke's territory along the shores of the Adriatic, a matter of no small importance to their commerce.

Leonardo also disclosed his name and rank; and soon he and his new friend were conversing with that ease and mutual confidence occasionally natural to persons of opposite character, and habitually solitary and meditative.

'Messere,' burst out Niccolò, and his candour was not unattractive, 'I know you by repute as a great painter; but I warn you I have no knowledge of painting, nor am I even fond of it. Of course you may respond, as did Dante to the street mocker who offered him a fig, "I wouldn't change one of mine for twenty of yours!" but I confess I am more interested in having learnt from the duke that you are an expert in military science. How important that is! Civil greatness is founded upon war, and depends on the regular army. I am writing a book on monarchies and republics, wherein I shall discuss the natural laws which govern the life, growth, decline, and death of every state, just like a mathematician discussing the laws of number, or a natural philosopher physics. Hitherto, sir, all who have written about the state——'

Here he stopped, and chid himself with a good-humoured smile.

'Forgive me, Messere, I am taking a mean advantage. It may be that policy interests you as little as painting interests me?'

'Not so,' said Leonardo. 'I tell you candidly I don't affect statecraft, because such talk is apt to be idle. But your opinions are so new and surprising, that, believe me, I am thrice happy to learn.'

'Beware, Messer Leonardo,' said the other; 'these matters are my hobby-horse. I will go without bread, if I may but talk upon politics with a man of understanding. The mischief is, to find the man of understanding! Our great ones think of naught but the price of wool and of silk, while I' (he smiled bitterly) 'am made of neither.'

Leonardo reassured him, and added, in order to keep the conversation going:—