'Your words make my hair stand on end, Messer Niccolò,' said Lucio, much shocked, but thinking a jest the most courteous form of reply: 'You may speak the truth, but I shall flatly refuse to believe these your real opinions.'
'Truths always seem improbable,' said Machiavelli dryly.
Leonardo, who was listening, had already observed that Messer Niccolò, while pretending indifference, was casting sly glances at Lucio as if to gauge the effect his words were producing. It was evident that Machiavelli had little self-command, was not possessed of calm and conquering strength. Unwilling to think like other men, hating the commonplace, he had fallen into the opposite error, into exaggeration, into the affectation of views rare and startling, but incomplete and paradoxical. He played with such words as virtue and ferocity, much as a juggler plays with naked swords. He had a whole armoury of these polished, shining, tempting and dangerous weapons, ready for the disabling of men like Messer Lucio; men of the herd, respectable, sensible, conventional. He punished them for their triumphant mediocrity, and for his own disregarded superiority; he cut and scratched them; but did not kill or even seriously wound them. Leonardo remembered the monster which he had once painted on the wooden 'rotello' for Ser Piero da Vinci; an animal put together from the different parts of a variety of repulsive reptiles. Had not Messer Niccolò put together as useless and impossible a monstrosity in his superhumanly astute and conscienceless prince? A being contrary to nature, fascinating as Medusa, invented for the terrifying of the vulgar? Yet under this wantonness of imagination, this artistic dispassionateness, Leonardo perceived great suffering in the soul of Messer Niccolò, as if a juggler, playing with swords, were himself cut to the quick.
'Is he not one of those unhappy sick men,' thought the painter, 'who seek relief from pain in envenoming their wounds?' He did not know the last secret of this dark spirit, so like, and yet so unlike, his own.
Messer Lucio, like a man in a nightmare, was struggling with the Medusa head evoked by Messer Niccolò.
'Well, well!' he said, 'I will not dispute with you. Severity may have been necessary to princes in the past. We can pardon them a good deal for the sake of their heroic virtues and exploits. But, pardon me, what has this to do with the Duke of Romagna? Quod licet Jovi non licet bovi. What is permitted to Alexander the Great or to Julius Cæsar, may be unpardonable in Alexander the pope or in Cæsar Borgia, of whom we cannot yet say whether he be Cæsar or nothing. I at least think, and all will agree with me——'
'Oh, of course, all will agree with you,' interrupted Niccolò, out of patience, 'but that is no proof, Messer Lucio. The truth does not lie on the high road where all men pass. But to conclude the discussion, here is my last word. As I observe the acts of Cæsar, I find them perfect; and I would suggest him as a model to all who would obtain power by force of arms and by successful adventure. He combines cruelty so well with virtue, he knows so accurately when to caress and when to crush, the foundations of his power are so firmly though so quickly laid, that already he is an autocrat, the only one in Italy, perhaps the only one in Europe. It is hard to imagine what may not lie before him in the future.' Machiavelli's eyes burned, his voice shook, and red spots glowed on his sunken cheeks; he seemed like a seer. From the mask of a cynic looked out the face of the former disciple of Savonarola, the fanatic.
But Lucio, weary of the discussion, had no sooner suggested sealing a truce with two or three bottles from the neighbouring cellar than the visionary disappeared.
'Nay,' cried Messer Niccolò eagerly, 'let us go to a different tavern. I have a good scent in such matters, I know where we shall find handsome women.'
'What, in this scurvy little town?' said Lucio.