The duke's manner of life was strange enough. Summer and winter he went to bed at four or five in the morning, so that for him it was dawn at three in the afternoon, sunrise at four; at five he began to dress and to dine and to conduct his business affairs all simultaneously. He surrounded his doings with mystery, not only out of natural secretiveness, but by studied calculation; he seldom left his palace, and always masked. Only on great festivals did he show himself to the people, and to the troops only in moments of extreme danger. He liked to astonish; his appearances were always dramatic, like those of a demi-god.
Scarce credible reports were current as to his profuseness. All the gold continually flowing into the treasury of St. Peter's did not suffice for the expenditure of the Gonfaloniere of the Church. Envoys reported that he spent not less than eighteen hundred ducats daily; and that when he rode through the streets crowds followed him to pick up the easily dropped silver shoes, with which his horses were shod, solely as largesse to the people. Wonders were told also as to his physical strength. He could bend horse-shoes in his fingers (thin and delicate as a woman's), twist iron rods, break the cables of ships. At a bull-fight in Rome some years ago, when he had been Cardinal of Valenza, the youthful Cæsar had cut a bull in half with a single stroke of his sword. Inaccessible to his courtiers and to the ambassadors of great potentates, he was often to be seen on the hills round Cesena watching the boxing matches of the wild Romagna herdsmen, and sometimes taking part in the sport.
At the same time he was the ideal of a cavalier and the paragon of fashion. On the day of his sister Lucrezia's marriage with Alfonso d'Este, he left the siege of a fortress and rode from the camp to the wedding, unrecognised, and clad in black velvet with a black mask. He passed through the crowd of guests, bowed, and when all drew back in surprise, danced to the strains of the music with such grace that at once the cry was raised, 'Cesare! Cesare! L'unico Cesare!'
Heeding neither guests nor bridegroom, he drew Lucrezia aside and whispered in her ear. Her eyes fell, she flushed, then grew white, to the enhancement of her dainty pearl-like beauty. It might be she was innocent; there was no question that she was frail; report added submissive, perhaps even criminally submissive, to the terrible will of this her brother.
He, it seemed, cared for one point only, that there should be no proofs. Fame probably exaggerated his sins; but possibly the reality was more terrible than fame. At any rate he knew how to conceal his actions, and to wipe out every trace of them.
X
The old Gothic municipal palace of Fano served as the duke's residence. Leonardo and Machiavelli crossed the dreary hall where less important visitors were received, and entered an inner apartment, once a chapel. There was stained glass in the lancet windows; and the Apostles and Fathers of the Church were carved in oak on the high stalls of the choir. On the ceiling was a faded fresco of the Holy Dove hovering over clouds and angels. The courtiers were standing and talking in undertones, for the near presence of the sovereign was felt even through the walls. The ill-starred envoy from Rimini, a bald and feeble old man who had been waiting three months for his audience of the duke, clearly worn out by many sleepless nights, had fallen into a doze. Now and then the door opened, and the secretary Agapito, with an anxious air, spectacles on nose and pen behind his ear, looked in, and summoned to his Highness one or other of those waiting. Each time, the bald old man from Rimini shuddered, started up, saw it was not his turn, sighed heavily, and again sank into his doze. His slumbers were soothed by the sound of an apothecary's pestle beating in a mortar; for, a suitable room being lacking, this chapel was used not only as the ante-chamber to the presence but also as the surgery. Where the altar had stood was a table crowded with the bottles, gallipots, and retorts of a physician's laboratory, and behind it Gaspare Torella, the bishop of Santa Giusta, and the chief physician to the Duke of Valentinois, was preparing a fashionable medicine, a decoction of 'guaiaco,' or, as it was commonly called, 'Holy tree,' brought from the new islands discovered by Columbus. The bishop-doctor, while he rubbed the yellow lumps in his shapely hands, was discoursing on the nature of this healing tree; and the oaken saints on the stalls seemed listening in amazement to the strange talk of these new shepherds of the Lord's flock. The chapel was lighted only by the physician's blinking lamp; the air was choked by the pungent smell of the medicine, mingled with faint perfume of the incense of earlier years; one might have fancied this an assembly of prelates engaged in the performance of some strange mystic rite. Meantime the Florentine secretary was taking now one, now another of the courtiers aside, and adroitly questioning them as to Cæsar's policy. Presently he approached Leonardo and whispered to him very mysteriously.
'I shall eat the artichoke; I shall eat the artichoke!'
'What artichoke?' asked the painter, bewildered.