'What! these also? Nay, master, but I will not make your machine again. Think of the money, the labour we have thrown to the wind! What better can you want? Not to fly, on wings like those, would be impossible! An elephant could rise on them. Pr'ythee, master, let me try! I will prove them over water, and then if I fall I'll come off with no worse than a bathing. I can swim as a fish; I wasn't born to be drowned.'
And he clasped his hands supplicatingly. Leonardo, however, shook his head.
'Patience, friend, have yet patience. It will come in its own time, and then—'
'Then?' cried the smith, almost in tears. 'Why not now? Of a surety, master, as true as God is in heaven, I shall fly.'
'No, Astro, fly thou wilt not. By a mathematical law——'
'I could have sworn you would say that! To the devil with your mathematical laws, for they upset everything. And to think of the years we have laboured! I am sick to remember it! Every gnat, mosquito, fly, I pray you license—every muck-fly, every dunghill-fly—has its wings; and men crawl like worms. 'Tis rank injustice! And why should we doubt? There they are, your wings, ready, and beautiful; ready to be blessed of God, and spread, and to be off! And then we shall see what we shall see!'
He paused, seemed to recall something, and continued more calmly:—
'I would tell you a thing, master. This very night I dreamed, nay, but I dreamed——'
'I conceive you! You flew.'
'Ay. But how? Hear me. I stood in a chamber, where I know not, and amid a throng. They looked at me and pointed, and then they laughed. And I said to myself, "cursed spite 'twill be if I fly not." So I got up and I shook my arms and I rose; I warrant you 'twas hard, as though I would raise a mountain on my back! But 'twas soon lighter, and I rose till my head was in the roof. And they cried aloud, Behold him! he flieth! Ay, and I passed through the window like yon bird, and I circled higher and yet higher, till I touched the sky. And the wind whistled in my ears, and I laughed for very joy. "Why," I questioned of myself, "did I never fly till now? 'Tis mighty easy; and there is no call for any machinery at all."'