'In every man there is a god and a beast, coupled.'
Going on with his anatomical drawing, he added—
'Persons with base minds and unworthy passions do not merit so complex and beautiful a physical structure as others, of high intelligence and lofty thoughts. 'Twere enough if they had a bag with two openings, one to receive, the other to eject food; for, in plain fact, they be no more than a passage for nourishment.'
Next morning Giovanni found the Master at work on his painting 'San Gerolamo nel deserto.' In a savage den, the recluse, kneeling and gazing at the Crucified, beats his breast so vehemently that the lion at his feet looks into his eyes, and has opened his jaws in a long and pitiful moan, as if in compassion for his master.
Boltraffio remembered that other picture, white Leda embraced by the swan, the Goddess consumed by the flames of Savonarola's pyre. And as so often before, he asked himself again which of these opposed conceptions was dearest to the heart of the master? or could the two be equally dear?
VII
Summer came. Putrid fever of the Pontine marshes, the 'malaria,' began to rage in the city; at the end of July there were daily deaths among those about the Pope. He himself appeared troubled and sad; but it was less the fear of death which was oppressing him, than the absence of his idolised Lucrezia. He had before now had several attacks of fierce desire, blind and dumb, like madness, terrifying even to himself; he fancied that if he did not satisfy them at once they would suffocate him. He wrote begging her to come for a few days; she replied that her husband would not permit her to leave him. The aged Borgia would have shrunk from no crime to rid himself of this detested son-in-law as he had rid himself of Lucrezia's earlier husbands. But there was no jesting with the Duke of Ferrara, for he had the finest artillery in Italy.
At the beginning of August Alexander went to the villa of Cardinal Adrian of Corneto. At supper he ate more heartily than usual, and drank heavy Sicilian wines; afterwards he sat long on the terrace, enjoying the insidious freshness of the Roman night. Next morning he felt himself indisposed. It was told afterwards that having approached the window he saw two funerals, that of his favourite chamberlain, and that of Messer Guglielmo Raimondi, both men heavy in figure like himself.
'The season is dangerous for us fat folk,' he murmured forebodingly. The words were no sooner uttered than a dove flew in at the window, dashed itself against the wall, and fell stunned at the feet of His Holiness.