Astro had fallen back into his torpor, and was looking serenely out of the window. The house stood high, and commanded a view of the tiled roofs, the domes and towers of Rome, of the Campagna spreading like a sea, traversed by long lines of ruined aqueducts, of the hills of Albano and Frascati, of the clear sky where the swallows swooped and circled. Astro watched them, and smiled, and waved his arms joyously as if imitating their flight.
Cucurlu!
Up they flew!
Curlu!
he crooned contentedly.
Leonardo stood, still as a stone, between his two disciples, the imbecile and the suicide.
A few days later he found Giovanni's diary and read it attentively.
'The white witch!' always and everywhere! May she be accursed. The last mystery: two shall be in one. Christ and Antichrist are one. The heaven above—the heaven below!
'No! No! This shall not, must not be! Rather, death!'