'Certainly,' said Leonardo brightening, 'I have long wished your Excellency could be induced to try it, say in one of the suburbs. Five thousand houses would suffice for thirty thousand people; they would be decently divided, whereas now they herd together in dirt and distemper, disseminating the seeds of disease. My plan, Signore, if literally carried out, would provide the finest city in the world.'
The duke's laughter checked the enthusiast.
'You are finely crazed, Messer Leonardo. If I gave you the reins you would turn the State topsy-turvy. You do not see that the most submissive of slaves would resent your two-storeyed streets, would spit upon your boasted cleanliness—your pipes and conduits—your finest city in the world, perdio; and would flee back to their lousy old towns again, where, as you say, they have a good modicum of filth and distemper, but no insults to their self-respect. Well, and this?' he added, pointing to another drawing.
This proved to be a design for a 'house of accommodation,' with secret rooms, doors, and passages, so disposed that the visitors should not meet each other.
'Ah! this is admirable!' cried the duke. 'I am weary of the robbings and the murderings in these places. Here there would be order and security. I will build at once on your plan.' He smiled and added, 'Bravo! Bravo! I see nothing is beneath your ingenuity. A proposito! I remember once reading of the "Ear of Dionysius," a construction at Syracuse, which permitted the tyrant in his palace to hear the speech of his prisoners in the quarry. Think you it were possible to construct an Ear in my palace?'
As he spoke the duke had stammered and blushed a little, but he recovered himself immediately: before such a man as this artist no shame was required. And Leonardo, without trenching on morals, eagerly discussed the acoustics of the notion.
Then Bellincioni reappeared, announcing that his sonnet was ready and passing beautiful; at which Leonardo took flight, having accepted the duke's invitation to supper.
Ludovico requested the poet to read his work. The salamander, so the sonnet ran, lives in the fire, but a lady, of virgin ice, has her dwelling in the lover's fiery heart. The concluding quatrain seemed to the duke surprisingly tender:—
'I sing, poor swan, of my consumèd years,
But singing brings my torture no relief;