"It were a pity to rob him of his illusions if they are an inspiration to him," he mused. "Let him think himself favoured by Apollo; and as for my niece, since our business here is now accomplished and we shall leave Siena on the morrow, he will probably never see her again, and it is as well that he should not connect her with his visions."
Thus ended our adventures at the villa of Cetinale for Raphael also presently left us for Urbino and Florence and all things seemed as they had been before our meeting together. But I knew that the day would surely come when he would claim his beloved, and that in the spinning of their fates so slight a thing as the pranking of a fool had twisted itself into the very fibre of their lives, never to be unravelled until the shears of Atropos should cut the cords asunder.
III
APOLLO FULFILS HIS PROMISE
Federigo de Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino, gives his views of Raphael
Then why too will he try so many things,
Instead of sticking to one single art;
He must be studying music, twanging strings,
And writing sonnets with their "heart and dart,"
Lately he's setting up for architect,
And planning palaces, and, as I learn,
Has made a statue—every art in turn.
W. W. Story.
Raphael, as I have said, betook himself to Florence, that centre of the arts, and for a matter of four years I saw him not, nor can I, my Giulio, give you any record of his Florentine experiences, vital as they were to the flowering of his character and genius. I saw only the change; he left me a youth, naïve, ignorant, but filled with a divine enthusiasm, inspired as it were by the very spirit of God. In those four years he became instructed, absorbing all that was best from ancient and modern art, but still a mystic, a young archangel in knowledge and power.
He studied first with Fra Bartolommeo in the cloister of San Marco, and the painter-monk yearned over him, as the child of his soul. But he divined also from the mere beholding of Da Vinci's pictures what I had been able to learn only by painful study, the secret of the master's charm.
At the same time the strong undercurrent of the Greek spirit rife in Florence was bearing him irresistibly on to his mission as leader of all that is beautiful, joyous, and noble in classical art. Fra Bartolommeo could not fail to be distressed by these tendencies in his disciple. Raphael came to him one day saying, "Beloved Master, his holiness the Pope has called me to Rome; and I go with joy, for it has been revealed to me that there I shall find Apollo."
"Ah! my son," the pious painter replied in anguished warning, "beware, for whoso findeth Apollo loseth Christ."