So saying, she left the room, and Leonardo remained in thought, sometimes gazing at the picture he had commenced, sometimes at the pallet in his hand, figuring in fancy strange forms and glowing landscapes out of the colours daubed upon it. But though the eye, and the fancy, and the imagination had occupation, the reasoning mind, which has a strange faculty of separating itself from things which seem its attributes, nay, even parts of its essence, to the superficial eye, was busy with matters altogether different. It was engaged with Leonora and her fate.
"This is strange--this is unaccountable," he thought; "she loves him still; she always has loved him. She casts the blame of their separation on him; and he--miserable young man!--thinks her to blame, and has put a seal upon his own wretchedness by marrying yon light piece of vanity whom I saw in Rome. Pride, pride! How much wretchedness would be spared if people would condescend to explain; and yet perhaps there has been some dark work under this; it must be so, or some explanation would have taken place. I will search it to the bottom. I will know the whole ere I am done. They cannot, they shall not baffle me."
He started up, laid down his pallet and his brushes, and then, after gazing at the picture for a moment, took his way down the few steps which led from Leonora's saloon down to a little flower-garden, shaded by some pine-trees, in a quiet nook at the end of the terrace. Two marble steps brought him to the terrace itself, and, hurrying along its broad expanse, not without feeling and noticing the beauty of the view, Leonardo reached the wide avenue, lined with stone-pines, which led to the gates of the gardens.
About half way down he met a man coming leisurely up; and, as his all-noting eye fell upon him, the painter suddenly stopped, saying:
"Who are you, my friend? I know your face right well, and yet I cannot attach a name to it."
"I know yours too, signor," replied the other; "but there is a difference between Leonardo da Vinci, the great master, and poor Antonio, the humble friend and servant of Lorenzo Visconti; the one name will live for ever, the other will never be known. I met you and spoke to you once or twice at Belgiojoso in happier days."
"Ay, I recollect you now," said Leonardo; "but how happens it, my friend, that you are going up to the villa of the Signor d'Orco and his daughter?"
"I was going to see the young signora," replied Antonio. "I do not perceive why I should not. I have ever loved her in my humble way, and love her still; for, to tell the truth, signer maestro, I cannot believe that she has ever wilfully ill-treated one whom I love better still."
"Nor I--nor I, Antonio," cried the painter, eagerly grasping his arm; "she believes that he has ill-treated her."
"Nay, God knows, not that," replied Antonio. "Oh, had you seen how he pined, signor, for the least news of her, or how his heart was torn and moved when his letters were returned with nothing but a scrap of her handwriting, contemptuous in its tone and meaning, you would know at once he is not to blame."