"Ah, young hearts! young hearts!" said the old lady, who had slept for several hours; "they have thoughts enough to keep them waking, and strength to bear it. Old people have only to pray and sleep. But, indeed, you had better come to rest; we have all to rise betimes."
After a word or two more, Leonora parted from her lover, and soon seeking her bed, lay down and dreamed, but not asleep.
As if the painter had heard her light foot on the stairs, she had not been gone a minute when Leonardo appeared. He took Lorenzo's hand eagerly in his, and said, in a low, earnest tone:
"Let her not go to Rome, I beseech you, young gentleman--let her not go to Rome."
"And why are you so eager she should not go there?" asked Lorenzo, somewhat surprised, and even alarmed by his new friend's manner. "Is there any danger?"
"Every danger," answered Da Vinci.
"Why?"
"For a thousand reasons, but they are difficult to explain. Yet stay; I remember rapping a fellow student's knuckles to prevent his putting his profane hand on a bunch of beautiful grapes, all covered with their vineyard bloom, when I was about to paint them. This young lovely girl--this Signora d'Orco, is like one of those grapes, rich in the bloom of innocence. There is the sweet fruit within--there is, or is to come the ardent wine of love and passion, but the bloom is there still. Oh, let it not be brushed away too soon, Lorenzo! Now listen: Rome is a place of horror and vice. In the chair of the Apostle sits the incarnation of every sin and crime. The example is too widely, too eagerly followed by people ever ready to learn. The very air is pollution. The very ground in foul. Would you take her into a pest-house? But more, still more--nay, what shall I say? How shall I say it? Her father--her very father has been gained by the foulest of the foul offspring of Borgia. Ramiro d'Orco is now the bosom counsellor of Cæsar, who, in a shorter space of time than it took his great namesake to make himself master of the Roman State, has accumulated more vices,--committed more crimes, than any man now living, or that ever lived."
"But how have they gained him? Why have they sought him?" asked Lorenzo. "He is himself wealthy; his daughter is more so. They cannot approach him by mercenary means: and then, why should they seek a man who has no political power?"
"A tale long to tell, an intrigue difficult to explain," replied Da Vinci. "I can show you why and how, in a few words indeed; but if you must seek proofs of what I say, you may have to buy them dearly. Listen then to them, Lorenzo Visconti. Men seek that which they have not. Money might not tempt Ramiro d'Orco. The prospect of that political power which he does not possess has tempted him. They have promised him what I may well call prefectal power in one half of Romagna, and he has yielded. What would he not sacrifice for that? His own honour--perhaps his child's. Thus your first question is answered. Thus they have approached and gained him.