I wander alone or with Francesco.
Inside the château, if it is raining or cold or misty, we prowl through the halls and public rooms. Halls, rooms, people. A door opens and there is someone. A door shuts, and you are alone with a dozen doors. Cold windows merge into cold mirrors, a door opens. Here are tapestries from Bruges. Someone coughs. Feminine laughter sounds.
As I walked toward Cloux, lights blinked in window after window; a light appeared in my studio; someone passed carrying a torch. Maturina has a fire in my fireplace. She has the table set for Francesco and me. Glaring at me she scolds me for my damp clothes. “Your cough...you know! You never think of yourself. Your supper has been ready a long time. I’ve asked Francesco to look after you but he forgets. Only yesterday I said to him...”
Whenever the Egyptian sultan presented the Florentines with a new animal, I made sketches. At one time, there were several lions in the town’s menagerie. An old lion had a stubby grey mane and a black splotch across his face. Since one of his paws was crippled, he limped badly. As he walked or stretched out in the summer sun, a friendly ibis often pecked about in his fur. Old and wise, he ate only two or three times a week...and outlived younger lions. Bruno, a keeper, let me measure him. Skull. Neck. Spine. Shoulders. Rump. Paws.
I suggested large cages for the menagerie animals but no one listened. When I designed a cage for a lion on two levels, with a tree in a corner, nothing came of it.
One night, in winter, a friar opened a cage and let a sick lion go; for days the young man had tried to cure the female. Running amok through town, she created quite a scare until she was trapped in a cul-de-sac by some of my apprentices. Muzzled, growling, she was returned to her cage where she died.
It was only a few blocks from my studio to the menagerie and I often heard the animals roar while I worked.
Cloux.
Cage.