After the first words of greeting, I said,
“I am wondering how much more I can absorb today. By mistake I came in through the church, and found myself confronted by a series of masterpieces so overpowering that I am almost exhausted by the monuments of great personages and the important events they recall.”
“A fortunate mistake,” he replied smiling. “The entrance to the Library should be forever closed, and every one forced to come in through the church as you did, in order to absorb the old-world atmosphere, and be ready to receive what I can give.—So this is your first visit? You know nothing of the history of the Library?”
“Simply that everything was designed by Michelangelo,—and the names of some of the priceless manuscripts in your collection.”
“It is not quite exact to say that everything was designed by the great Buonarroti,” he corrected. “It was Michelangelo who conceived, but Vasari who designed and executed. Let me show you the letter the great artist wrote to Vasari about the stairway you just ascended” (page [280]).
Leaving me for a moment he returned with a manuscript in his hand which he read aloud:
There is a certain stair that comes into my thoughts like a dream, the letter ran; but I don’t think it is exactly the one which I had planned at the time, seeing that it appears to be but a clumsy affair. I will describe it for you here, nevertheless. I took a number of oval boxes, each about one palm deep, but not of equal length and breadth. The first and largest I placed on a pavement at such distance from the wall of the door as seemed to be required by the greater or lesser degree of steepness you may wish to give the stair. Over this was placed another, smaller in all directions, and leaving sufficient room on that beneath for the foot to rest on in ascending, thus diminishing each step as it gradually retires towards the door; the uppermost step being of the exact width required for the door itself. This part of the oval steps must have two wings, one right and one left, the steps of the wings to rise by similar degree, but not be oval in form.
“Who but a great artist could visualize that marvelous staircase through a collection of wooden boxes!” Biagi exclaimed. “Vasari built this great room, but the designs were truly Michelangelo’s,—even to the carving of these plutei,” he added, laying his hand on the reading-desk from which he had just risen. “See these chains, which have held these volumes in captivity for over four hundred years.”
He asked me how long I was to be in Florence.
“For a week,” I answered, believing the statement to be truthful; but the seven days stretched out into many weeks before I was able to break the chains which held me to the Library as firmly as if they were the links which for so many years had kept the Medicean treasures in their hallowed places.