'Lippi. Let me go home! Let me go home! I am so cold. I feel so sick.'
His eyelids fell heavily, and he babbled deliriously.--
'Tornerà l'età dell' oro, Cantiam tutti: "Viva il Moro!"'
Leonardo wrapped the boy in his own cloak, laid him in a chair and roused the servants in the ante-chamber who were sleeping off the effects of their cups. He learned from them about the child: that he was motherless, the son of a tinker in the _Broletto Novo_, who, for twenty scudi, had sold his child to the mumming, though warned that he might die of being gilded. Leonardo returned, wrapped the boy snugly in his furs, and was carrying him out of the palace to the nearest drug shop that the paint might be removed from his skin. Suddenly, however, he paused, for he remembered the drawing he had just commenced, and the interesting look of despair in Ludovico's face.
'Ah, well,' he thought, 'I shall scarce forget it. The chief thing is the wrinkle over the arched eyebrows, and the strange smile which one might think full of serenity, even of enthusiasm. The expression of immense grief is like enough to that of immoderate joy; and truly Plato has said that the two emotions, rising upon different bases, converge at their apex.'
Then feeling the tremble of the frozen child, he added to himself ironically--
'Poor little sick bird--our Age of Gold!'
And he pressed him with such tenderness to his heart that the little lad fancied his mother had risen from her grave, and was comforting him.
Beatrice Sforza d'Este died on Tuesday, the 2nd of January 1497, at six in the morning. The Duke remained by her corpse for twenty-four hours, refusing food and sleep. It was feared his reason would give way. On Thursday morning he called for writing materials and wrote to Isabella d'Este, sister of the dead Duchess, a long letter breathing bitterest grief.
'It had been easier for me to have died myself,' he wrote; 'I pray you send me no condolence nor messenger.'
After writing he was induced to eat a little, not presenting himself at table but being served in solitude by Ricciardetto.
He had proposed to leave the disposing of the funeral to Bartolomeo Calco, his secretary; arranging himself merely the order of the procession. But his interest became aroused, and presently he was planning details of the ceremonial with the same zeal he had shown in ordering the magnificent festival of the Golden Age. He fixed the precise weight of the funeral tapers; the number of _braccia_ of gold brocade and of black cramoisie for the altar cloths; the largess of small coin, pease, and tallow to be distributed among the poor in the name of the deceased. Choosing the cloth for the mourning of the court functionaries, he did not omit to feel its weight with his fingers, and to make sure of its quality by holding it to the light. For himself he ordered a special mourning garb (_abito solenne di lutto profondo_) having holes torn in it to simulate the rendings of despairing frenzy.