Messer Leonardo stood musing, half abstracted. He was wont to hunt for the faces for his pictures about the city, and when he marked a quarry, to pursue it in and out of the human warren like a weasel, tasting its life in anticipation, until the moment came to seize and drain it. So had he captured the model for his Christ--among the people, as was meet--Lucio, the widow’s son, who had a face like an angel’s, and the gift, it seemed, of immortal youth. Lucio’s mother was the poorest of the poor, and bedridden at that; yet the fond pride in her kept her grown child in idleness. She embroidered rich cloths for tailors, and made a sufficient pittance; but him she would never let soil his lovely hands in menial service. It had been a different thing, however, when Messer Leonardo, the Duke’s own petted protégé, had proposed to introduce Lucio into the great picture of the Last Supper he was about to paint for the monks of Santa Maria delle Grazie. And as its divine protagonist! Here was service deliriously sanctified. Lucio must be enraptured to consecrate his young glowing beauty to an end so sublime. And he went, indeed, to the great Master’s atelier in the Palace, and was made the subject of innumerable studies, pending his appearance in the fresco. The fresco itself was to be painted on an end wall of the monastery refectory, continuing in perspective the actual rafters of the room, and so far consisted in no more than a charcoal drawing, masterly outlining the group assembled at the consecration. Only the Christ Himself bloomed in flowery suggestion from the midmost throng, a figure iridescent, half revealed, as if it were verily a dream materialising. Before this figure da Vinci, tall, comely, a rapt look on his beardless, keen-cut features, the solemnity of the riddle in his eyes, stood one morning, his forefinger to his lip, and pondered--pondered. His model for the Christ stood at his shoulder. “Ho, Lucio!” he said suddenly, like a man awakening; “you suggest it is thus; and perhaps it is thus. How, then, to elude the riddle which eludes me?” “Why not paint me so, Master, with my lids down?” Leonardo glanced quickly at the speaker; then, raising his left hand with the brushes and the pallet in it, selected here and there and began to work. Presently, as he modelled with deft fingers, half-murmured fragments of speech came from him. “What is thine age, Lucio? I forget.” “Yet under twenty-five, Master.” “Why, a miracle, Lucio! The bloom of thee; the round chin of thee; the golden dusky wings of thy hair! What ensures such youth in manhood? Innocence? A mother’s love? Art thou very innocent, Lucio?” “Who can be wholly innocent, Master, with the stain of that original sin in him?” “True. Yet, for all that, a good son, a pious son. Show me thine eyes again. Ah, the shy revealing! Art afraid it will out--the answer to the riddle?” “No, Master.” “Once more, then. There! Now keep them so.” Presently he spoke again: