He wrought for many days; and then gradually a strange awe began to assail him. There was something emerging from the darkness, a light, a vibration, which shook and confused his purpose. What was it? A Judas--with the glimmer of some lost angel reappearing, faint and indefinite, in the backward abysm of his eyes! That would never do--or would it--perhaps the best of all? He stayed his hand in amazement. The wonder grew, and with it some emotion, some reluctant sympathy with the debased thing--reciprocal, he somehow felt it to be. And then one morning suddenly the creature spoke. It was in the refectory, whither he had been conveyed, that the Master might consider him in his actual relation to the composition--whence, still flowered, faint and mystic, the unsolved riddle of the Christ--and his voice came in a moment like a breaking water: “He lied to Heaven and his mother, Messer; he had never hung the little gold and crystal reliquary at the shrine of the Beata Virgine in Saronno!” Leonardo started violently and faced round. He stood gazing rigid at the speaker, like one stricken by some mortal memory. “He was a hypocrite and a libertine,” cried the apparition, wildly striking its breast. “He had never left Milan. He had hung the reliquary about the neck of a little evil courtesan of the Ghetto, and with it had bought of her the hour’s bliss he had long and greedily coveted. But his mother, believing him, was cured through her faith; and, when she was restored, she herself made a pilgrimage of gratitude to the shrine, and she discovered what alone was to be found there--the killing truth. And thence she returned, the false life ebbing from her drop by drop, and, coming home, she read the confirmation in his eyes and she died of it. And you could not read it, Messer, as a mother came to; but the riddle spoiled your Christ--as it need not spoil your Judas. I am well portrayed at last--I am well.” He ceased, dropping his head; and Leonardo found his voice in a cry: “Thou art Lucio!” And the other muttered: “Yes, I am Lucio, who came to thee for Christ and remain’st as Judas.” Then Leonardo said: “He forgave them on the cross. As thou look’st towards Him whom in thine own image thou hast betrayed, so shalt thou find mercy, even thou. In Judas’ eyes I find my Christ at last.” Wu Taotsz, the Celestial Painter In his fortress-palace at Nankin sat the Emperor Shun-yuen. It was a torrid day of the year 750, and the Emperor was fretful. Surfeit of power, he was reflecting, did not spell content. On the contrary, like lesser surfeits, it discomposed. It was a natural paradox, perhaps, that his seeming so full should make life appear so empty. He could not, for all his omnipotence, both eat his cake and have it.