nged
with rushes and a few twisted trees. An ancient, half-sunken
boat drowsing under the bank he hailed again in the name of Saint
Christopher. Dismounting, he fastened his mule to a willow and proceeded
to place me, then himself found a root of a tree, and taking out his
knife fell to sharpening pencil. This done, he rested book against knee
and began to draw.

Having made his figure in one posture he rose and showed me another and
drew his fisherman so. Then he demonstrated a third way and drew again.
Now he was silent, working hard, and now he dropped his hand, threw
back his head and talked. He himself made a picture, paly gold of locks,
subtle and quick of face, plastered against a blue shield with a willow
wreath going around.

I stood so or so, drawing hard upon the net with the fishes. Then at
his command I approached more nearly, and he drew full face and
three-quarter and profile. It was between these accomplishings that he
talked more intimately.

"Seamen go to Italy," he said. "Were you ever in Milan? But that is
inland."

I answered that I had been from Genoa to Milan.

"It is not likely that you saw a great painter there Messer Leonardo?"

It happened that I had done this, and moreover had seen him at work and
heard him put right thought into most right words. I was so tired
of lying that after a moment I said that I had seen and heard Messer
Leonardo.

"Did you see the statue?"

"The first time I saw him he was at work upon it. The next time he
was painting in the church of Santa Maria. The third time he sat in a
garden, sipped wine and talked."

"I hold you," he said, "to be a fortunate fisherman! Just as this fisher
I am painting, and whether it is Andrew or Mark, I do not yet know, was
a most fortunate fisherman!" He ended meditatively, "Though whoever it
is, probably he was crucified or beheaded or burned."

I felt a certain shiver of premonition. The day that had been warm and
bright turned in a flash ashy and chill. Then it swung back to its first
fair seeming, or not to its first, but to a deeper, brighter yet. The
Fisherman by Galilee was fortunate. Whoever perceived truth and beauty
was fortunate, fortunate now and forever!

We came back to Messer Leonardo. "I spent six months at the court in
Milan," said the fair man. "I painted the Duke and the Duchess and two
great courtiers. Messer Leonardo was away. He returned, and I visited
him and found a master. Since that time I study li