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Do not deprive me of glory, my only hope and happiness. And these entreaties were followed by a new refusal. 'Knowest thou not, cried Fioraventi angrily, 'that the gates of Muscovy are like the gates of hell step beyond them, and thou canst never return. But suddenly, unexpectedly, from some secret motive, he ceased to oppose Antony's desire. With tears he gave him his blessing for the journey.
The young Antonio is educated by the physician, Antonio Fioraventi of Padua, in ignorance of his birth is disowned by his father, but cherished by his mother; and grows up an accomplished gentleman, scholar, and leech, of handsome person, captivating manners, and ardent aspirations to extend the limits of science, and to promote the advancement of knowledge and of civilization all over the earth.
It was reconstructed by Fioraventi in 1475 after the model of the Cathedral of Vladimir, and in spite of the frequent calamities and fires which have half ruined Moscow still preserves in a great measure its primitive character. The church of the Assumption has five domes resting in the centre of the building on four massive circular pillars, and the sanctuary is composed of four hemicycles.
It was by means of the Greeks who followed Sophia, that Iván was enabled to maintain a diplomatic intercourse with the other governments of Europe; it was from her that Russia received her imperial emblem, the double-headed eagle; it was in her train that science, taste, and refinement penetrated to Moscow; it was probably at her instigation that Iván embellished his capital with the beauties of architecture, and encouraged men of science, and amongst others Antonio, "the heretic," and Fioraventi Aristotle, the architect and mechanician, to settle at Moscow.
While these dreams are floating in his mind, a letter on the architect Fioraventi, who had for some time resided in Moscow, to his brother, the Italian physician, requesting him to send some skilful leech to the court of Iván, decides the fate of Antonio.
In illustration of this feeling, we must still extract an eloquent discourse on the life of the artist, which the author puts into the mouth of Fioraventi Aristotle a passage of much feeling, and, we fear, of too much truth: "Thou knowest not, Antony, what a life is that of an artist!
"Fioraventi began to look out for a physician who would volunteer into a country so distant and so little known: he never thought of proposing the journey to his pupil; his youth the idea of a separation of a barbarous country all terrified the old man. His imagination was no longer wild the intellect and the heart alone had influence on him. And what had Antony to hope for there?
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