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The wise woman evidently demands one competent to put the devil into a hole an operation which I have striven to perform all my life." "Canst thou balance our city upon an egg?" inquired Eustachio. "Better upon an egg than upon a quack!" retorted the priest. But such was not the opinion of Eustachio himself, who privately conferred with Leonardo.
Albrecht, on his part, not wishing to be surpassed by Lucas either in the number or in the excellence of his works, engraved a nude figure on some clouds, and a Temperance with marvellous wings, holding a cup of gold and a bridle, with a most delicate little landscape; and then a S. Eustachio kneeling before the stag, which has the Crucifix between its horns, a sheet which is amazing, and particularly for the beauty of some dogs in various attitudes, which could not be more perfect.
On one part of the façade, therefore, he painted in colours the scene of S. Eustachio causing himself to be baptized with his wife and children, which was a very good work; and on the centre of the façade he painted the same Saint, when, while hunting, he sees Jesus Christ on the Cross between the horns of a stag.
"Eustachio," said Leonardo, with admiration, "it is the misery of Mantua that she hath no citizen who can act half as well as thou canst talk. I would fain have further discourse with thee." The two statesmen laid their heads together, and ere long the mob were crying, "A Virgil! a Virgil!" The councillors reassembled and passed resolutions.
Fortunately Eustachio, who had been appointed to the post by Duke Galeazzo, and solemnly charged to hold it, in case of his own death, until his son was of age, refused to give up the keys; and the young duke and his brother Ermes were conducted into the Rocca, while at the same moment Tassino received an order from the Council to leave Milan.
"But who shall be Regent?" inquired some one when Virgil had been elected unanimously. "Who but we?" asked Eustachio and Leonardo. "Are we not the heads of the Virgilian party?" Thus had the enthusiastic Manto, purest of idealists, installed in authority the two most unprincipled politicians in the republic; and she had lost her lover besides, for Benedetto fled the city, vowing vengeance.
"Let it be equipped," returned Frederick, and in half-an-hour Eustachio and Leonardo, their hands tied behind them, were stumbling up the breach, impelled by pikes in the rear, and confronting the catapults, chevaux de frise, hidden pitfalls, Greek fire, and boiling water provided by their own direction, and certified to them the preceding evening as all that could be desired.
He espoused Lucrezia, daughter of Lionardo Contarini, a noble as rich and magnificent as Jacopo's own father, the Doge; and, on the 29th of January 1441, the noble Eustachio Balbi being chosen lord of the feasts, the bridegroom, the bride's brother and eighteen other patrician youths, assembled in the Palazzo Balbi, whence they went on horseback to conduct Lucrezia to the Ducal Palace.
An assembly met daily in quest of a remedy, but its members were forbidden to propose anything old, and were unable to invent anything new. "Why not consult Manto, the alchemist's daughter, our prophetess, our Sibyl?" the young Benedetto asked at last. "Why not?" repeated Eustachio, an elderly man. "Why not, indeed?" interrogated Leonardo, a man of mature years. All the speakers were noble.
Instead of the Piazza di Spagna and the Villa Medici, the narrow streets and gloomy squares of Ponte, Parione and Sant' Eustachio became the gathering-place of society, high, low and indiscriminate; and far from exhibiting the slightest signs of mourning for its late ruler, the city gave itself up to a sort of Carnival season, all the more delightful, because it was necessarily unexpected.
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