The Romance of Leonardo Da Vinci

Meantime, in the hinder-part of the warehouse, heaped with bales, and lighted only by the glimmer of a lamp before the image of the Madonna, three lads, Dolfo, Antonio, and Giovanni were gossiping together. Dolfo, Messer Buonaccorsi's clerk, a red-haired, snub-nosed, good-natured youth, was entering the number of ells of cloth which Antonio da Vinci, old for his years, with glassy eyes and thin, rough, black locks, was rapidly measuring with the Florentine measure, called a _canna_: Giovanni Boltraffio, a student of painting from Milan, a big boy of nineteen, but shy and awkward, with innocent, sad, grey eyes, and an irresolute expression, was sitting cross-legged on a made-up bale, and listening with all his ears.

'This is what we have come to,' cried Antonio excitedly; 'digging heathen gods out of the ground! ' Then he added, dictating to Dolfo, 'of brown Scotch faced-cloth, 32 _braccia_,[1] 6 fingers, 8 nails. ' Then, having folded the measured piece, he threw it into its place, and raising his finger with the gesture of a menacing prophet, in imitation of Fra Girolamo Savonarola, he cried, '_Gladius Dei super terram cito et velociter! _ In the island of Patmos San Giovanni had a vision: he saw the angel lay hold on the dragon, that old serpent, which is the Devil, and bind him a thousand years, and cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him up, and set a seal upon him, that he should deceive the nations no more till the thousand years should be fulfilled.