City of God by Cecelia Holland Page A

him—”
    â€œAre you mad? All he requires is the excuse.”
    â€œTo tie him down,” Nicholas said. He knew nothing of military strategies, and he was bad at chess, but his idea seemed obvious to him. “So that he has to keep his men together.”
    Bruni snorted. His coat was off. His fine lawn shirt, embroidered and frilled with lace, was the brightest surface in the room, standing out against the drapery. “Nicholas, you tire of diplomatics. Do you crave a career as a condottiere?” He smiled unpleasantly and turned away.
    â€œThe French king is crossing the Alps,” Nicholas said. “He will reach Milan in a matter of days. Valentino will have to withdraw.”
    â€œOr attack. With French help.”
    Nicholas pressed his fingertips to the top of the desk. “Let me go to the French.”
    â€œTo be humiliated again? You heard how before half the Royal Court Niccolo Machiavelli was forced to listen to a recital of our sins. No.” Bruni raised his hands again, shaking his head. “In this we cannot rely on friends—former friends. We stand alone, as once we stood alone against the tyrant Giangaleazzo. I will not see the French.”
    Nicholas looked down at the leather-bound book on the desk. The title crossed the spine in gold leaf: Tales of Cathay. Bruni had turned toward the hidden window and drawn the drape aside a little to look out, his face knotted into a frown. Perhaps he learned such poses from his books. Nicholas said, “Very well, Excellency.”
    â€œYou may go,” Bruni said.
    â€œThank you, Excellency.”
    In the afternoon, walking home to his house, Nicholas, went out of his way to visit a small shop at the very edge of the city. He walked back through the pastures and woods of the Esquiline Hill. As he was moving along the path that curved along the lower slope, he came in sight of some children swinging on ropes hanging in the trees.
    He stopped to watch their broad pendulum sweeps across the bare ground beneath the trees. The children did not see him; they shrieked with laughter as they played, their hair flying and the rags of their clothes fluttering.
    Here the steep hillside was buttressed with a facing of brick, part of the extensive ruins that covered the hill, and he stood in the lee of the brick wall. His eyes followed the swinging ropes, measuring their motion. The speed did not vary, no matter how the child twisted or pumped. One child’s rope broke, and the child fell, then knotting the rope together began to swing again. Now the rope was shorter and swung faster. He watched the child work at his play, how he raised and lowered his body in time with the swing, and so drove the rope farther out and back. That was how the motion worked. The child, pumping his body up and down, changed the length of the pendulum and so enlarged the motion of the rope. Nicholas watched them for some time, enjoying his discovery. He wondered if the child would be able to get the rope swinging at all, if he began pumping with it perfectly still. Usually the children ran a few steps with the rope to start the swing.
    If he had asked such questions at the university, the professors would have referred him to Aristotle. He detested Aristotle; the children at their play seemed to have more of a practical sense of the world than the Stagirite philosopher.
    It was obvious to Nicholas that a knowledge existed other than Aristotle’s idea of knowledge, which was of the essential nature of things. Discussions of essences always dissolved into mere opinion and fashion and had become more decorative than functional. Yet the relations between things could be understood exactly, and expressed exactly, leaving out the nature of the man thinking of them. All nature seemed composed of such simple consequences as the action of the swinging rope. There seemed everywhere in the world an order of a few simple relationships, endlessly repeated.
    The idea