Two fables: the vain razor and the restless stone
Both moralize on idleness and discontent, with columns of arithmetic in the margins
The page carries two of Leonardo's moral fables. In the first, a razor abandons the barber's shop out of vanity, hides itself away in idleness, and rusts into a useless saw, an emblem of talents lost to sloth and the rust of ignorance. In the second, a stone leaves its quiet, flowered height to join its fellow stones in the road below, only to be crushed by cart wheels and horses' hooves, a warning against forsaking the contemplative life for the crowded city. Columns of arithmetical figures run down the left margin and across the foot of the sheet.
On this page
Fable of the razor that rusted in idleness
A razor slips from its handle, sees the sun mirrored in its polished body, and, filled with pride, resolves never to return to the mean work of shaving peasants' beards. Hiding for months in a secret place, it emerges to find itself turned into a rusty saw whose surface no longer reflects the sun. Leonardo draws the moral that minds which give themselves to idleness instead of exercise lose their edge, and the rust of ignorance spoils their form.
Fable of the stone that left its solitary height
A fine stone stands raised above a stony road at the edge of a delightful wood, among grasses and coloured flowers, but longs to join the many stones lying in the road below. Letting itself roll down among its 'sisters,' it is then endlessly tormented by cart wheels, iron-shod horses and travellers, and looks back in vain to the peace it left. So it happens, Leonardo concludes, to those who leave the solitary, contemplative life to dwell in cities full of infinite evils.
Columns of multiplication and division
Down the left margin and along the lower edge of the sheet run several stacks of arithmetical working, long strings of digits set out in columns of products and remainders. They are practice calculations unrelated to the fables, jotted around the literary text.