frivolities now in the sleepy little town....

The two great towers of Amboise with the inclined planes of brickwork,
which wind upward in the midst instead of staircases, were the result
of the work which Charles set on foot as a distraction of his grief.
These strange ascents had been partially restored by the Comte de
Paris, the present owner of Amboise, before his exile stopt the work
of repairing the chateau, and it is still possible to imagine the
"charrettes, mullets, et litieres," of which Du Bellay speaks,
mounting from the low ground to the chambers above, or the Emperor
Charles V., in later years, riding up with his royal host Francis I.,
always fond of display, amid such a blaze of flambeaux "that a man
might see as clearly as at mid-day."

These great towers and the exquisite little chapel were the work of
the "excellent sculptors and artists from Naples" who, as Commines
tells us, were brought back with the spoils of the Italian wars; for
the young king "never thought of death" but only of collecting round
him "all the beautiful things which he had seen and which had given
him pleasure, from France or Italy or Flanders;" but death came upon
him suddenly. At the end of a garden walk, fringed with a mossy grove
of limes that rises from the river bank, is the little doorway through
which Charles VIII. was passing when he hit his head, never a
very strong one, against the low stone arch, and died a few hours
afterward. The castle had been fortified before his time; he left it
beautiful as well, and the traces of his work are those which are most
striking at the present day....

Within the shadow of the lime trees on the terraced garden of Amboise
is a small bust of Leonardo da Vinci, for it was near here he died.
His remains are laid in the beautiful chapel at the corner of
the castle court, and the romantic story of his last moments at
Fontainebleau becomes the sad reality of a tombstone covering ashes
mostly unknown and certainly indistinguishable; "among which" as the
epitaph painfully records, "are supposed to be the remains of Leonardo
da Vinci." He had been brought to Paris a weak old man, by Francis,
in pursuance of a certain fixt artistic policy, to which it may be
noticed this forgotten and uncertain grave does but little credit.

To Francis I., rightly or wrongly, is given the glory of having
naturalized in France the arts of Italy; to him is due the
architecture built for ease and charm which t