He was sixty-three. He had done many great things, but now, with ease and every comfort, perchance his genius would be more brilliant than ever. When about this age, Michael Angelo had completed his wonderful statues in the Medici chapel, and later even painted his "Last Judgment" and planned the great dome of St. Peter's. But Leonardo, the versatile, luxury-loving, "divine Leonardo," no longer urged to duty by necessity, did nothing further for the world. He mingled in the gayeties of the court, walked arm in arm in his gardens with the beautiful Salaï, his long white hair falling to his shoulders, and made a unique automaton for the great festivities of the conquering young king at Pavia, a lion filled with hidden machinery by means of which it walked up to the throne, and, opening its breast, showed it filled with a great number of fleurs-de-lis. He soon fell into a kind of languor that presaged the sure coming of death. In early life he had been so devoted to science that Vasari tells us "by this means he conceived such heretical ideas that he did not belong to any religion, but esteemed it better to be a philosopher than a Christian." Now he turned his thoughts toward the Catholic church, and made his will, which recommends his soul "to God, the glorious Virgin Mary, his lordship St. Michael, and all the beautiful angels and saints of Paradise." He wishes that at his obsequies "there shall be sixty torches carried by sixty poor persons, who shall be paid for carrying them according to the discretion of the said Melzi, which torches shall be shared among the four churches above named." To his beloved pupils, ever with him, he gives his property. Nine days after this, says Vasari, May 2, 1519, at the age of sixty-seven, Leonardo died in the arms of his devoted King, Francis I.; but later historians have considered this doubtful. He was buried under the flag-stones in the Church of St. Florentin at Amboise. In the religious wars which followed, the church was demolished, the gravestones sold, and the lead coffins melted for their metal. Many persons have tried to find the grave of the great master, and M. Arsène Houssaye made a last and perhaps successful attempt in 1863. He says, "More than one Italian had gone to Amboise for the purpose of finding the tomb of Leonardo da Vinci, and had gazed sadly on the spot where the church once stood, now covered by thick growing covert. "The gardener's daughter had been often questioned, and it was she who first gave me the idea, some years ago, of seeking for the tomb of the painter of the 'Last Supper,' but I do not know whether the fact of her having the painter's name sometimes on her lips arose from the fact of her hearing him spoken of by her father or by visitors. She it was who pointed out to me the spot where the great painter of Francis I. might be found; a white-cherry tree was growing there, whose fruit was so rich from the fact of its growing above the dead.