There was much that was familiar in the castle at Amboise. The thick, high walls and round towers and especially the graceful, lacy spires of the king’s residence brought back much that he had known in his native land. The gardens had been planted by Italians—there were orange trees and even a mulberry tree from his beloved plains of Lombardy. The king’s residence and chapel had been constructed and the decorations carved in stone by Italian artisans. Leonardo could stop and talk in his native tongue with many of the men employed by the king. Since the time of Charles VIII, the French had brought in the latest Renaissance styles from Italy. Leonardo’s steps took him back from the castle grounds and down a path with a hand-railing. The steep roofs of the town of Amboise with their chimneys could be seen below him. The path led to a small manor house, like a miniature castle with sharp spires and lacy, carved-stone gables that was set in green lawns and gravel paths. The Manoir de Cloux, as Leonardo’s house was called, had been a hunting lodge for Francis I, but when Leonardo had arrived he gave the house to Leonardo for his home. Francis, in his admiration for this great man, also gave him seven hundred crowns a year, together with a pension of four hundred for Francesco de’ Melzi. [Illustration: _Leonardo at Chateau d’Amboise on the Loire._] The long journey from Rome had left Leonardo tired and weak and he had fallen ill again shortly after his arrival. This time the attack was more serious and had left him with his right hand permanently crippled. He looked at it now as he opened the door to his room. “Another warning,” he thought, “and there’s still so much to do.” The young, robust King Francis was everywhere at once. He gloried in knightly tournaments, hunts, and sports of all kinds. Always restless, he might appear at any place unannounced. Frequently there would be a clamor at the gates of Leonardo’s home and the king would ride in with one or two of his nobles. With a great jingling of spurs he would bound up the stairs of the manor house calling for Leonardo. He delighted in long talks with the old man, and would listen respectfully as Leonardo, his deep-set eyes brooding over his notes, would demonstrate some scientific point on a blank sheet of paper. At this time, Leonardo was engaged on three projects which demanded his immediate attention. One was the entertainment for a banquet that Francis was giving for his sister, Marguerite de Valois, and her husband. Another was a new design for the king’s castle at Amboise, and the third was a design for making a navigable waterway from Amboise to Romorantin. Although these three projects were the main ones that occupied Leonardo’s time, there was always the supervising of his pupils’ painting on the walls in the little chapel of the manor house, his own work on a painting of St. John the Baptist, and the continual ordering and revising of his notes.