Yet when Leonardo returned from this “tour” he realized that he could no longer make such trips. The hardships of sleeping in tents, riding over the hot roads, and the necessary work involved in surveying the possible sites for a bridge had left him almost exhausted. He had made one suggestion, however, and that was to build houses that could be carried and then assembled with a few wooden locking devices, then just as quickly taken down and moved to the next place. They could also be left standing where the country people could use them while the court was away. Indeed, such structures would seem to be the ancestors of our own prefabricated houses. The winter of 1519 was a bitter one. When the cold fog spread over the valley shrouding the bare trees it chilled the big, white-washed rooms of Cloux. The wind blew down from the north sending blasts down the chimneys and scattering ashes and sparks. Leonardo, huddled against the huge fireplace with its roof projecting into the room, pulled his black cloak lined in soft leather around him and reminded himself to include it in his will for Mathurine, the faithful domestic who cooked for him and took care of his house. The aged Leonardo, who had observed and analyzed so much of man and nature, knew now that his own days were numbered. When the first, pale sunlight of March shone through the small leaded-glass windows of his house, he applied to the king for permission to make out his own will. French law demanded that the property of any foreigner dying in France went to the Crown. The permission was granted, and on April 23, 1519, Guillaume Boureau, the Royal Notary of Amboise was summoned with witnesses. To his half-brothers in Florence Leonardo left his property at Fiesole and four hundred ducats. To his faithful friend and companion, Francesco de’ Melzi, nobleman of Milan, Leonardo willed his notes, drawings, and paintings. Battista was given the income that Louis XII had granted Leonardo from the tolls of the canal at San Cristoforo near Milan. Mathurine was granted the “good black cloth, trimmed with leather” and two ducats. Moreover, Leonardo outlined in detail the plans for his own funeral, right down to the use of ten pounds of candles. Too weak now to stand any more, Leonardo was confined to his big four-poster bed with the canopy. From it he could see the tracery of the Chapel of Saint-Hubert against the pale, foreign sky through the little window in the corner. The vicar of the church of Saint-Denis was called, with two priests and two Franciscan friars, and Leonardo received the last sacraments at his bedside. An entry in his notes reads, “While I thought I was learning to live, I have been learning how to die.” But death was not easy for him. With tears rolling down his sunken cheeks for “his wasted life,” he died on May 2, 1519—fighting even this final interruption to all his work.