Ser Piero took it, and departed without a word to his son; he really felt quite shaken from the shock he had had, and he determined that so wonderful a painting should never fall into the hands of a peasant. So he went to a shop where he found a shield the same size as the other, bearing the device of a heart pierced by an arrow, and when next he went into the country he bade the farmer come up to the house to receive it. 'Oh Excellency! how beautiful! how can I ever thank you for your goodness?' cried the man in delight when, after his long waiting, the shield was at last delivered to him. 'I thought you would be pleased,' answered Ser Piero, smiling to himself as he pictured what would have been the face of the man before him, had he been given Leonardo's monster. But this he kept for some time and then sold to a merchant for a hundred ducats, who in his turn parted with it to the Duke of Milan for three times the price. In this way Leonardo da Vinci grew to manhood, gaining friends as he went by his beauty and his talents, and keeping them by his sweetness of temper and his generosity. He loved all animals, especially horses, and could never see a caged bird without trying to buy it, in order to set it free. The kings and popes of those days were always eager to attract artists to their courts, and vied with each other in trying to outbid rivals, and when he was very young Leonardo received a commission from the King of Portugal to draw a design for some hangings to be copied in silk in Flanders. He painted an immense number of portraits, some to please himself and others ordered by his friends, and decorated, either with painting or sculpture, a great many churches and other buildings. Two of his pictures, at any rate, you may perhaps know from engravings of them--the portrait of Francesco del Giocondo's wife, bought by Francis the First and lately stolen from the Louvre, and the Last Supper, painted for the Dominican monks in Milan, and now almost ruined by the damp. Leonardo was forty-one when he was invited to go to Milan by the celebrated Lodovico Sforza, uncle to the reigning duke. Knowing that Lodovico--il Moro, as he was called--had a passion for music, the painter constructed with his own hands a silver instrument, shaped like a horse's head, to which he sang tunes invented by himself, to words made up as he went along. This delighted Lodovico and also his wife, the young daughter of the Duke of Ferrara, who had been brought up amongst musicians and poets. Those were gay days at Milan, when all did their best to produce some form of beauty and everybody's 'best' was so very good. But dark days were soon to follow, and in a great measure they were the work of Lodovico himself.