nces to Louis XII., who accepted his offers of
service and advised the Venetians to make peace with him.

In his extremity Lodovico turned to his sole remaining ally, the Emperor
Maximilian, and sent Erasmo Brasca and Marchesino Stanga to Fribourg, to
beg that a German force might be speedily sent to his assistance, while
he earnestly entreated his niece the empress to plead his cause with her
husband. Unfortunately, Bianca had little or no influence at the
imperial court, and Maximilian, who would gladly have helped the duke,
was hampered by want of money and already engaged in war with his
turbulent Swiss neighbours. But Bianca did her best for her uncle, and
in these last days her letters were his chief consolation. She sent him
the latest and most confidential news, and wrote repeatedly from
Fribourg and Innsbruck, encouraging him with hopes of speedy help, and
reminding him how triumphantly he had overcome greater dangers in the
past.

Even now, when his enemies were closing round him and the last struggle
was at hand, Lodovico still clung to his old ideals. The love of art was
still the ruling passion of his life, and Leonardo still for him the
prince of painters. On the 26th of April, he made the Florentine master
a present of a vineyard which he had bought from the monastery of S.
Victor outside the Porta Vercellina, probably adjoining a house and
piece of land which the painter had already received from him, near S.
Maria delle Grazie. During the last few years the duke, we know, had
found it increasingly difficult to provide money for his vast
enterprises, and from a rough draft of a letter that has been found
among Leonardo's manuscripts, we gather that the painter's salary was in
arrears, and that his equestrian statue had not yet been cast in bronze:

"Signore," he writes in these fragmentary sentences, "knowing the mind
of your Excellency to be fully occupied, I must ask pardon for reminding
you of my small affairs.... My life is at your service; I am always
ready to obey your commands. I will say nothing of the horse, because I
know the times; but, as your Highness is aware, two years' salary is
owing to me, and I have two masters working at my expense, so that I
have had to advance fifteen _lire_ out of my own purse to pay them.
Gladly as I would undertake immortal works and show posterity that I
have lived, I am obliged to earn my living.... May I remind your
Highness of the commission to paint the Ca