ictor with their smiles. Everywhere tall white
lilies were seen blossoming in the streets that led to the Duomo--Notre
Dame du Dome, as the monkish chronicler calls the glorious pile of
dazzling marbles that rose into the summer air. Here the procession
paused, and the king walked up the vaulted aisles to pay his devotions
at the Madonna's shrine. Then he rode on again, to the sound of trumpets
and horns, and the royal guard of Gascon archers led the way up the
well-known street, with the frescoed palaces and goldsmiths and
armourers' shops, to the gates of the famous Castello, where the victor
entered and took up his abode in this proud citadel of the Sforzas, the
core and centre of the Milanese.

In the eyes of the French strangers it was all very marvellous--the
beautiful city with its stately palaces and hospitals, and the fair
churches with their Gothic spires and pinnacles, their slender creamy
shafts and deep red terra-cotta mouldings; the Milanese ladies with
their jewelled robes and mantles embroidered with cunningly wrought
devices, the flowering lilies and the garlands of laurel and myrtle--all
seen under the radiant sunshine and the deep blue of the Italian skies.
But what excited their admiration and wonder more than all was the
Castello.

"A thing," writes one of them, "truly marvellous and inestimable, with
so many large and beautiful rooms that I lost all reckoning. Without are
broad lakes, fair running streams, and bridges. There is a fine large
square on the side of the town, and on the other are beautiful meadows
and woods and the chateau, where the Moro had his stables, painted with
frescoes of different-coloured horses."

King Louis wondered most of all at the strength and completeness of the
bastions and excellence of the artillery, exclaiming that never before
had he seen so strong and splendid a citadel! And he and all the
Frenchmen greatly blamed that second Judas, who had betrayed his master
and delivered it up without a blow.

The next morning, his Majesty attended mass at S. Ambrogio, accompanied
by the Dukes of Ferrara and Savoy, the Marquis of Mantua, Caesar Borgia,
and all the cardinals and ambassadors, and afterwards visited the church
and convent of S. Maria delle Grazie. Here he gazed with admiration on
the Cenacolo of Leonardo, that master of whose genius he had heard so
much, and expressed his ardent wish to transfer the famous wall-painting
to France, a sentiment which can hardly