model of a great equestrian statue, a bronze horse with the figure of
the Duke upon its back.

'Year after year Leonardo worked at that wonderful fresco of the Last
Supper. Sometimes for weeks or months he never touched it, but he
always returned to it again. Then for days he would work from morning
till night, scarcely taking time to eat, and able to think of nothing
else, until suddenly he would put down his brushes and stand silently
for a long, long time before the picture. It seemed as if he was
wasting the precious hours doing nothing, but in truth he worked more
diligently with his brain when his hands were idle.

Often too when he worked at the model for the great bronze horse, he
would suddenly stop, and walk quickly through the streets until he came
to the refectory, and there, catching up his brushes, he would paint in
one or perhaps two strokes, and then return to his modelling.

Besides all this Leonardo was busy with other plans for the Duke's
amusement, and no court fete was counted successful without his help.
Nothing seemed too difficult for him to contrive, and what he did was
always new and strange and wonderful.

Once when the King of France came as a guest to Milan, Leonardo
prepared a curious model of a lion, which by some inside machinery was
able to walk forward several steps to meet the King, and then open wide
its huge jaws and display inside a bed of sweet-scented lilies, the
emblem of France, to do honour to her King. But while working at other
things Leonardo never forgot his longing to learn the secret art of
flying. Every now and then a new idea would come into his head, and he
would lay aside all other work until he had made the new machine which
might perhaps act as the wings of a bird. Each fresh disappointment
only made him more keen to try again.

'I know we shall some day have wings,' he said to his pupils, who
sometimes wondered at the strange work of the master's hands. 'It is
only a question of knowing how to make them. I remember once when I was
a baby lying in my cradle, I fancied a bird flew to me, opened my lips
and rubbed its feathers over them. So it seems to be my fate all my
life to talk of wings.'

Very slowly the great fresco of the Last Supper grew under the master's
hand until it was nearly finished. The statue, too, was almost
completed, and then evil days fell upon Milan. The Duke was obliged to
flee before the French soldiers, who forced their way into the tow