At the end of a garden walk, fringed with a mossy grove
of limes that rises from the river bank, is the little doorway through
which Charles VIII. was passing when he hit his head, never a
very strong one, against the low stone arch, and died a few hours
afterward. The castle had been fortified before his time; he left it
beautiful as well, and the traces of his work are those which are most
striking at the present day....
Within the shadow of the lime trees on the terraced garden of Amboise
is a small bust of Leonardo da Vinci, for it was near here he died.
His remains are laid in the beautiful chapel at the corner of
the castle court, and the romantic story of his last moments at
Fontainebleau becomes the sad reality of a tombstone covering ashes
mostly unknown and certainly indistinguishable; "among which" as the
epitaph painfully records, "are supposed to be the remains of Leonardo
da Vinci." He had been brought to Paris a weak old man, by Francis,
in pursuance of a certain fixt artistic policy, to which it may be
noticed this forgotten and uncertain grave does but little credit.
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