The Romance of Leonardo Da Vinci

While waiting till his consort should have returned from the chase, the duke took a walk through his domain. He inspected the stables, built like a Greek temple, with columns, porticos, and doubly-lighted windows; the splendid dairy, where he tasted junkets and new-made cheese; then, passing numberless hay-barns and sheds, came to the farm and the cattle-yards. Here every detail rejoiced his heart; the sound of the milk falling from the udders of his favourite Languedoc cow; the newly-littered sow's motherly gruntings; the smell of honey from the swarming hives. A smile of satisfaction illumined his dark face; truly his home was like a filled goblet! He returned to the house and waited under the gallery. It was towards evening, but not yet the hour of sunset; from the water-meadows of the Ticino came the pungent freshness of the grass.

The duke cast his eyes slowly over his estate; pastures, meadows, fields watered by a network of ditches, planted with long rows of apple, and pear, and mulberry trees, trellised with the hanging garlands of the vines. From Mortara to Abbiategrasso and further to the very horizon, where in the creeping twilight the snows of Monte Rosa gleamed with unearthly radiance, the boundless plain of Lombardy flowered like the Paradise of God.