io Vasari, of whom, as has been told, he was much the friend,
parted from him for the last time in Venice, Michele said to him: "I
would have you know, Messer Giorgio, that, when I was in my youth at
Monte Fiascone, I became enamoured, as fortune would have it, of the
wife of a stone-cutter, and received from her complaisance all that I
desired; but no one ever heard of it from me. Now, having heard that
the poor woman has been left a widow, with a daughter ready for a
husband, whom she says she conceived by me, I wish--although it may
well be that this is not true, and such is my belief--that you should
take to her these fifty crowns of gold and give them to her on my
part, for the love of God, to the end that she may use them for her
advantage and settle her daughter according to her station." Giorgio,
therefore, going to Rome, and arriving at Monte Fiascone, although the
good woman freely confessed to him that the girl was not the daughter
of Michele, insisted, in obedience to Michele's command, on paying her
the fifty crowns, which were as welcome to that poor woman as five
hundred would have been to another.

Michele, then, was courteous beyond the courtesy of any other man,
insomuch that he no sooner heard of the needs and desires of his
friends, than he sought to gratify them, even to the spending of his
life; nor did any person ever do him a service that was not repaid
many times over. Giorgio Vasari once made for him in Venice, with the
greatest diligence at his command, a large drawing in which the proud
Lucifer and his followers, vanquished by the Angel Michael, could be
seen raining headlong down from Heaven into the horrible depths of
Hell; and at that time Michele did not do anything but thank Giorgio
for it when he took leave of him. But not many days after, returning
to Arezzo, Giorgio found that San Michele had sent long before to his
mother, who lived at Arezzo, a quantity of presents beautiful and
honourable enough to be the gifts of a very rich nobleman, with a
letter in which he did her great honour for love of her son.

Many times the Signori of Venice offered to increase his salary, but
he refused, always praying that they should increase his kinsmen's
salaries instead of his own. In short, Michele was in his every action
so gentle, courteous, and loving, that he made himself rightly beloved
by innumerable lords; by Cardinal de' Medici, who became Pope Clement
VII, while he was in Rome; by Cardin