e of
race, we cannot blame the plain-liver and high-thinker, who, robbing
himself of luxuries and necessaries even, enabled his kinsmen to
maintain their rank among folk gently born and nobly nurtured.

III

In June 1515 Michelangelo was still working at the tomb of Julius. But
a letter to Buonarroto shows that he was already afraid of being
absorbed for other purposes by Leo: "I am forced to put great strain
upon myself this summer in order to complete my undertaking; for I
think that I shall soon be obliged to enter the Pope's service. For
this reason, I have bought some twenty migliaia [measure of weight] of
brass to cast certain figures." The monument then was so far advanced
that, beside having a good number of the marble statues nearly
finished, he was on the point of executing the bronze reliefs which
filled their interspaces. We have also reason to believe that the
architectural basis forming the foundation of the sepulchre had been
brought well forward, since it is mentioned, in the next ensuing
contracts.

Just at this point, however, when two or three years of steady labour
would have sufficed to terminate this mount of sculptured marble, Leo
diverted Michelangelo's energies from the work, and wasted them in
schemes that came to nothing. When Buonarroti penned that sonnet in
which he called the Pope his Medusa, he might well have been thinking
of Leo, though the poem ought probably to be referred to the earlier
pontificate of Julius. Certainly the Medici did more than the Delia
Rovere to paralyse his power and turn the life within him into stone.
Writing to Sebastiano del Piombo in 1521, Michelangelo shows how fully
he was aware of this. He speaks of "the three years I have lost."

A meeting had been arranged for the late autumn of 1515 between Leo X.
and Francis I. at Bologna. The Pope left Rome early in November, and
reached Florence on the 30th. The whole city burst into a tumult of
jubilation, shouting the Medicean cry of _"Palle"_ as Leo passed
slowly through the streets, raised in his pontifical chair upon the
shoulders of his running footmen. Buonarroto wrote a long and
interesting account of this triumphal entry to his brother in Rome. He
describes how a procession was formed by the Pope's court and guard
and the gentlemen of Florence. "Among the rest, there went a bevy of
young men, the noblest in our commonwealth, all dressed alike with
doublets of violet satin, holding gilded staves in their