at
you, for your own interests, are too partial to the quarries of
Carrara, and want to depreciate those of Pietra Santa. This of a
truth, would be wrong in you, considering the trust we have always
reposed in your honesty. Wherefore we inform you that, regardless of
any other consideration, his Holiness wills that all the work to be
done at S. Peter's or S. Reparata, or on the facade of S. Lorenzo,
shall be carried out with marbles supplied from Pietra Santa, and no
others, for the reasons above written. Moreover, we hear that they
will cost less than those of Carrara; but, even should they cost more,
his Holiness is firmly resolved to act as I have said, furthering the
business of Pietra Santa for the public benefit of the city. Look to
it, then, that you carry out in detail all that we have ordered
without fail; for if you do otherwise, it will be against the
expressed wishes of his Holiness and ourselves, and we shall have good
reason to be seriously wroth with you. Our agent Domenico
(Buoninsegni) is bidden to write to the same effect. Reply to him how
much money you want, and quickly, banishing from your mind every kind
of obstinacy."

Michelangelo began to work with his usual energy at roadmaking and
quarrying. What he learned of practical business as engineer,
architect, master of works, and paymaster during these years among the
Carrara mountains must have been of vast importance for his future
work. He was preparing himself to organise the fortifications of
Florence and the Leonine City, and to crown S. Peter's with the
cupola. Quarrying, as I have said, implied cutting out and
rough-hewing blocks exactly of the right dimensions for certain
portions of a building or a piece of statuary. The master was
therefore obliged to have his whole plan perfect in his head before he
could venture to order marble. Models, drawings made to scale, careful
measurements, were necessary at each successive step. Day and night
Buonarroti was at work; in the saddle early in the morning, among
stone-cutters and road-makers; in the evening, studying, projecting,
calculating, settling up accounts by lamplight.

VI

The narrative of Michelangelo's personal life and movements must here
be interrupted in order to notice an event in which he took no common
interest. The members of the Florentine Academy addressed a memorial
to Leo X., requesting him to authorise the translation of Dante
Alighieri's bones from Ravenna to his native