py me more than does my art; I cannot
keep a man to manage my house through lack of means."

Michelangelo's dejection caused serious anxiety to his friends. Jacopo
Salviati, writing on the 30th October from Rome, endeavoured to
restore his courage. "I am greatly distressed to hear of the fancies
you have got into your head. What hurts me most is that they should
prevent your working, for that rejoices your ill-wishers, and confirms
them in what they have always gone on preaching about your habits." He
proceeds to tell him how absurd it is to suppose that Baccio
Bandinelli is preferred before him. "I cannot perceive how Baccio
could in any way whatever be compared to you, or his work be set on
the same level as your own." The letter winds up with exhortations to
work. "Brush these cobwebs of melancholy away; have confidence in his
Holiness; do not give occasion to your enemies to blaspheme, and be
sure that your pension will be paid; I pledge my word for it."
Buonarroti, it is clear, wasted his time, not through indolence, but
through allowing the gloom of a suspicious and downcast
temperament--what the Italians call _accidia_--to settle on his
spirits.

Skipping a year, we find that these troublesome negotiations about the
tomb were still pending. He still hung suspended between the devil and
the deep sea, the importunate Duke of Urbino and the vacillating Pope.
Spina, it seems, had been writing with too much heat to Rome, probably
urging Clement to bring the difficulties about the tomb to a
conclusion. Michelangelo takes the correspondence up again with
Fattucci on November 6, 1526. What he says at the beginning of the
letter is significant. He knows that the political difficulties in
which Clement had become involved were sufficient to distract his
mind, as Julius once said, from any interest in "stones small or big."
Well, the letter starts thus: "I know that Spina wrote in these days
past to Rome very hotly about my affairs with regard to the tomb of
Julius. If he blundered, seeing the times in which we live, I am to
blame, for I prayed him urgently to write. It is possible that the
trouble of my soul made me say more than I ought. Information reached
me lately about the affair which alarmed me greatly. It seems that the
relatives of Julius are very ill-disposed towards me. And not without
reason.--The suit is going on, and they are demanding capital and
interest to such an amount that a hundred of my sort could n