ence without my company, write a word, I beg. I will set out at
once, for I feel sure that I shall get permission.... God, by His
goodness, keep you in good health, and bring you back to us safe and
happy."

Michelangelo set forth upon his journey soon after the receipt of this
letter. He was in Ferrara on the 9th of November, as appears from a
despatch written by Galeotto Giugni, recommending him to the
Government of Florence. Letters patent under the seal of the Duke
secured him free passage through the city of Modena and the province
of Garfagnana. In spite of these accommodations, he seems to have met
with difficulties on the way, owing to the disturbed state of the
country. His friend Giovan Battista Palla was waiting for him at
Lucca, without information of his movements, up to the 18th of the
month. He had left Florence on the 11th, and spent the week at Pisa
and Lucca, expecting news in vain. Then, "with one foot in the
stirrup," as he says, "the license granted by the Signory" having
expired, he sends another missive to Venice, urging Michelangelo not
to delay a day longer. "As I cannot persuade myself that you do not
intend to come, I urgently request you to reflect, if you have not
already started, that the property of those who incurred outlawry with
you is being sold, and if you do not arrive within the term conceded
by your safe-conduct--that is, during this month--the same will happen
to yourself without the possibility of any mitigation. If you do come,
as I still hope and firmly believe, speak with my honoured friend
Messer Filippo Calandrini here, to whom I have given directions for
your attendance from this town without trouble to yourself. God keep
you safe from harm, and grant we see you shortly in our country, by
His aid, victorious."

With this letter, Palla, who was certainly a good friend to the
wayward artist, and an amiable man to boot, disappears out of this
history. At some time about the 20th of November, Michelangelo
returned to Florence. We do not know how he finished the journey, and
how he was received; but the sentence of outlawry was commuted, on the
23rd, into exclusion from the Grand Council for three years. He set to
work immediately at S. Miniato, strengthening the bastions, and
turning the church-tower into a station for sharpshooters. Florence by
this time had lost all her territory except a few strong places, Pisa,
Livorno, Arezzo, Empoli, Volterra. The Emperor Charles V. sig