bour and good faith, have been my ruin, and
I go continually from bad to worse. Better would it have been for me
if I had set myself to making matches in my youth! I should not be in
such distress of mind.... I will not remain under this burden, nor be
vilified every day for a swindler by those who have robbed my life and
honour. Only death or the Pope can extricate me." It appears that at
this time the Duke of Urbino's agents were accusing him of having lent
out moneys which he had received on account for the execution of the
monument. Then follows, in the same month of October, that stormy
letter to some prelate, which is one of the most weighty
autobiographical documents from the hand of Michelangelo in our
possession.

"Monsignore,--Your lordship sends to tell me that I must begin to
paint, and have no anxiety. I answer that one paints with the brain
and not with the hands; and he who has not his brains at his command
produces work that shames him. Therefore, until my business is
settled, I can do nothing good. The ratification of the last contract
does not come. On the strength of the other, made before Clement, I am
daily stoned as though I had crucified Christ.... My whole youth and
manhood have been lost, tied down to this tomb.... I see multitudes
with incomes of 2000 or 3000 crowns lying in bed, while I with all my
immense labour toil to grow poor.... I am not a thief and usurer, but
a citizen of Florence, noble, the son of an honest man, and do not
come from Cagli." (These and similar outbursts of indignant passion
scattered up and down the epistle, show to what extent the sculptor's
irritable nature had been exasperated by calumnious reports. As he
openly declares, he is being driven mad by pin-pricks. Then follows
the detailed history of his dealings with Julius, which, as I have
already made copious use of it, may here be given in outline.) "In the
first year of his pontificate, Julius commissioned me to make his
tomb, and I stayed eight months at Carrara quarrying marbles and
sending them to the Piazza of S. Peter's, where I had my lodgings
behind S. Caterina. Afterwards the Pope decided not to build his tomb
during his lifetime, and set me down to painting. Then he kept me two
years at Bologna casting his statue in bronze, which has been
destroyed. After that I returned to Rome and stayed with him until his
death, always keeping my house open without post or pension, living on
the money for the tomb, si