tionary intrigues. Luckily
for himself and his nephew, he could make out a good case and defend
his conduct. Though Buonarroti's sympathies and sentiments inclined
him to prefer a republic in his native city, and though he threw his
weight into that scale at the crisis of the siege, he did not forget
his early obligations to the House of Medici. Clement VII. accepted
his allegiance when the siege was over, and set him immediately to
work at the tasks he wished him to perform. What is more, the Pope
took pains and trouble to settle the differences between him and the
Duke of Urbino. The man had been no conspirator. The architect and
sculptor was coveted by every pope and prince in Italy. Still there
remained a discord between his political instincts, however prudently
and privately indulged, and his sense of personal loyalty to the
family at whose board he sat in youth, and to whom he owed his
advancement in life. Accordingly, we shall find that, though the Duke
of Tuscany made advances to win him back to Florence, Michelangelo
always preferred to live and die on neutral ground in Rome. Like the
wise man that he was, he seems to have felt through these troublous
times that his own duty, the service laid on him by God and nature,
was to keep his force and mental faculties for art; obliging old
patrons in all kindly offices, suppressing republican aspirations--in
one word, "sticking to his last," and steering clear of shoals on
which the main raft of his life might founder.

From this digression, which was needful to explain his attitude toward
Florence and part of his psychology, I return to the incidents of
Michelangelo's illness at Rome in 1544. Lionardo, having news of his
uncle's danger, came post-haste to Rome. This was his simple duty, as
a loving relative. But the old man, rendered suspicious by previous
transactions with his family, did not take the action in its proper
light. We have a letter, indorsed by Lionardo in Rome as received upon
the 11th of July, to this effect: "Lionardo, I have been ill; and you,
at the instance of Ser Giovan Francesco (probably Fattucci), have come
to make me dead, and to see what I have left. Is there not enough of
mine at Florence to content you? You cannot deny that you are the
image of your father, who turned me out of my own house in Florence.
Know that I have made a will of such tenor that you need not trouble
your head about what I possess at Rome. Go then with God, and do not