: "You have
been very hasty in sending me information regarding the estates of the
Corboli. I did not think you were yet in Florence. Are you afraid lest
I should change my mind, as some one may perhaps have put it into your
head? I tell you that I want to go slowly in this affair, because the
money I must pay has been gained here with toil and trouble
unintelligible to one who was born clothed and shod as you were. About
your coming post-haste to Rome, I do not know that you came in such a
hurry when I was a pauper and lacked bread. Enough for you to throw
away the money that you did not earn. The fear of losing what you
might inherit on my death impelled you. You say it was your duty to
come, by reason of the love you bear me. The love of a woodworm! If
you really loved me, you would have written now: 'Michelangelo, spend
those 3000 ducats there upon yourself, for you have given us enough
already: your life is dearer to us than your money.' You have all of
you lived forty years upon me, and I have never had from you so much
as one good word. 'Tis true that last year I scolded and rebuked you
so that for very shame you sent me a load of trebbiano. I almost wish
you hadn't! I do not write this because I am unwilling to buy. Indeed
I have a mind to do so, in order to obtain an income for myself, now
that I cannot work more. But I want to buy at leisure, so as not to
purchase some annoyance. Therefore do not hurry."

Lionardo was careless about his handwriting, and this annoyed the old
man terribly.

"Do not write to me again. Each time I get one of your letters, a
fever takes me with the trouble I have in reading it. I do not know
where you learned to write. I think that if you were writing to the
greatest donkey in the world you would do it with more care. Therefore
do not add to the annoyances I have, for I have already quite enough
of them."

He returns to the subject over and over again, and once declares that
he has flung a letter of Lionardo's into the fire unread, and so is
incapable of answering it. This did not prevent a brisk interchange of
friendly communications between the uncle and nephew.

Lionardo was now living in the Buonarroti house in Via Ghibellina.
Michelangelo thought it advisable that he should remove into a more
commodious mansion, and one not subject to inundations of the
basement. He desired, however, not to go beyond the quarter of S.
Croce, where the family had been for centuries establi