forego his own profit that the boy might have the best possible
advantages. And I never think of Ghirlandajo without mentally lifting my
hat.

At the Academy, Michelangelo ceased to paint and draw, and devoted all
his energies to modeling in clay. So intent was his application that in a
few weeks he had mastered technicalities that took others years to
comprehend.

One day the father came and found the boy in a blouse at work with mallet
and chisel on a block of marble. "And is it a stone-mason you want to
make of my heir and firstborn?" asked the fond father.

It was explained that there were stone-masons and stone-masons. A
stone-mason of transcendent skill is a sculptor, just as a painter who
can produce a beautiful picture is an artist.

Simone Buonarroti acknowledged he had never looked at it just in that
way, but still he would not allow his son to remain at the trade
unless--unless he himself had an office under the government.

Lorenzo gave him the desired office, and took the young stone-mason as
one of the Medici family, and there the boy lived in the Palace, and
Lorenzo acted toward him as though he were his son.

The favor with which he was treated excited the envy of some of the
other pupils, and thus it was that in sudden wrath Torrigiano struck him
that murderous blow with the mallet. Torrigiano paid for his fierce
temper, not only by expulsion from the Academy, but by banishment from
Florence.

Michelangelo was the brightest of the hundred young men who worked and
studied at the Medici palace.

But when this head scholar was eighteen Lorenzo died. The son of Lorenzo
continued his father's work in a feeble way, for Piero de Medici was a
good example of the fact that great men seldom reproduce themselves after
the flesh. Piero had about as much comprehension of the beautiful as the
elder Buonarroti. He thought that all these young men who were being
educated at the Academy would eventually be valuable adjuncts to the
State, and as such it was a good scheme to give each a trade--besides, it
kept them off the street; and then the work was amusing, a diversion to
the nobility when time hung heavy.

Once there came a heavy snowstorm, and snow being an unusual thing in
Florence, Piero called a lot of his friends together in the gardens, and
summoning Michelangelo, ordered him to make a snow image for the
amusement of the guests, just as Piero at other times had a dog jump
through a hoop.

"What s