y as if he had been his brother. In order that he might visit
him the more easily he had a drawbridge thrown across from the gallery
of the Vatican to Michelangelo's house which gave him a secret passage."

But this favour did not last. The character of Julius II was as
passionate and as changeable as that of Michelangelo. His mind, always
in a ferment, took up in rapid succession and ever with the same
eagerness the most varied projects. Another idea drove the plan for the
tomb from his mind. In order that he might gain immortal glory by one
gigantic work he decided to reconstruct St. Peter's. He was encouraged
in this by enemies of Michelangelo, who himself writes in 1542:[23]

"All the difficulties which arose between the pope and myself were the
work of Bramante and of Raphael. It was their jealousy that kept him
from having his tomb made while he was still alive. They tried to ruin
me. Raphael had good reason for doing this, since all that he knew of
art he learnt from me."

It is not easy to say how far Raphael was carried along by the party of
Bramante, who was his friend and fellow-countryman, but there is no
doubt that Bramante was chiefly responsible for the check to
Michelangelo's great undertaking and that he profited by his absence in
Carrara to destroy his influence over the pope.

"The marks of his favour which Julius II had showered on Michelangelo,"
says Condivi, "resulted, as often happens at courts, in exciting
jealousy against him, and, following the jealousy, endless persecution.
Bramante, the architect, who was dear to the pope, made him change his
plans. He reminded him of the popular superstition that it was of bad
augury to build your tomb while you were still alive, and other stories
of the same kind. Bramante was driven to do this, not only through
jealousy, but from fear that Michelangelo's knowledge would reveal his
own mistakes. For Bramante, as everyone knows, was much given to
pleasure and very dissipated. The salary he received from the pope,
though it was great, was not nearly enough for him, so that he tried to
make more out of his work by constructing walls of bad material and
neither solid nor strong enough for their height and thrust. Anyone can
prove this by the construction of St. Peter's, or the Belvedere gallery,
or the cloister of S. Pietro in Vinculi and other buildings which he
erected and which it has been necessary to support all over again and to
strengthen with buttres