of Arezzo and Livorno. In July and August he was sent to
Ferrara to examine the celebrated defensive works there and to consult
with the Duke, a great expert in fortifications. The Duke received him
with great honour and took him over the fortifications himself, showed
him his art collection and asked him for one of his works.[45] But
Michelangelo suspected Capponi and the party of the Medici of taking
advantage of his absence to delay the fortification of the town and his
suspicions were confirmed by the neglected condition in which he found
the work on his return. To block these intrigues he installed himself at
San Miniato and would not stir from there again. His restless spirit
felt the least breath of the rumours of treason which, as always,
circulated in a besieged town and which unhappily, as the future showed,
were only too well founded.

Capponi, under suspicion, had been replaced as Gonfalonier by Francesco
Carducci, but the untrustworthy Malatesta Baglioni, who later on was to
give up the town, was named _Condottiere_ and governor-general of the
Florentine troops. Michelangelo foresaw his treason and confided his
suspicions to Carducci. Malatesta did not fail to hear of this
denunciation. He was all-powerful at Florence as Generalissimo, and
since a man of his type would stop at nothing when it was a question of
revenge or of the removal of a dangerous adversary, Michelangelo
believed himself lost. "I had resolved, however, to await without fear
the end of the war," he writes on September 25, 1529, to Battista della
Palla. "But on Tuesday morning the twenty-first of September a certain
man came to me outside of the Porta San Niccolo, where I was on the
bastions, and whispered in my ear that if I wished to save my life I
must not stay any longer in Florence. He went with me to my house,
brought me some horses, and did not leave me again until he had put me
outside of Florence."

Varchi, filling in the details, gives the name of the Councellor Rinaldo
Corsini[46] and adds that Michelangelo had sewed twelve thousand golden
florins into three quilted shirts, and that it was not without
difficulty that he escaped from Florence with Rinaldo and his pupil
Antonio Mini by the gate of Justice, which was the least guarded. That
was on the morning of September 21st. He went through Ferrara without
stopping there and arrived at Venice on September 25th. The Signory at
once sent two gentlemen to do anything for him which