these giants who groan and complain and on those two sombre,
pondering heroes. The superb imperfection of some of these colossal
figures, from which the sculptor has only torn aside with his chisel
part of the veil of marble that covers them, adds still more to the
impression of mysterious terror expressed by these classic divinities,
half released from chaos and soon to exhaust themselves in a vain
struggle against the forces of destruction. Action, resigned and
powerless, turns his head aside. At his feet Day in fierce contempt for
all things, shows for a moment over his shoulder, his face wrapped in
clouds. He turns his back on life and plunges into passionate isolation.
Night, overcome by leaden sleep and burning with fever, sinks into the
midst of a stifling nightmare, like a stone into a gulf.

Thought, self-divining, bends toward the tomb his austere face bathed in
shadow and considers the succession of his days. Dawn, so beautiful and
pure, wakened against her will, weary of living and exhausted, stirs in
mortal pain; Twilight, with bended brow, bitter and disabused, remembers
the past without regret. The dolorous and resigned Virgin looks on at
this threnody of negation while the child God, famished, gnaws her
breast in anger.[47]

It was in this outburst of despair that Michelangelo drowned his shame
at raising this monument of slavery.[48] He fell ill from
over-excitement and Clement VII attempted in vain to soothe him. He sent
affectionate messages to him by his secretary, Pier Paolo Marzo, urging
him not to overexert himself, to work reasonably and at his leisure, to
take a walk occasionally, and "not to reduce himself to the condition of
a drudge." In the autumn of 1534 his life was in danger. Giovanni
Battista di Paolo Mini wrote on September 29th to Valori, "Michelangelo
is worn and emaciated. I have spoken of it to Bugiardino and Antonio
Mini; we agreed that he had not long to live unless someone looks out
for him."

Clement VII was disturbed and on November 21, 1531, by a special letter
he forbade Michelangelo under pain of excommunication "to work in any
way whatever, except on the tomb of Julius II and the undertaking which
we have entrusted to you (ne aliquo modo laborare debeas nisi in
sepulture et opera nostra quam tibi comisimus) so that you may still
bring glory to Rome, your family and yourself."

He protected Michelangelo against the importunities of those who came to
beg for works of art,