he foot of His
Holiness, besought him that he should deign to make use of him in the
buildings which were to be erected, so men said, at the Monte, a place
which the Lord Duke of Florence had given in fief to the Pontiff. The
Pope, then, having received him warmly, ordained that the means to live
in Rome should be given to him without exacting any sort of exertion
from him; and in this manner Niccolo spent several months in Rome,
drawing many antiquities to pass the time.

Meanwhile the Pope resolved to increase his native town of Monte
Sansovino, and to make there, besides many ornamental works, an
aqueduct, because that place suffered much from want of water; and
Giorgio Vasari, who had orders from the Pope to cause those buildings to
be begun, recommended Niccolo Soggi strongly to His Holiness, entreating
him that Niccolo should be given the office of superintendent over those
works. Whereupon Niccolo went to Arezzo filled with these hopes, but he
had not been there many days when, worn out by the fatigues and
hardships of this world and by the knowledge that he had been abandoned
by him who should have been the last to forsake him, he finished the
course of his life and was buried in S. Domenico in that city.

Not long afterwards Domenico Giuntalodi, Don Ferrante Gonzaga having
died, departed from Milan with the intention of returning to Prato and
of passing the rest of his life there in repose. However, finding there
neither relatives nor friends, and recognizing that Prato was no abiding
place for him, he repented too late that he had behaved ungratefully to
Niccolo, and returned to Lombardy to serve the sons of Don Ferrante. But
no long time passed before he fell sick unto death; whereupon he made a
will leaving ten thousand crowns to his fellow-citizens of Prato, to the
end that they might buy property to that amount and form a fund
wherewith to maintain continually at their studies a certain number of
students from Prato, in the manner in which they maintained certain
others, as they still do, according to the terms of another bequest. And
this has been carried out by the men of that town of Prato, who,
grateful for such a benefit, which in truth has been a very great one
and worthy of eternal remembrance, have placed in their Council Chamber
the image of Domenico, as that of one who has deserved well of his
country.

FOOTNOTE:

[32] See p. 208, Vol. III.

[33] These words are missing in the text.