nd omens. One of his friends dreamed
twice that Lorenzo, then lately dead, appeared to him in grey and dusty
apparel. To Michelangelo this dream seemed to portend the troubles which
afterwards really came, and with the suddenness which was characteristic
of all his movements, he left Florence. Having occasion to pass through
Bologna, he neglected to procure the little seal of red wax which the
stranger entering Bologna must carry on the thumb of his right hand. He
had no money to pay the fine, and would have been thrown into prison had
not one of the magistrates interposed. He remained in this man's house a
whole year, rewarding his hospitality by readings from the Italian poets
whom he loved. Bologna, with its endless colonnades and fantastic
leaning towers, can never have been one of the lovelier cities of Italy.
But about the portals of its vast unfinished churches and its dark
shrines, half hidden by votive flowers and candles, lie some of the
sweetest works of the early Tuscan sculptors, Giovanni da Pisa and
Jacopo della Quercia, things as winsome as flowers; and the year which
Michelangelo spent in copying these works was not a lost year. It was
now, on returning to Florence, that he put forth that unique presentment
of Bacchus, which expresses, not the mirthfulness of the god of wine,
but his sleepy seriousness, his enthusiasm, his capacity for profound
dreaming. No one ever expressed more truly than Michelangelo the notion
of inspired sleep, of faces charged with dreams. A vast fragment of
marble had long lain below the Loggia of Orcagna, and many a sculptor
had had his thoughts of a design which should just fill this famous
block of stone, cutting the diamond, as it were, without loss. Under
Michelangelo's hand it became the David which stood till lately on the
steps of the Palazzo Vecchio, when it was replaced below the Loggia.
Michelangelo was now thirty years old, and his reputation was
established. Three great works fill the remainder of his life--three
works often interrupted, carried on through a thousand hesitations, a
thousand disappointments, quarrels with his patrons, quarrels with his
family, quarrels perhaps most of all with himself--the Sistine Chapel,
the Mausoleum of Julius the Second, and the Sacristy of San Lorenzo.

In the story of Michelangelo's life the strength, often turning to
bitterness, is not far to seek; a discordant note sounds throughout it
which almost spoils the music. He "treats t