the record, and be the finest thing done in painting since the ancients.  Then he asked if I had read your letter.  I said, No.  He laughed loudly, as though at a good joke, and I quitted him with compliments.  Bandinelli, who is copying the Laocoon, tells me that the Cardinal showed him your letter, and also showed it to the Pope; in fact, nothing is talked about at the Vatican except your letter, and it makes everybody laugh.”  He adds that he does not think the hall ought to be committed to young men.  Having discovered what sort of things they meant to paint there, battle-pieces and vast compositions, he judges the scheme beyond their scope.  Michelangelo alone is equal to the task.  Meanwhile, Leo, wishing to compromise matters, offered Sebastiano the great hall in the lower apartments of the Borgias, where Alexander VI. used to live, and where Pinturicchio painted—­rooms shut up in pious horror by Julius when he came to occupy the palace of his hated and abominable predecessor.  Sebastiano’s reliance upon Michelangelo, and his calculation that the way to get possession of the coveted commission would depend on the latter’s consenting to supply him with designs, emerge in the following passage:  “The Cardinal told me that he was ordered by the Pope to offer me the lower hall.  I replied that I could accept nothing without your permission, or until your answer came, which is not to hand at the date of writing.  I added that, unless I were engaged to Michelangelo, even if the Pope commanded me to paint that hall, I would not do so, because I do not think myself inferior to Raffaello’s ’prentices, especially after the Pope, with his own mouth, had offered me half of the upper hall; and anyhow, I do not regard it as creditable to myself to paint the cellars, and they to have the gilded chambers.  I said they had better be allowed to go on painting.  He answered that the Pope had only done this to avoid rivalries.  The men possessed designs ready for that hall, and I ought to remember that the lower one was also a hall of the Pontiffs.  My reply was that I would have nothing to do with it; so that now they are laughing at me, and I am so worried that I am well-nigh mad.”  Later on he adds:  “It has been my object, through you and your authority, to execute vengeance for myself and you too, letting malignant fellows know that there are other demigods alive beside Raffael da Urbino and his ’prentices.”  The vacillation of Leo in this business, and his desire to make things pleasant, are characteristic of the man, who acted just in the same way while negotiating with princes.

IX