to him:  ’O Rinaldo, I dreamed to-night that Lorenzo Zampalochi had been made Gonfalonier;’ alluding to Lorenzo Giacomini, who had a swollen leg, and had been his adversary in the Ten.  Well, they took the road for Venice; but when they came to Polesella, Rinaldo proposed to push on to Ferrara and have an interview with Galeotto Giugni.  This he did, and Michelangelo awaited him, for so he promised.  Messer Galeotto, who was spirited and sound of heart, wrought so with Rinaldo that he persuaded him to turn back to Florence.  But Michelangelo pursued his journey to Venice, where he took a house, intending in due season to travel into France.”

Varchi follows this report pretty closely, except that he represents Rinaldo Corsini as having strongly urged him to take flight, “affirming that the city in a few hours, not to say days, would be in the hands of the Medici.”  Varchi adds that Antonio Mini rode in company with Michelangelo, and, according to his account of the matter, the three men came together to Ferrara.  There the Duke offered hospitality to Michelangelo, who refused to exchange his inn for the palace, but laid all the cash he carried with him at the disposition of his Excellency.

Segni, alluding briefly to this flight of Michelangelo from Florence, says that he arrived at Castelnuovo with Rinaldo Corsini, and that what they communicated to Niccolo Capponi concerning the treachery of Malatesta and the state of the city, so affected the ex-Gonfalonier that he died of a fever after seven days.  Nardi, an excellent authority on all that concerns Florence during the siege, confirms the account that Michelangelo left his post together with Corsini under a panic; “by common agreement, or through fear of war, as man’s fragility is often wont to do.”  Vasari, who in his account of this episode seems to have had Varchi’s narrative under his eyes, adds a trifle of information, to the effect that Michelangelo was accompanied upon his flight, not only by Antonio Mini, but also by his old friend Piloto.  It may be worth adding that while reading in the Archivio Buonarroti, I discovered two letters from a friend named Piero Paesano addressed to Michelangelo on January 1, 1530, and April 21, 1532, both of which speak of his having “fled from Florence.”  The earlier plainly says:  “I heard from Santi Quattro (the Cardinal, probably) that you have left Florence in order to escape from the annoyance and also from the evil fortune of the war in which the country is engaged.”  These letters, which have not been edited, and the first of which is important, since it was sent to Michelangelo in Florence, help to prove that Michelangelo’s friends believed he had run away from Florence.

It was necessary to enter into these particulars, partly in order that the reader may form his own judgment of the motives which prompted Michelangelo to desert his official post at Florence, and partly because we have now to consider the Ricordo above mentioned, with the puzzling date, September 10.  This document is a note of expenses incurred during a residence of fourteen days at Venice.  It runs as follows:—­