Michelangelo set forth upon his journey soon after the receipt of this letter.  He was in Ferrara on the 9th of November, as appears from a despatch written by Galeotto Giugni, recommending him to the Government of Florence.  Letters patent under the seal of the Duke secured him free passage through the city of Modena and the province of Garfagnana.  In spite of these accommodations, he seems to have met with difficulties on the way, owing to the disturbed state of the country.  His friend Giovan Battista Palla was waiting for him at Lucca, without information of his movements, up to the 18th of the month.  He had left Florence on the 11th, and spent the week at Pisa and Lucca, expecting news in vain.  Then, “with one foot in the stirrup,” as he says, “the license granted by the Signory” having expired, he sends another missive to Venice, urging Michelangelo not to delay a day longer.  “As I cannot persuade myself that you do not intend to come, I urgently request you to reflect, if you have not already started, that the property of those who incurred outlawry with you is being sold, and if you do not arrive within the term conceded by your safe-conduct—­that is, during this month—­the same will happen to yourself without the possibility of any mitigation.  If you do come, as I still hope and firmly believe, speak with my honoured friend Messer Filippo Calandrini here, to whom I have given directions for your attendance from this town without trouble to yourself.  God keep you safe from harm, and grant we see you shortly in our country, by His aid, victorious.”

With this letter, Palla, who was certainly a good friend to the wayward artist, and an amiable man to boot, disappears out of this history.  At some time about the 20th of November, Michelangelo returned to Florence.  We do not know how he finished the journey, and how he was received; but the sentence of outlawry was commuted, on the 23rd, into exclusion from the Grand Council for three years.  He set to work immediately at S. Miniato, strengthening the bastions, and turning the church-tower into a station for sharpshooters.  Florence by this time had lost all her territory except a few strong places, Pisa, Livorno, Arezzo, Empoli, Volterra.  The Emperor Charles V. signed her liberties away to Clement by the peace of Barcelona (June 20,1529), and the Republic was now destined to be the appanage of his illegitimate daughter in marriage with the bastard Alessandro de’ Medici.  It only remained for the army of the Prince of Orange to reduce the city.  When Michelangelo arrived, the Imperial troops were leaguered on the heights above the town.  The inevitable end of the unequal struggle could be plainly foreseen by those who had not Palla’s enthusiasm to sustain their faith.  In spite of Ferrucci’s genius and spirit, in spite of the good-will of the citizens, Florence was bound to fall.  While admitting that Michelangelo abandoned his post in a moment of panic, we must do him the justice of