your service; and what is better, the Pope comes every day to visit us.  If you decide on the Belvedere, you must let me know the day of your departure, and about when you will arrive.  In that case I will take up my post at the spiral staircase of Bramante, where you will be able to see me.  If you wish, nobody but my brother and Mona Lisabetta and I shall know that you are here, and you shall do just as you please; and, in short, I beg you earnestly to choose this plan.  Otherwise, come to the Borgo Nuovo, to the houses which Volterra built, the fifth house toward S. Angelo.  I have rented it to live there, and my brother Fruosino is also going to live and keep shop in it.  There you will have a room or two, if you like, at your disposal.  Please yourself, and give the letter to Tommaso di Stefano Miniatore, who will address it to Messer Lorenzo de’ Medici, and I shall have it quickly.”

Nothing came of these proposals.  But that Michelangelo did not abandon the idea of going to Rome appears from a letter of Sebastiano’s written on the 24th of February.  It was the first which passed between the friends since the terrible events of 1527 and 1530.  For once, the jollity of the epicurean friar has deserted him.  He writes as though those awful months of the sack of Rome were still present to his memory.  “After all those trials, hardships, and perils, God Almighty has left us alive and in health, by His mercy and piteous kindness.  A thing, in sooth, miraculous, when I reflect upon it; wherefore His Majesty be ever held in gratitude....  Now, gossip mine, since we have passed through fire and water, and have experienced things we never dreamed of, let us thank God for all; and the little remnant left to us of life, may we at least employ it in such peace as can be had.  For of a truth, what fortune does or does not do is of slight importance, seeing how scurvy and how dolorous she is.  I am brought to this, that if the universe should crumble round me, I should not care, but laugh at all.  Menighella will inform you what my life is, how I am.  I do not yet seem to myself to be the same Bastiano I was before the Sack.  I cannot yet get back into my former frame of mind.”  In a postscript to this letter, eloquent by its very naivete, Sebastiano says that he sees no reason for Michelangelo’s coming to Rome, except it be to look after his house, which is going to ruin, and the workshop tumbling to pieces.  In another letter, of April 29, Sebastiano repeats that there is no need for Michelangelo to come to Rome, if it be only to put himself right with the Pope.  Clement is sincerely his friend, and has forgiven the part he played during the siege of Florence.  He then informs his gossip that, having been lately at Pesaro, he met the painter Girolamo Genga, who promised to be serviceable in the matter of the tomb of Julius.  The Duke of Urbino, according to this man’s account, was very eager to see it finished.  “I replied that the work was going forward, but that 8000 ducats were needed for