As it is not my intention to write the political history of Michelangelo’s period, I need not digress here upon the invasion of Italy by Charles VIII., which caused the expulsion of the Medici from Florence, and the establishment of a liberal government under the leadership of Savonarola.  Michelangelo appears to have anticipated the catastrophe which was about to overwhelm his patron.  He was by nature timid, suspicious, and apt to foresee disaster.  Possibly he may have judged that the haughty citizens of Florence would not long put up with Piero’s aristocratical insolence.  But Condivi tells a story on the subject which is too curious to be omitted, and which he probably set down from Michelangelo’s own lips.  “In the palace of Piero a man called Cardiere was a frequent inmate.  The Magnificent took much pleasure in his society, because he improvised verses to the guitar with marvellous dexterity, and the Medici also practised this art; so that nearly every evening after supper there was music.  This Cardiere, being a friend of Michelangelo, confided to him a vision which pursued him, to the following effect.  Lorenzo de’ Medici appeared to him barely clad in one black tattered robe, and bade him relate to his son Piero that he would soon be expelled and never more return to his home.  Now Piero was arrogant and overbearing to such an extent that neither the good-nature of the Cardinal Giovanni, his brother, nor the courtesy and urbanity of Giuliano, was so strong to maintain him in Florence as his own faults to cause his expulsion.  Michelangelo encouraged the man to obey Lorenzo and report the matter to his son; but Cardiere, fearing his new master’s temper, kept it to himself.  On another morning, when Michelangelo was in the courtyard of the palace, Cardiere came with terror and pain written on his countenance.  Last night Lorenzo had again appeared to him in the same garb of woe; and while he was awake and gazing with his eyes, the spectre dealt him a blow on the cheek, to punish him for omitting to report his vision to Piero.  Michelangelo immediately gave him such a thorough scolding that Cardiere plucked up courage, and set forth on foot for Careggi, a Medicean villa some three miles distant from the city.  He had traveled about halfway, when he met Piero, who was riding home; so he stopped the cavalcade, and related all that he had seen and heard.  Piero laughed him to scorn, and, beckoning the running footmen, bade them mock the poor fellow.  His Chancellor, who was afterwards the Cardinal of Bibbiena, cried out:  ’You are a madman!  Which do you think Lorenzo loved best, his son or you?  If his son, would he not rather have appeared to him than to some one else?’ Having thus jeered him, they let him go; and he, when he returned home and complained to Michelangelo, so convinced the latter of the truth of his vision that Michelangelo after two days left Florence with a couple of comrades, dreading that if what Cardiere had predicted should come true, he would no longer be safe in Florence.”