Probably Michelangelo meant that he should have liked to call Cavalieri his friend, since he had already given him friendship.  The next letter, July 28, 1533, begins thus:—­“My dear Lord,—­Had I not believed that I had made you certain of the very great, nay, measureless love I bear you, it would not have seemed strange to me nor have roused astonishment to observe the great uneasiness you show in your last letter, lest, through my not having written, I should have forgotten you.  Still it is nothing new or marvellous when so many other things go counter, that this also should be topsy-turvy.  For what your lordship says to me, I could say to yourself:  nevertheless, you do this perhaps to try me, or to light a new and stronger flame, if that indeed were possible:  but be it as it wills:  I know well that, at this hour, I could as easily forget your name as the food by which I live; nay, it were easier to forget the food, which only nourishes my body miserably, than your name, which nourishes both body and soul, filling the one and the other with such sweetness that neither weariness nor fear of death is felt by me while memory preserves you to my mind.  Think, if the eyes could also enjoy their portion, in what condition I should find myself.”

This second letter has also been extremely laboured; for we have three other turns given in its drafts to the image of food and memory.  That these two documents were really addressed to Cavalieri, without any thought of Vittoria Colonna, is proved by three letters sent to Michelangelo by the young man in question.  One is dated August 2, 1533, another September 2, and the third bears no date.  The two which I have mentioned first belong to the summer of 1533; the third seems to be the earliest.  It was clearly written on some occasion when both men were in Rome together, and at the very beginning of their friendship.  I will translate them in their order.  The first undated letter was sent to Michelangelo in Rome, in answer to some writing of the illustrious sculptor which we do not possess:—­

“I have received from you a letter, which is the more acceptable because it was so wholly unexpected.  I say unexpected, because I hold myself unworthy of such condescension in a man of your eminence.  With regard to what Pierantonio spoke to you in my praise, and those things of mine which you have seen, and which you say have aroused in you no small affection for me, I answer that they were insufficient to impel a man of such transcendent genius, without a second, not to speak of a peer, upon this earth, to address a youth who was born but yesterday, and therefore is as ignorant as it is possible to be.  At the same time I cannot call you a liar.  I rather think then, nay, am certain, that the love you bear me is due to this, that you being a man most excellent in art, nay, art itself, are forced to love those who follow it and love it, among whom am I; and in this, according to my capacity, I yield to few.  I promise