It is not necessary to follow all the references to Tommaso Cavalieri contained in Angelini’s letters.  They amount to little more than kind messages and warm wishes for Michelangelo’s return.  Soon, however, Michelangelo began to send poems, which Angelini acknowledges (September 6):  “I have received the very welcome letter you wrote me, together with your graceful and beautiful sonnet, of which I kept a copy, and then sent it on to M. Thomao.  He was delighted to possess it, being thereby assured that God has deigned to bestow upon him the friendship of a man endowed with so many noble gifts as you are.”  Again he writes (October 18):  “Yours of the 12th is to hand, together with M. Thomao’s letter and the most beautiful sonnets.  I have kept copies, and sent them on to him for whom they were intended, because I know with what affection he regards all things that pertain to you.  He promised to send an answer which shall be enclosed in this I now am writing.  He is counting not the days merely, but the hours, till you return.”  In another letter, without date, Angelini says, “I gave your messages to M. Thomao, who replied that your presence would be dearer to him than your writing, and that if it seems to you a thousand years, to him it seems ten thousand, till you come.  I received your gallant (galante) and beautiful sonnet; and though you said nothing about it, I saw at once for whom it was intended, and gave it to him.  Like everything of yours, it delighted him.  The tenor of the sonnet shows that love keeps you perpetually restless.  I do not think this ought to be the effect of love, and so I send you one of my poor performances to prove the contrary opinion.”  We may perhaps assume that this sonnet was the famous No. xxxi., from the last line of which every one could perceive that Michelangelo meant it for Tommaso Cavalieri.

VII

It is significant that, while Michelangelo’s affection for the young Roman was thus acquiring force, another friendship, which must have once been very dear to him, sprang up and then declined, but not apparently through his own fault or coldness.  We hear of Febo di Poggio in the following autumn for the first and last time.  Before proceeding to speak of him, I will wind up what has to be said about Tommaso Cavalieri.  Not long after the date of the last letter quoted above, Michelangelo returned to Rome, and settled there for the rest of his life.  He continued to the end of his days in close friendship with Cavalieri, who helped to nurse him during his last illness, who took charge of his effects after his death, and who carried on the architectural work he had begun at the Capitol.

Their friendship seems to have been uninterrupted by any disagreement, except on one occasion when Michelangelo gave way to his suspicious irritability, quite at the close of his long life.  This drew forth from Cavalieri the following manly and touching letter:—­