and had lived many years in his employment, rather as valet and housekeeper than anything else; this indeed was obvious, because he had acquired no skill in the arts.  Consequently, while I was pressing Michel Agnolo with arguments he could not answer, he turned round sharply to Urbino, as though to ask him his opinion.  The fellow began to bawl out in his rustic way:  ’I will never leave my master Michel Agnolo’s side till I shall have flayed him or he shall have flayed me.’  These stupid words forced me to laugh, and without saying farewell, I lowered my shoulders and retired.”

This was in 1552.  The Duke was loth to take a refusal, and for the next eight years he continued to ply Michelangelo with invitations, writing letters by his own hand, employing his agents in Rome and Florence, and working through Vasari.  The letters to Vasari during this period are full of the subject.  Michelangelo remains firm in his intention to remain at Rome and not abandon S. Peter’s.  As years went on, infirmities increased, and the solicitations of the Duke became more and more irksome to the old man.  His discomfort at last elicited what may be called a real cry of pain in a letter to his nephew:—­

“As regards my condition, I am ill with all the troubles which are wont to afflict old men.  The stone prevents me passing water.  My loins and back are so stiff that I often cannot climb upstairs.  What makes matters worse is that my mind is much worried with anxieties.  If I leave the conveniences I have here for my health, I can hardly live three days.  Yet I do not want to lose the favour of the Duke, nor should I like to fail in my work at S. Peter’s, nor in my duty to myself.  I pray God to help and counsel me; and if I were taken ill by some dangerous fever, I would send for you at once.”

Meanwhile, in spite of his resistance to the Duke’s wishes, Michelangelo did not lose the favour of the Medicean family.  The delicacy of behaviour by means of which he contrived to preserve and strengthen it, is indeed one of the strongest evidences of his sincerity, sagacity, and prudence.  The Cardinal Giovanni, son of Cosimo, travelled to Rome in March 1560, in order to be invested with the purple by the Pope’s hands.  On this occasion Vasari, who rode in the young prince’s train, wrote despatches to Florence which contain some interesting passages about Buonarroti.  In one of them (March 29) he says:  “My friend Michelangelo is so old that I do not hope to obtain much from him.”  Beside the reiterated overtures regarding a return to Florence, the Church of the Florentines was now in progress, and Cosimo also required Buonarroti’s advice upon the decoration of the Great Hall in the Palazzo della Signoria.  In a second letter (April 8) Vasari tells the Duke:  “I reached Rome, and immediately after the most reverend and illustrious Medici had made his entrance and received the hat from our lord’s hands, a ceremony which I wished to see with a view to the frescoes in the Palace, I