“I gather from your letter that you lend credence to certain envious and scoundrelly persons, who, since they cannot manage me or rob me, write you a lot of lies.  They are a set of sharpers, and you are so silly as to believe what they say about my affairs, as though I were a baby.  Get rid of them, the scandalous, envious, ill-lived rascals.  As for my suffering the mismanagement you write about, I tell you that I could not be better off, or more faithfully served and attended to in all things.  As for my being robbed, to which I think you allude, I assure you that I have people in my house whom I can trust and repose on.  Therefore, look to your own life, and do not think about my affairs, because I know how to take care of myself if it is needful, and am not a baby.  Keep well.”

This is the last letter to Lionardo.  It is singular that Michelangelo’s correspondence with his father, with Luigi del Riccio, with Tommaso dei Cavalieri, and with his nephew, all of whom he sincerely loved, should close upon a note of petulance and wrath.  The fact is no doubt accidental.  But it is strange.

X

We have frequently had occasion to notice the extreme pain caused to Michelangelo’s friends by his unreasonable irritability and readiness to credit injurious reports about them.  These defects of temper justified to some extent his reputation for savagery, and they must be reckoned among the most salient features of his personality.  I shall therefore add three other instances of the same kind which fell under my observation while studying the inedited documents of the Buonarroti Archives.  Giovanni Francesco Fattucci was, as we well know, his most intimate friend and trusted counsellor during long and difficult years, when the negotiations with the heirs of Pope Julius were being carried on; yet there exists one letter of unaffected sorrow from this excellent man, under date October 14, 1545, which shows that for some unaccountable reason Michelangelo had suddenly chosen to mistrust him.  Fattucci begins by declaring that he is wholly guiltless of things which his friend too credulously believed upon the strength of gossip.  He expresses the deepest grief at this unjust and suspicious treatment.  The letter shows him to have been more hurt than resentful.  Another document signed by Francesco Sangallo (the son of his old friend Giuliano), bearing no date, but obviously written when they were both in Florence, and therefore before the year 1535, carries the same burden of complaint.  The details are sufficiently picturesque to warrant the translation of a passage.  After expressing astonishment at Michelangelo’s habit of avoiding his society, he proceeds:  “And now, this morning, not thinking that I should annoy you, I came up and spoke to you, and you received me with a very surly countenance.  That evening, too, when I met you on the threshold with Granacci, and you left me by the shop of Pietro Osaio, and the