“P.S.—­If you talk to the father of the lad, put the matter to him nicely:  as that he is a good boy, but too refined, and not fit for my service, and say that he had better send for him home.”

The repentant postscript is eminently characteristic of Michelangelo.  He used to write in haste, apparently just as the thoughts came.  Afterwards he read his letter over, and softened its contents down, if he did not, as sometimes happened, feel that his meaning required enforcement; in that case he added a stinging tail to the epigram.  How little he could manage the people in his employ is clear from the last notice we possess about the unlucky lad from Florence.  “I wrote about the boy, to say that his father ought to send for him, and that I would not disburse more money.  This I now confirm.  The driver is paid to take him back.  At Florence he will do well enough, learning his trade and dwelling with his parents.  Here he is not worth a farthing, and makes me toil like a beast of burden; and my other apprentice has not left his bed.  It is true that I have not got him in the house; for when I was so tired out that I could not bear it, I sent him to the room of a brother of his.  I have no money.”

These household difficulties were a trifle, however, compared with the annoyances caused by the stupidity of his father and the greediness of his brothers.  While living like a poor man in Rome, he kept continually thinking of their welfare.  The letters of this period are full of references to the purchase of land, the transmission of cash when it was to be had, and the establishment of Buonarroto in a draper’s business.  They, on their part, were never satisfied, and repaid his kindness with ingratitude.  The following letter to Giovan Simone shows how terrible Michelangelo could be when he detected baseness in a brother:—­

“Giovan Simone,—­It is said that when one does good to a good man, he makes him become better, but that a bad man becomes worse.  It is now many years that I have been endeavouring with words and deeds of kindness to bring you to live honestly and in peace with your father and the rest of us.  You grow continually worse.  I do not say that you are a scoundrel; but you are of such sort that you have ceased to give satisfaction to me or anybody.  I could read you a long lesson on your ways of living; but they would be idle words, like all the rest that I have wasted.  To cut the matter short, I will tell you as a fact beyond all question that you have nothing in the world:  what you spend and your house-room, I give you, and have given you these many years, for the love of God, believing you to be my brother like the rest.  Now, I am sure that you are not my brother, else you would not threaten my father.  Nay, you are a beast; and as a beast I mean to treat you.  Know that he who sees his father threatened or roughly handled is bound to risk his own life in this cause.  Let that suffice.  I repeat that you have nothing in the world; and if I hear the least thing about your ways of going on, I will come to Florence by the post, and show you how far wrong you are, and teach you to waste your substance, and set fire to houses and farms you have not earned.  Indeed you are not where you think yourself to be.  If I come, I will open your eyes to what will make you weep hot tears, and recognise on what false grounds you base your arrogance.