BENVENUTO. 
                 Faith, a pretty artist
To pass his days in stamping leaden seals
On Papal bulls!

MICHAEL ANGELO. 
He has grown fat and lazy,
As if the lead clung to him like a sinker. 
He paints no more, since he was sent to Fondi
By Cardinal Ippolito to paint
The fair Gonzaga.  Ah, you should have seen him
As I did, riding through the city gate,
In his brown hood, attended by four horsemen,
Completely armed, to frighten the banditti. 
I think he would have frightened them alone,
For he was rounder than the O of Giotto.

BENVENUTO. 
He must have looked more like a sack of meal
Than a great painter.

MICHAEL ANGELO. 
                  Well, he is not great
But still I like him greatly.  Benvenuto
Have faith in nothing but in industry. 
Be at it late and early; persevere,
And work right on through censure and applause,
Or else abandon Art.

BENVENUTO. 
                 No man works harder
Then I do.  I am not a moment idle.

MICHAEL ANGELO. 
And what have you to show me?

BENVENUTO. 
                    This gold ring,
Made for his Holiness,—­my latest work,
And I am proud of it.  A single diamond
Presented by the Emperor to the Pope. 
Targhetta of Venice set and tinted it;
I have reset it, and retinted it
Divinely, as you see.  The jewellers
Say I’ve surpassed Targhetta.

MICHAEL ANGELO. 
                      Let me see it. 
A pretty jewel.

BENVENUTO. 
           That is not the expression. 
Pretty is not a very pretty word
To be applied to such a precious stone,
Given by an Emperor to a Pope, and set
By Benvenuto!

MICHAEL ANGELO. 
                 Messer Benvenuto,
I lose all patience with you; for the gifts
That God hath given you are of such a kind,
They should be put to far more noble uses
Than setting diamonds for the Pope of Rome. 
You can do greater things.

BENVENUTO. 
             The God who made me
Knows why he made me what I am,—­a goldsmith,
A mere artificer.

MICHAEL ANGELO. 
                  Oh no; an artist
Richly endowed by nature, but who wraps
His talent in a napkin, and consumes
His life in vanities.

BENVENUTO. 
                    Michael Angelo
May say what Benvenuto would not bear
From any other man.  He speaks the truth. 
I know my life is wasted and consumed
In vanities; but I have better hours
And higher aspirations than you think. 
Once, when a prisoner at St. Angelo,
Fasting and praying in the midnight darkness,
In a celestial vision I beheld
A crucifix in the sun, of the same substance
As is the sun itself.  And since that hour
There is a splendor round about my head,
That may be seen at sunrise and at sunset
Above my shadow on the grass.  And now
I know that I am in the grace of God,
And none henceforth can harm me.