“Pray answer the questions in this letter as soon as possible, because I am burning with impatience to set out.  If you have changed your mind, and do not care to go, still let me know, so that I may provide as best I can for my own journey.”

What appears manifest from this document is that Michelangelo was decoyed away from Florence by some one, who, acting on his sensitive nervous temperament, persuaded him that his life was in danger.  Who the man was we do not know, but he must have been a person delegated by those who had a direct interest in removing Buonarroti from the place.  If the controller-general of the defences already scented treason in the air, and was communicating his suspicions to the Signory, Malatesta Baglioni, the archtraitor, who afterwards delivered Florence over for a price to Clement, could not but have wished to frighten him away.

From another of Michelangelo’s letters we learn that he carried 3000 ducats in specie with him on the journey.  It is unlikely that he could have disposed so much cash upon his person.  He must have had companions.

Talking with Michelangelo in 1549—­that is, twenty years after the event—­Busini heard from his lips this account of the flight.  “I asked Michelangelo what was the reason of his departure from Florence.  He spoke as follows:  ’I was one of the Nine when the Florentine troops mustered within our lines under Malatesta Baglioni and Mario Orsini and the other generals:  whereupon the Ten distributed the men along the walls and bastions, assigning to each captain his own post, with victuals and provisions; and among the rest, they gave eight pieces of artillery to Malatesta for the defence of part of the bastions at S. Miniato.  He did not, however, mount these guns within the bastions, but below them, and set no guard.’  Michelangelo, as architect and magistrate, having to inspect the lines at S. Miniato, asked Mario Orsini how it was that Malatesta treated his artillery so carelessly.  The latter answered:  ’You must know that the men of his house are all traitors, and in time he too will betray this town.’  These words inspired him with such terror that he was obliged to fly, impelled by dread lest the city should come to misfortune, and he together with it.  Having thus resolved, he found Rinaldo Corsini, to whom he communicated his thought, and Corsini replied lightly:  ’I will go with you.’  So they mounted horse with a sum of money, and road to the Gate of Justice, where the guards would not let them pass.  While waiting there, some one sung out:  ’Let him by, for he is of the Nine, and it is Michelangelo.’  So they went forth, three on horseback, he, Rinaldo, and that man of his who never left him.  They came to Castelnuovo (in the Garfagnana), and heard that Tommaso Soderini and Niccolo Capponi were staying there.  Michelangelo refused to go and see them, but Rinaldo went, and when he came back to Florence, as I shall relate, he reported how Niccolo had said