multitudes with incomes of 2000 or 3000 crowns lying in bed, while I with all my immense labour toil to grow poor....  I am not a thief and usurer, but a citizen of Florence, noble, the son of an honest man, and do not come from Cagli.” (These and similar outbursts of indignant passion scattered up and down the epistle, show to what extent the sculptor’s irritable nature had been exasperated by calumnious reports.  As he openly declares, he is being driven mad by pin-pricks.  Then follows the detailed history of his dealings with Julius, which, as I have already made copious use of it, may here be given in outline.) “In the first year of his pontificate, Julius commissioned me to make his tomb, and I stayed eight months at Carrara quarrying marbles and sending them to the Piazza of S. Peter’s, where I had my lodgings behind S. Caterina.  Afterwards the Pope decided not to build his tomb during his lifetime, and set me down to painting.  Then he kept me two years at Bologna casting his statue in bronze, which has been destroyed.  After that I returned to Rome and stayed with him until his death, always keeping my house open without post or pension, living on the money for the tomb, since I had no other income.  After the death of Julius, Aginensis wanted me to go on with it, but on a larger scale.  So I brought the marbles to the Macello dei Corvi, and got that part of the mural scheme finished which is now walled in at S. Pietro in Vincoli, and made the figures which I have at home still.  Meanwhile, Leo, not wishing me to work at the tomb, pretended that he wanted to complete the facade of S. Lorenzo at Florence, and begged me of the Cardinal.

“To continue my history of the tomb of Julius, I say that when he changed his mind about building it in his lifetime, some shiploads of marble came to the Ripa, which I had ordered a short while before from Carrara, and as I could not get money from the Pope to pay the freightage, I had to borrow 150 or 200 ducats from Baldassare Balducci—­that is, from the bank of Jacopo Gallo.  At the same time workmen came from Florence, some of whom are still alive; and I furnished the house which Julius gave me behind S. Caterina with beds and other furniture for the men, and what was wanted for the work of the tomb.  All this being done without money, I was greatly embarrassed.  Accordingly, I urged the Pope with all my power to go forward with the business, and he had me turned away by a groom one morning when I came to speak upon the matter.” (Here intervenes the story of the flight to Florence, which has been worked up in the course of Chapter IV.) “Later on, while I was at Florence, Julius sent three briefs to the Signory.  At last the latter sent for me and said:  ’We do not want to go to war with Pope Julius because of you.  You must return; and if you do so, we will write you letters of such authority that if he does you harm, he will be doing it to this Signory.’  Accordingly, I took the letters, and went back to the Pope, and what followed would be long to tell!