of snubbing him.  For instance, news reached Rome that the landed property of a certain Francesco Corboli was going to be sold.  Michelangelo sent to Lionardo requesting him to make inquiries; and because the latter showed some alacrity in doing so, his uncle wrote him the following querulous epistle:  “You have been very hasty in sending me information regarding the estates of the Corboli.  I did not think you were yet in Florence.  Are you afraid lest I should change my mind, as some one may perhaps have put it into your head?  I tell you that I want to go slowly in this affair, because the money I must pay has been gained here with toil and trouble unintelligible to one who was born clothed and shod as you were.  About your coming post-haste to Rome, I do not know that you came in such a hurry when I was a pauper and lacked bread.  Enough for you to throw away the money that you did not earn.  The fear of losing what you might inherit on my death impelled you.  You say it was your duty to come, by reason of the love you bear me.  The love of a woodworm!  If you really loved me, you would have written now:  ’Michelangelo, spend those 3000 ducats there upon yourself, for you have given us enough already:  your life is dearer to us than your money.’  You have all of you lived forty years upon me, and I have never had from you so much as one good word.  ’Tis true that last year I scolded and rebuked you so that for very shame you sent me a load of trebbiano.  I almost wish you hadn’t!  I do not write this because I am unwilling to buy.  Indeed I have a mind to do so, in order to obtain an income for myself, now that I cannot work more.  But I want to buy at leisure, so as not to purchase some annoyance.  Therefore do not hurry.”

Lionardo was careless about his handwriting, and this annoyed the old man terribly.

“Do not write to me again.  Each time I get one of your letters, a fever takes me with the trouble I have in reading it.  I do not know where you learned to write.  I think that if you were writing to the greatest donkey in the world you would do it with more care.  Therefore do not add to the annoyances I have, for I have already quite enough of them.”

He returns to the subject over and over again, and once declares that he has flung a letter of Lionardo’s into the fire unread, and so is incapable of answering it.  This did not prevent a brisk interchange of friendly communications between the uncle and nephew.

Lionardo was now living in the Buonarroti house in Via Ghibellina.  Michelangelo thought it advisable that he should remove into a more commodious mansion, and one not subject to inundations of the basement.  He desired, however, not to go beyond the quarter of S. Croce, where the family had been for centuries established.  The matter became urgent, for Lionardo wished to marry, and could not marry until he was provided with a residence.  Eventually, after rejecting many plans and proffers of houses, they decided to enlarge and improve the original Buonarroti mansion in Via Ghibellina.  This house continued to be their town-mansion until the year 1852, when it passed by testamentary devise to the city of Florence.  It is now the Museo Buonarroti.