ts, and all that was required.
How far I succeeded, that I shall leave to be judged by others; but this
I must say, that I gave to it all the study, labour, and diligence in my
power and knowledge.

Meanwhile, the Lord Duke Cosimo desiring that the Book of the Lives,
already brought almost to completion with the greatest diligence that I
had found possible, and with the assistance of some of my friends,
should be given to the printers, I gave it to Lorenzo Torrentino,
printer to the Duke, and so the printing was begun. But not even the
Theories had been finished, when, Pope Paul III having died, I began to
doubt that I might have to depart from Florence before that book was
finished printing. Going therefore out of Florence to meet Cardinal di
Monte, who was passing on his way to the Conclave, I had no sooner made
obeisance to him and spoken a few words, than he said: "I go to Rome,
and without a doubt I shall be Pope. Make haste, if you have anything to
do, and as soon as you hear the news set out for Rome without awaiting
other advice or any invitation." Nor did that prognostication prove
false, for, being at Arezzo for that Carnival, when certain festivities
and masquerades were being arranged, the news came that the Cardinal had
become Julius III. Whereupon I mounted straightway on horseback and went
to Florence, whence, pressed by the Duke, I went to Rome, in order to be
present at the coronation of the new Pontiff and to take part in the
preparation of the festivities. And so, arriving in Rome and dismounting
at the house of Messer Bindo, I went to do reverence to his Holiness and
to kiss his feet. Which done, the first words that he spoke to me were
to remind me that what he had foretold of himself had not been false.
Then, after he was crowned and settled down a little, the first thing
that he wished to have done was to satisfy an obligation that he had to
the memory of Antonio, the first and elder Cardinal di Monte, by means
of a tomb to be made in S. Pietro a Montorio; of which the designs and
models having been made, it was executed in marble, as has been related
fully in another place. And meanwhile I painted the altar-picture of
that chapel, in which I represented the Conversion of S. Paul, but, to
vary it from that which Buonarroti had executed in the Pauline Chapel, I
made S. Paul young, as he himself writes, and fallen from his horse, and
led blind by the soldiers to Ananias, from whom by the imposition o