itude, groaning continually and pretending to be suffering from
colic. The master-builders, who were standing waiting for orders as to
what they were to do, on hearing this, asked Lorenzo what they were to
go on with: but he replied that it was for Filippo to give orders, and
that they must wait for him. There was one who said, "What, dost thou
not know his mind?" "Yes," answered Lorenzo, "but I would do nothing
without him"; and this he said to excuse himself, because, not having
seen the model of Filippo, and having never asked him what method he
intended to follow, he would never commit himself in talking of the
matter, in order not to appear ignorant, and would always make a
double-edged answer, the more so as he knew that he was employed in the
work against the will of Filippo. The illness of the latter having
already lasted for more than two days, the provveditore and many of the
master-masons went to see him and asked him repeatedly to tell them what
they were to do. And he replied, "You have Lorenzo, let him do
something"; nor could they get another word out of him. Whereupon, this
becoming known, there arose discussions and very adverse judgments with
regard to the work: some saying that Filippo had gone to bed in his
vexation at finding that he had not the courage to raise the cupola, and
that he was repenting of having meddled with the matter; while his
friends defended him, saying that his anger, if anger it was, came from
the outrage of having been given Lorenzo as colleague, but that his real
trouble was colic, caused by fatiguing himself overmuch at the work.
Now, while this noise was going on, the building was at a standstill,
and almost all the work of the masons and stone-cutters was suspended;
and they murmured against Lorenzo, saying, "He is good enough at drawing
the salary, but as for directing the work, not a bit of it! If we had
not Filippo, or if he were ill for long, what would the other do? Is it
Filippo's fault that he is ill?" The Wardens of Works, seeing themselves
disgraced by this state of things, determined to go and find Filippo;
and after arriving and sympathizing with him first about his illness,
they told him in how great confusion the building stood and what
troubles his illness had brought upon them. Whereupon Filippo, speaking
with great heat both under the cloak of illness and from love of the
work, replied, "Is not that Lorenzo there? Can he do nothing? And I
marvel at you as well