at
country, although he was looked upon with favour there; but he had a
reason for delay in a woman, beloved by him for many years, who detained
him with her sweet words and cajoleries. However, so mightily did his
desire to revisit Rome and his friends work in him, that he took from
his bank a good sum of money that he possessed, and, wholly determined,
prepared to depart.

Polidoro had employed as his assistant for a long time a lad of the
country, who bore greater love to his master's money than to his master;
but, the money being kept, as has been said, in the bank, he was never
able to lay his hands upon it and carry it off. Wherefore, an evil and
cruel thought entering his head, he resolved to put his master to death
with the help of some accomplices, on the following night, while he was
sleeping, and then to divide the money with them. And so, assisted by
his friends, he set upon Polidoro in his first sleep, while he was
slumbering deeply, and strangled him with a cloth. Then, giving him
several wounds, they made sure of his death; and in order to prove that
it was not they who had done it, they carried him to the door of the
woman whom he had loved, making it appear that her relatives or other
persons of the house had killed him. The assistant gave a good part of
the money to the villains who had committed so hideous an outrage, and
bade them be off. In the morning he went in tears to the house of a
certain Count, a friend of his dead master, and related the event to
him; but for all the diligence that was used for many days in seeking
for the perpetrator of the crime, nothing came to light. By the will of
God, however, nature and virtue, in disdain at being wounded by the hand
of fortune, so worked in one who had no interest in the matter, that he
declared it to be impossible that any other but the assistant himself
could have committed the murder. Whereupon the Count had him seized and
put to the torture, and without the application of any further torment
he confessed the crime and was condemned by the law to the gallows; but
first he was torn with red-hot pincers on the way to execution, and
finally quartered.

For all this, however, life was not restored to Polidoro, nor was there
given back to the art of painting a genius so resolute and so
extraordinary, such as had not been seen in the world for many an age.
If, indeed, at the time when he died, invention, grace, and boldness in
the painting of figures