I intend to do," replied Michelangelo; "your business is to take
charge of the expenses and to see that no one steals. The building is my
affair." He then turned to the pope and said, "Holy Father, you see what
my pay is. If the miseries I endure do not help my soul it is all time
and trouble lost."

The pope, who loved him, placed his hands on his shoulders and said:
"You gain for both your soul and your body. Have no fear."[89]

[Illustration: TOMB OF GIULIANO DE' MEDICI

Chapel of the Medici in San Lorenzo, Florence (1524-1526 and
1530-1534).]

Without the favour of the pope he could not have held out for a moment
against the enmity which his haughty and contemptuous ways roused
against him. Therefore when Paul III died and Marcellus II succeeded him
(April 9, 1555) Michelangelo was on the point of leaving Rome, but by
the twenty-third of May Marcellus had died and Paul IV took his place.
Michelangelo, again sure of the highest protection, went on with his
fight. He would have thought himself dishonoured and would have feared
for his salvation if he had given up the work. "Against my will," he
wrote in 1555, "I was entrusted with this task, and for eight years I
have exhausted myself in vain in the midst of all kinds of trouble and
weariness. Now that the construction is so far advanced that I can begin
to vault the dome, to leave Rome would be to ruin the whole work, a
great shame to me and for my soul a great sin."[90]

In 1557 Cosmo de' Medici begged him to come back to Florence "where
honour and rest awaited him," but he answered firmly, "I can not leave
here until I have carried the construction of St. Peter's so far that my
plan can not be changed or destroyed and there will no longer be any
possibility for thieves to begin their work again, as these scoundrels
are only waiting for a chance to do. This is my resolve."

That same year his friends, who were afraid that he would carry his
great designs with him into the grave, for none of them were written
down, urged and besought until they succeeded in persuading him to
execute a model in wood of the dome of St. Peter's.[91] He was still
working on this in 1560.

The building went on, but not without many difficulties. It was
necessary in 1557 to rebuild almost the entire vault of the Chapel of
the King of France because Michelangelo had been ill and unable to watch
the work closely enough.

The attacks on him began again with fresh vigour at each mista