write, but, in reply to your letter, I shall say
something. You know how Urbino died, wherein God has shown me very
great grace, although it is also a grave loss and an infinite grief to
me. This grace is that whereas when living he kept me alive, dying he
has taught me to die not with regret, but with a desire for death. I
have had him twenty-six years, and have found him a very rare and
faithful servant; and now, when I had made him rich and was looking to
him as the staff and repose of my old age, he has flown from me, nor
is any hope left to me but to see him again in Paradise. And of this
God has granted a sign in the happy death that he died, in that dying
grieved him much less than leaving me in this traitorous world with so
many afflictions; although the greater part of me is gone with him,
and nothing is left me but infinite misery. I commend myself to you."

Michelagnolo was employed in the time of Pope Paul IV on many parts of
the fortifications of Rome, and also by Salustio Peruzzi, to whom that
Pope, as has been related elsewhere, had given the charge of executing
the great portal of the Castello di S. Angelo, which is now half
ruined; and he occupied himself in distributing the statues of that
work, examining the models of the sculptors, and correcting them. At
that time the French army approached near to Rome, and Michelagnolo
thought that he was like to come to an evil end together with that
city; whereupon he resolved to fly from Rome with Antonio Franzese of
Castel Durante, whom Urbino at his death had left in his house as his
servant, and went secretly to the mountains of Spoleto, where he
visited certain seats of hermits. Meanwhile Vasari wrote to him,
sending him a little work that Carlo Lenzoni, a citizen of Florence,
had left at his death to Messer Cosimo Bartoli, who was to have it
printed and dedicated to Michelagnolo; which, when it was finished,
Vasari sent in those days to Michelagnolo, and he, having received it,
answered thus:

"_September_ 18, 1556.

"MESSER GIORGIO, DEAR FRIEND,

"I have received Messer Cosimo's little book, which you send to me,
and this shall be a letter of thanks. I pray you to give them to him,
and send him my compliments.

"I have had in these days great discomfort and expense, but also great
pleasure, in visiting the hermits in the mountains of Spoleto,
insomuch that less than half of me has returned to Rome, seeing th