Page:The Life of Michael Angelo.djvu/125

 early days nothing stayed the vengeance of the conquerors. Michael Angelo's best friends, including Battista della Palla, were the first to suffer. Michael Angelo hid himself, it is said, in the steeple of San Niccolò-oltr' Arno. He had good reasons for fear: the news had got abroad that he had intended to demolish the Palace of the Medici. But Clement VII. had not lost his affection for him. If we are to believe Sebastiano del Piombo, he had been deeply grieved by what he heard of Michael Angelo during the siege; but he contented himself with shrugging his shoulders and saying, "Michael Angelo is in the wrong; never have I harmed him." As soon as the anger of the proscribers was beginning to subside, Clement VII. wrote to Florence, directing that Michael Angelo should be found and, if he were willing to continue work on the tombs of the Medici, treated with all the respect he merited.

Michael Angelo came out from his hiding-place and resumed his work to the glory of those against whom he had fought. The unfortunate man did more: for Baccio Valori, the man who did the Pope's dirty work, the murderer of his friend Battista della Palla, he consented to carve his statue of "Apollo drawing an Arrow from his Quiver." Soon he was to disown the banished Florentines. Lamentable weakness on the part of a great man, forced to defend the life of his artistic dreams by acts of cowardice and against the murderous brutality of material strength, which could, at its will, have stifled