Page:The Life of Michael Angelo.djvu/135

 His enmity had still further increased since Michael Angelo’s refusal to contribute to the servitude of Florence by building a fortress to dominate the town—an act of courage which shows sufficiently clearly, in the case of this timorous man, the grandeur of his love for his native city. Since then Michael Angelo feared everything on the part of the Duke, and he only owed his salvation, when Clement VII. died, to the chance of being away from Florence at that moment. He did not return. He was, indeed, never to see it again. It was all over with the Medici chapel—it was never completed. The monument we know under that name is but remotely connected with the one which Michael Angelo had imagined. Barely the skeleton of the mural decoration remains. Not only had Michael Angelo not executed half the statues and the paintings which he had in view, but when, later, his disciples endeavoured to discover and carry out his thoughts, he was no longer even capable of telling them what these had been. He had abandoned all his enterprises so completely that he had forgotten everything.