Page:The Life of Michael Angelo.djvu/142

92 But the insults of an Aretino—such men are common to all ages—could not reach a Michael Angelo. "They formed in their hearts a Michelagniolo out of the stuff of which their own hearts was made."

No one possessed a purer soul than Michael Angelo. No one had a more religious conception of love. "I have often heard him speak of love," says Condivi, "and those who were present used to say that Plato did not speak otherwise. For my part, I know not what Plato said of it; but this I know well, in my long and intimate intercourse with him, I have never heard him utter any but the most honourable words, which had the effect of calming in young men the inordinate desires which agitated them."

But there was nothing literary and cold in this Platonic idealism: it was united to a frenzy of thought which made Michael Angelo the prey of everything which he considered beautiful. He knew this himself, and said one day when refusing an invitation from his friend Giannotti:

"When I see a man who possesses some talent or gift of intelligence, a man who knows how to do or to say something better than the rest of the world, I am constrained to fall in love with him, and then I give myself so completely to him that I no longer belong to myself.... You are all so highly gifted that if I accepted your invitation I should lose my liberty. Each of you would steal a portion of myself. Even the dancer and the lute player, if they were skilled in art, could do what they liked with me! Instead of being rested, fortified, calmed by your society, my soul would be torn and dispersed to