Page:The Life of Michael Angelo.djvu/225

Rh never, it would seem, the slightest doubt in his faith. At the time of the illness or death of his father and brothers, his first concern was ever that they should receive the sacrament. He had a boundless confidence in prayer, "which he regarded as more efficacious than all the medicines in the world"; he attributed to its power all the good which had come to him and believed that it preserved him from evil. In his solitude he was subject to crises of mystic adoration. By chance the recollection of one of these has been handed down to us: a contemporary narrative shows us the ecstatic face of the hero of the Sistine, praying, alone, at night, in his garden in Rome, and imploring with his sorrowful eyes the starry sky.