Page:The Life of Michael Angelo.djvu/52

 weeping and shouting like demented beings. The wealthiest citizens—the Ruccellais, the Salviatis, the Albizzis, and the Strozzis—demanded to enter into Orders. Learned men and philosophers, including Pic de la Mirandole and Politiano, themselves abdicated. Michael Angelo's elder brother Leonardo became a Dominican.

Michael Angelo did not escape this contagious terror. When he whom the prophet had announced approached—the new Cyrus, the sword of God, the little deformed monster, Charles VIII., King of France—he was panic-stricken. A dream threw his mind off its balance. One of his friends, Cardiere, a poet and musician, saw, one night; the shade of Lorenzo de' Medici, with his half-naked body wrapped in a black tattered robe. The dead man commanded him to tell his son Piero that shortly he would be driven from his house never again to return. Michael Angelo, to whom Cardiere confided the story of his vision, exhorted him to relate everything to the prince; but the poet, who was frightened of Piero,