But the old man, rendered suspicious by previous transactions with his family, did not take the action in its proper light.

We have a letter, indorsed by Lionardo in Rome as received upon the 11th of July, to this effect: "Lionardo, I have been ill; and you, at the instance of Ser Giovan Francesco (probably Fattucci), have come to make me dead, and to see what I have left.

Is there not enough of mine at Florence to content you?
You cannot deny that you are the image of your father, who turned me out of my own house in Florence.
Know that I have made a will of such tenor that you need not trouble your head about what I possess at Rome.

Go then with God, and do not present yourself before me; and do not write to me again, and act like the priest in the fable." The correspondence between uncle and nephew during the next months proves that this furious letter wrought no diminution of mutual regard and affection.

Before the end of the year he must have recovered, for we find him writing to Del Riccio: "I am well again now, and hope to live yet some years, seeing that God has placed my health under the care of Maestro Baccio Rontini and the trebbian wine of the Ulivieri." This letter is referred to January 1545, and on the 9th of that month he dictated a letter to his friend Del Riccio, in which he tells Lionardo Buonarroti: "I do not feel well, and cannot write.
Nevertheless I have recovered from my illness, and suffer no pain now." We have reason to think that Michelangelo fell gravely ill again toward the close of 1545.