One of his letters gives an explanation of the eighth epitaph: "Our dead friend speaks and says: if the heavens robbed all beauty from all other men on earth to make me only, as indeed they made me, beautiful; and if by the divine decree I must return at doomsday to the shape I bore in life, it follows that I cannot give back the beauty robbed from others and bestowed on me, but that I must remain for ever more beautiful than the rest, and they be ugly.

This is just the opposite of the conceit you expressed to me yesterday; the one is a fable, the other is the truth." Some time in 1545 Luigi went to Lyons on a visit to Ruberto Strozzi and Giuliano de' Medici.

This seems to have happened toward the end of the year; for we possess a letter indorsed by him, "sent to Lyons, and returned upon the 22nd of December." This document contains several interesting details.

"All your friends are extremely grieved to hear about your illness, the more so that we cannot help you; especially Messer Donato (Giannotti) and myself.

However, we hope that it may turn out to be no serious affair, God willing.