On this occasion Luigi del Riccio took him into his own apartments at the Casa Strozzi; and here he nursed him with such personal devotion that the old man afterwards regarded Del Riccio as the saviour of his life.

We learn this from the following pathetic sonnet:-- _It happens that the sweet unfathomed sea Of seeming courtesy sometimes doth hide Offence to life and honour.

This descried, I hold less dear the health restored to me.
He who lends wings of hope, while secretly He spreads a traitorous snare by the wayside, Hath dulled the flame of love, and mortified Friendship where friendship burns most fervently.
Keep then, my dear Luigi, clear and fare, That ancient love to which my life I owe, That neither wind nor storm its calm may mar.
For wrath and pain our gratitude obscure; And if the truest truth of love I know, One pang outweighs a thousand pleasures far._ Ruberto Strozzi, who was then in France, wrote anxiously inquiring after his health.

In reply, Michelangelo sent Strozzi a singular message by Luigi del Riccio, to the effect that "if the king of France restored Florence to liberty, he was ready to make his statue on horseback out of bronze at his own cost, and set it up in the Piazza." This throws some light upon a passage in a letter addressed subsequently to Lionardo Buonarroti, when the tyrannous law, termed "La Polverina," enacted against malcontents by the Duke Cosimo de' Medici, was disturbing the minds of Florentine citizens.

Michelangelo then wrote as follows: "I am glad that you gave me news of the edict; because, if I have been careful up to this date in my conversation with exiles, I shall take more precautions for the future.