FRA SEBASTIANO.
                   And thank God for it.
And now, being somewhat rested, I will tell you
Why I have climbed these formidable stairs.
I have a friend, Francesco Berni, here,
A very charming poet and companion,
Who greatly honors you and all your doings,
And you must sup with us.

MICHAEL ANGELO.
                       Not I, indeed.
I know too well what artists' suppers are.
You must excuse me.

FRA SEBASTIANO.
                 I will not excuse you.
You need repose from your incessant work;
Some recreation, some bright hours of pleasure.

MICHAEL ANGELO.
To me, what you and other men call pleasure
Is only pain.  Work is my recreation,
The play of faculty; a delight like that
Which a bird feels in flying, or a fish
In darting through the water,--nothing more.
I cannot go.  The Sibylline leaves of life
Grow precious now, when only few remain.
I cannot go.

FRA SEBASTIANO.
              Berni, perhaps, will read
A canto of the Orlando Inamorato.

MICHAEL ANGELO.
That is another reason for not going.
If aught is tedious and intolerable,
It is a poet reading his own verses,

FRA SEBASTIANO.
Berni thinks somewhat better of your verses
Than you of his.  He says that you speak things,
And other poets words.  So, pray you, come.

MICHAEL ANGELO.
If it were now the Improvisatore,
Luigia Pulci, whom I used to hear
With Benvenuto, in the streets of Florence,
I might be tempted.  I was younger then
And singing in the open air was pleasant.

FRA SEBASTIANO.
There is a Frenchman here, named Rabelais,
Once a Franciscan friar, and now a doctor,
And secretary to the embassy:
A learned man, who speaks all languages,
And wittiest of men; who wrote a book
Of the Adventures of Gargantua,
So full of strange conceits one roars with laughter
At every page; a jovial boon-companion
And lover of much wine.  He too is coming.

MICHAEL ANGELO.
Then you will not want me, who am not witty,
And have no sense of mirth, and love not wine.
I should be like a dead man at your banquet.
Why should I seek this Frenchman, Rabelais?
And wherefore go to hear Francesco Berni,
When I have Dante Alighieri here.
The greatest of all poets?

FRA SEBASTIANO.
                     And the dullest;
And only to be read in episodes.
His day is past.  Petrarca is our poet.

MICHAEL ANGELO.
Petrarca is for women and for lovers
And for those soft Abati, who delight
To wander down long garden walks in summer,
Tinkling their little sonnets all day long,
As lap dogs do their bells.

FRA SEBASTIANO.
                        I love Petrarca.
How sweetly of his absent love he sings
When journeying in the forest of Ardennes!
"I seem to hear her, hearing the boughs and breezes
And leaves and birds lamenting, and the waters
Murmuring flee along the verdant herbage."

MICHAEL ANGELO.
Enough.  It is all seeming, and no being.
If you would know how a man speaks in earnest,
Read here this passage, where St. Peter thunders
In Paradise against degenerate Popes
And the corruptions of the church, till all
The heaven about him blushes like a sunset.
I beg you to take note of what he says
About the Papal seals, for that concerns
Your office and yourself.

FRA SEBASTIANO, reading.
                 Is this the passage?
"Nor I be made the figure of a seal
To privileges venal and mendacious,
Whereat I often redden and flash with fire!"--
That is not poetry.

MICHAEL ANGELO.
                    What is it, then?

FRA SEBASTIANO.
Vituperation; gall that might have spirited
From Aretino's pen.

MICHAEL ANGELO.
                  Name not that man!
A profligate, whom your Francesco Berni
Describes as having one foot in the brothel
And the other in the hospital; who lives
By flattering or maligning, as best serves
His purpose at the time.  He writes to me
With easy arrogance of my Last Judgment,
In such familiar tone that one would say
The great event already had occurred,
And he was present, and from observation
Informed me how the picture should be painted.

FRA SEBASTIANO.
What unassuming, unobtrusive men
These critics are!  Now, to have Aretino
Aiming his shafts at you brings back to mind
The Gascon archers in the square of Milan,
Shooting their arrows at Duke Sforza's statue,
By Leonardo, and the foolish rabble
Of envious Florentines, that at your David
Threw stones at night.  But Aretino praised you.

MICHAEL ANGELO.
His praises were ironical.  He knows
How to use words as weapons, and to wound
While seeming to defend.  But look, Bastiano,
See how the setting sun lights up that picture!

FRA SEBASTIANO.
My portrait of Vittoria Colonna.

MICHAEL ANGELO.
It makes her look as she will look hereafter,
When she becomes a saint!

FRA SEBASTIANO.
                      A noble woman!

MICHAEL ANGELO.
Ah, these old hands can fashion fairer shapes
In marble, and can paint diviner pictures,
Since I have known her.

FRA SEBASTIANO.
             And you like this picture.
And yet it is in oil; which you detest.

MICHAEL ANGELO.
When that barbarian Jan Van Eyck discovered
The use of oil in painting, he degraded
His art into a handicraft, and made it
Sign-painting, merely, for a country inn
Or wayside wine-shop.  'T is an art for women,
Or for such leisurely and idle people
As you, Fra Bastiano.  Nature paints not
In oils, but frescoes the great dome of heaven
With sunset; and the lovely forms of clouds
And flying vapors.

FRA SEBASTIANO.
             And how soon they fade!
Behold yon line of roofs and belfries painted
Upon the golden background of the sky,
Like a Byzantine picture, or a portrait
Of Cimabue.  See how hard the outline,
Sharp-cut and clear, not rounded into shadow.
Yet that is nature.

MICHAEL ANGELO.
                    She is always right.
The picture that approaches sculpture nearest
Is the best picture.