MICHAEL ANGELO.
Some morning you will look for it in vain;
It will be gone.  The current of the river
Is undermining it.

JULIUS.
                  But you repaired it.

MICHAEL ANGELO.
I strengthened all its piers, and paved its road
With travertine.  He who came after me
Removed the stone, and sold it, and filled in
The space with gravel.

JULIUS.
                     Cardinal Salviati
And Cardinal Marcello, do you listen?
This is your famous Nanni Baccio Bigio.

MICHAEL ANGELO, aside.
There is some mystery here.  These Cardinals
Stand lowering at me with unfriendly eyes.

JULIUS.
Now let us come to what concerns us more
Than bridge or gardens.  Some complaints are made
Concerning the Three Chapels in St. Peter's;
Certain supposed defects or imperfections,
You doubtless can explain.

MICHAEL ANGELO.
                     This is no longer
The golden age of art.  Men have become
Iconoclasts and critics.  They delight not
In what an artist does, but set themselves
To censure what they do not comprehend.
You will not see them bearing a Madonna
Of Cimabue to the church in triumph,
But tearing down the statue of a Pope
To cast it into cannon.  Who are they
That bring complaints against me?

JULIUS.
                              Deputies
Of the commissioners; and they complain
Of insufficient light in the Three Chapels.

MICHAEL ANGELO.
Your Holiness, the insufficient light
Is somewhere else, and not in the Three Chapels.
Who are the deputies that make complaint?

JULIUS.
The Cardinals Salviati and Marcello,
Here present.

MICHAEL ANGELO, rising.
         With permission, Monsignori,
What is it ye complain of?

CARDINAL MARCELLO,
                           We regret
You have departed from Bramante's plan,
And from San Gallo's.

MICHAEL ANGELO.
               Since the ancient time
No greater architect has lived on earth
Than Lazzari Bramante.  His design,
Without confusion, simple, clear, well-lighted.
Merits all praise, and to depart from it
Would be departing from the truth. San Gallo,
Building about with columns, took all light
Out of this plan; left in the choir dark corners
For infinite ribaldries, and lurking places
For rogues and robbers; so that when the church
Was shut at night, not five and twenty men
Could find them out.  It was San Gallo, then,
That left the church in darkness, and not I.

CARDINAL MARCELLO.
Excuse me; but in each of the Three Chapels
Is but a single window.

MICHAEL ANGELO.
                        Monsignore,
Perhaps you do not know that in the vaulting
Above there are to go three other windows.

CARDINAL SALVIATI.
How should we know?  You never told us of it.

MICHAEL ANGELO.
I neither am obliged, nor will I be,
To tell your Eminence or any other
What I intend or ought to do.  Your office
Is to provide the means, and see that thieves
Do not lay hands upon them.  The designs
Must all be left to me.

CARDINAL MARCELLO.
                        Sir architect,
You do forget yourself, to speak thus rudely
In presence of his Holiness, and to us
Who are his cardinals.

MICHAEL ANGELO, putting on his hat.
                       I do not forget
I am descended from the Counts Canossa,
Linked with the Imperial line, and with Matilda,
Who gave the Church Saint Peter's Patrimony.
I, too, am proud to give unto the Church
The labor of these hands, and what of life
Remains to me.  My father Buonarotti
Was Podesta of Chiusi and Caprese.
I am not used to have men speak to me
As if I were a mason, hired to build
A garden wall, and paid on Saturdays
So much an hour.

CARDINAL SALVIATI, aside.
       No wonder that Pope Clement
Never sat down in presence of this man,
Lest he should do the same; and always bade him
Put on his hat, lest he unasked should do it!

MICHAEL ANGELO.
If any one could die of grief and shame,
I should.  This labor was imposed upon me;
I did not seek it; and if I assumed it,
'T was not for love of fame or love of gain,
But for the love of God.  Perhaps old age
Deceived me, or self-interest, or ambition;
I may be doing harm instead of good.
Therefore, I pray your Holiness, release me;
Take off from me the burden of this work;
Let me go back to Florence.

JULIUS.
                         Never, never,
While I am living.

MICHAEL ANGELO.
                   Doth your Holiness
Remember what the Holy Scriptures say
Of the inevitable time, when those
Who look out of the windows shall be darkened,
And the almond-tree shall flourish?

JULIUS.
                              That is in
Ecclesiastes.

MICHAEL ANGELO.
               And the grasshopper
Shall be a burden, and desire shall fail,
Because man goeth unto his long home.
Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher; all
Is vanity.

JULIUS.
            Ah, were to do a thing
As easy as to dream of doing it,
We should not want for artists.  But the men
Who carry out in act their great designs
Are few in number; ay, they may be counted
Upon the fingers of this hand.  Your place
Is at St. Peter's.