ignored it the worst of calami-ties would overtake him. When the second letter arrived, the governor sent for Angelo to say to him:

— You have treated the Pope as the King of France himself would not dare to treat him, and we must put an end to this affair. We shall not stir up a war against the Pope for your sake and so imperil the safety of the state and expose it to indig-nity. Come... put your affairs in order for the return to Rome.

The artist sensed a spreading evil, and he actually thought of flight. The Sultan of Istanbul sent asking for him and opening to him the doors of his sultanate — and Istanbul had long been breathing in the flowers of Florence and their fragrance — and had Angelo gone down to the sultanate he would have found before him, as some say, a wide field for work and many projects standing ready. But a third letter arrived from the Pope, and there was no longer any escape from returning and meeting His Holiness midway on the road between Rome and Florence. When Angelo arrived he found the Pope awaiting him, and he bowed before him to receive his blessing, and His Holiness answered, saying:

— It was your duty to present yourself to us of your own accord; instead of that, you waited until we came ourselves to look for you!... And he meant by this that Bologna — where they met... was nearer to the city of flowers and art than to the city of churches and religion.

Angelo replied, saying: — Your Holiness must not forget that you wronged me without any fault or sin of mine!...

And the Pope bowed his head without uttering a word or offering an answer. One of the priests wished to save

the situation, and turned to him, repeating:

— Your Holiness must bear with this man's errors, for they are the fruit and offspring of ignorance; painters are all like that, and sculptors too, in spite of themselves.

The Pope started up in anger, continuing: — It is you who wrong him, not we; you who direct insult at him and abuse him; you are the ignorant fool, not he. Go... go, and may the devil take you.

They say the priest was slow in leaving, so the servants carried him out by force; and the Pope breathed out, scattering his fury, and blessed Angelo, and "pardoned" him, and asked him to fashion for him a statue to be cast in bronze. When he had finished his work Angelo returned to Florence, where he found a new letter from the Pope asking him to return to Rome to continue building the monument and raising its galleries — as he wished — and he returned...

Rome awoke early, in the forenoon of the twenty-first of February in the year 1513, to the sound of church bells and chimes, and its people asked, as was their habit, what the matter might be; they were told that Pope Julius II — patron of the monument of which the statue of Moses became one of its figures — had died. Many eyes wept for him and loving hearts grieved for him... but time paid no heed: it neither tarried nor stopped.

Leo X took his place on the eleventh of March. And on the sixth of May the officials met to decide upon the continuation of the memorial's construction; they renewed the contract with Angelo, and he set to work, having devoted to it seven years of his life, and wrote of it, saying: — This work upon which my thoughts are set will

be a thing whose like shall never appear upon the face of this earth.

This, my friend, is a single episode from the life of the greatest of artists, now sleeping — an episode with His Holiness the Supreme Pontiff... in one of the ages of the dark centuries... and it ended as every episode between art and anything else ends: with the victory of the former and its immortality... Have you not heard Angelo singing in one of his poems, addressing the artist:

"By bringing the dead old mem-ories back to life you bestow upon them and upon yourself, despite time and nature, a fame that shall not perish, and a life that shall never pass away."

And do not grieve. For Michelangelo lived long enough in time to witness thirteen popes — beginning with Sixtus IV and ending with Pius IV. Several popes came before them and several popes followed after them.

But the whole world has never seen the like of Michelangelo, neither before him nor after him, and it may never see it at all... for the gods are not always strong enough to create such men.

On the morning of the eighteenth of February in the year 1564 the people awoke to strange sounds their ears had never known before, unlike the sound of church bells, unlike the ringing of chimes... The whole world awoke to understand that Angelo's chisel and hammer had truly fallen from his hands, and that his brush had dropped... and that he was dead!... Then all eyes wept for him, and all hearts grieved for him, and it was as though time, for the first time, its heart broken within it, tarried... and then stopped.

Beirut, 28/5/1947