There can be no doubt that he was perfectly honest in these transactions, and, as Pope Clement said, he was rather creditor than debtor.

Clement appears to have arranged matters to some extent with the executors, and we have a hint of the new arrangement in a letter by Michael Angelo to Fattucci,( 134) dated Florence, October 24, 1525:-- "MESSER GIOVAN FRANCESCO,--In reply to your last, the four statues I have in hand are not yet finished, and much has still to be done upon them.

The four others, for rivers, are not begun, because the marble was wanting, but now it has come.

I do not tell you how because there is no need.

With regard to the affair of Julius, I wish to make the Tomb like that of Pius in St.Peter's, as you have written, and will do so little by little, now one piece and now another, and will pay for it out of my own pocket, if I hold my pension and my house, as you have written; that is to say, the house where I lived yonder in Rome, with the marbles and movables therein.