By this time the House of the Medici, with all their followers, having been hunted out of Florence, came to Bologna and were lodged in the House of the Rossi.

Thus the vision of Cardiere, whether a delusion of the devil, a divine warning, or a strong imagination that had taken hold of him, was verified; a thing so truly remarkable that it is worthy of being recorded.

I have narrated it just as I heard it from Michael Angelo himself.

It was about three years after the death of the Magnificent Lorenzo that his children were exiled from Florence, so that Michael Angelo was between twenty and twenty-one years of age when he escaped the first popular tumults by remaining with the aforesaid gentleman of Bologna until the city of Florence settled down again.

This gentleman honoured him highly, delighting in his genius, and every evening he made him read something from Dante or from Petrarca, or now and then from Boccaccio, until he fell asleep.
XVII.