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THE LIFE OF MICHAEL ANGELO
towards Vasari and said: 'I am so old that death frequently drags at my mantle to take me, and one day my person will fall like this light.' "
He was absorbed by the idea of death: from day to day it became gloomier and more attractive. "There is not one of my thoughts," he said to Vasari, "on which death is not deeply engraved."[1] It seemed to him, now, to be the only happiness in life.
"When my past is before me—and that is so every moment—I then well know, O false world! the error and the fault of the human race. He who ends by consenting to listen to your flatteries and your vain delights prepares painful sorrows for his soul. He knows well—he who has had experience—how often you promise the peace and prosperity which you do not possess, nor ever will. Consequently, the least favoured being is he who remains the longest here below; whilst he who lives the shortest time the more easily returns to Heaven. …[2]{
"Having reached my last hour, after many years of life, I tardily recognise, O world, your charms! You promise peace, and you possess it not; you promise rest, which dies before birth. … This I say and know from experience: he alone is elected to Heaven whose death follows closely on his birth."[3]
On his nephew Leonardo fêting the birth of his son, Michael Angelo blamed him severely.
"This pomp displeases me. It is not permissible to laugh when the whole world is weeping. It is senseless
