He went there and found the marble very unmanageable and
unsuitable;(47) and even if it had been suitable, it would be a difficult
and very expensive business to bring it down to the sea; for it would
require a new road to be constructed for several miles over the mountains
with pickaxes, and across the plains, which were very marshy, on piles.
Michael Angelo wrote all this to the Pope; but he rather believed those
who had written to him from Florence, and ordered him to make the road. So
to carry out the will of the Pope he constructed this road,(48) and by it
carried a vast quantity of marble to the sea coast, amongst them five
columns of the right size; one of them is to be seen on the Piazza of San
Lorenzo, brought by him to Florence;(49) the other four, because the Pope
had changed his mind and turned his thoughts elsewhere, are still lying on
the sea shore. But the Marchese di Carrara, thinking that Michael Angelo,
as a citizen of Florence, might have been the originator of the quarrying
at Pietrasanta, became his enemy; nor would he allow him to return to
Carrara afterwards even for marble that he had already quarried, which was
a great loss to Michael Angelo.
CHAPTER VIII
THE SACRISTY OF SAN LORENZO
XL. Now having returned to Florence, and finding, as was said before, that
the fervour of Pope Leo was all spent, Michael Angelo, grieving, remained
there doing nothing for a long while, having, first in one thing and then
in another, thrown away much of his time, to his great annoyance.
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