more affected than the one he sought to console. His ceaseless activity and overwhelming fatigue delivered him over without defence to all the aberrations of a mind which was filled with suspicions. He distrusted both his friends[1] and his enemies. He distrusted his parents, his brothers, and his adopted son, suspecting that they were impatiently waiting for his death.
Everything disquieted him.[2] Even the members of his own family made a mockery of his eternal disquietude.[3] As he himself said, he lived "in a state of melancholy, or rather of madness."[4] By dint of much suffering he ended by finding a sort of bitter pleasure in pain:
"E piu mi giova dove piu mi nuoce."[5]
- ↑ "In the sweetness of a perfect friendship, a menace to honour and life is often hid…" (Sonnet lxxiv. to his friend, Luigi del Riccio, who had just saved him from a serious illness, 1546.) See the fine letter of justification which his faithful friend, Tommaso de' Cavalieri, whom he had unjustly suspected, wrote to him on November 15, 1561: "I am more than certain that I have never offended you, but you are too inclined to put your trust in those whom you ought to believe the least…"
- ↑ "I live in a continual state of distrust…Place not your confidence in any one; sleep with your eyes open…."
- ↑ Letters of September and October 1515 to his brother Buonarroti: "…Do not laugh at what I write you…One ought not to mock at any one. In these days it does no harm to live in fear and disquietude for one's soul and body…It is good at all times to be disquieted….
- ↑ He often, in his letters, calls himself: "melancholy and mad," "old and mad," "mad and wicked." But elsewhere, having been reproached for his folly, he defends himself and alleges "that it never harmed any one but himself."
- ↑ "That which hurts me most pleases me the most." (Poems, xlii.)
fled from his own house, crying that his son had driven him forth.
