He believed in dreams and omens. One of his friends dreamed
twice that Lorenzo, then lately dead, appeared to him in grey and dusty
apparel. To Michelangelo this dream seemed to portend the troubles which
afterwards really came, and with the suddenness which was characteristic
of all his movements, he left Florence. Having occasion to pass through
Bologna, he neglected to procure the little seal of red wax which the
stranger entering Bologna must carry on the thumb of his right hand. He
had no money to pay the fine, and would have been thrown into prison had
not one of the magistrates interposed. He remained in this man's house a
whole year, rewarding his hospitality by readings from the Italian poets
whom he loved. Bologna, with its endless colonnades and fantastic
leaning towers, can never have been one of the lovelier cities of Italy.
But about the portals of its vast unfinished churches and its dark
shrines, half hidden by votive flowers and candles, lie some of the
sweetest works of the early Tuscan sculptors, Giovanni da Pisa and
Jacopo della Quercia, things as winsome as flowers; and the year which
Michelangelo spent in copying these works was not a lost year.
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