With quick intuition he soon perceived that Malatesta Baglioni, the captain-general of the republic, was a traitor, and, warned that he himself was to be assassinated, he fled to Venice. Here, in exile, he probably wrote his beautiful sonnets to Dante, whose works he so ardently admired. "How shall we speak of him? for our blind eyes Are all unequal to his dazzling rays. Easier it is to blame his enemies, Than for the tongue to tell his highest praise. For us he did explore the realms of woe; And, at his coming, did high heaven expand Her lofty gates, to whom his native land Refused to open hers. Yet shall thou know, Ungrateful city, in thine own despite, That thou hast fostered best thy Dante's fame; For virtue, when oppressed, appears more bright. And brighter, therefore, shall his glory be, Suffering of all mankind most wrongfully, Since in the world there lives no greater name." SOUTHEY. Venice offered Michael Angelo all possible inducements to remain, and Francis I. of France eagerly besought the artist to live at his court; but his heart was in Florence, and thither he returned, and bravely helped to defend her to the last. When the Medici were again triumphant, and freedom was dead, the artist being too great a man to imprison or kill, he was publicly pardoned by the pope, and went sadly to his work on the monuments in the Medici Chapel of San Lorenzo. Here he labored day and night, eating little and sleeping less, ill in body and suffering deeply in heart for his beloved Florence; working into the speaking stone his sorrow and his hopes. In 1534 the Medici Chapel was completed,--a massive piece of architecture, executed at an almost fabulous expense. On one side is the tomb of Giuliano de' Medici, the son of Lorenzo the Magnificent, with his statue in a sitting posture, holding in his hand the bâton of a general. Beneath him, over the tomb, are the statues Day and Night. Opposite is the tomb of Lorenzo de' Medici, the grandson of Lorenzo the Magnificent, and the father of Catherine de' Medici. It is clad in armor, with a helmet overshadowing the grave features. The Italians call it Il Pensiero ("Thought," or "Meditation"). Hawthorne said of this statue, "No such grandeur and majesty have elsewhere been put into human shape. It is all a miracle--the deep repose, and the deep life within it. It is as much a miracle to have achieved this as to make a statue that would rise up and walk.... This statue is one of the things which I look at with highest enjoyment, but also with grief and impatience, because I feel that I do not come at all to that which it involves, and that by and by I must go away and leave it forever. How wonderful! To take a block of marble, and convert it wholly into thought, and to do it through all the obstructions and impediments of drapery."