How far I succeeded, that I shall leave to be judged by others; but this I must say, that I gave to it all the study, labour, and diligence in my power and knowledge. Meanwhile, the Lord Duke Cosimo desiring that the Book of the Lives, already brought almost to completion with the greatest diligence that I had found possible, and with the assistance of some of my friends, should be given to the printers, I gave it to Lorenzo Torrentino, printer to the Duke, and so the printing was begun. But not even the Theories had been finished, when, Pope Paul III having died, I began to doubt that I might have to depart from Florence before that book was finished printing. Going therefore out of Florence to meet Cardinal di Monte, who was passing on his way to the Conclave, I had no sooner made obeisance to him and spoken a few words, than he said: "I go to Rome, and without a doubt I shall be Pope. Make haste, if you have anything to do, and as soon as you hear the news set out for Rome without awaiting other advice or any invitation." Nor did that prognostication prove false, for, being at Arezzo for that Carnival, when certain festivities and masquerades were being arranged, the news came that the Cardinal had become Julius III. Whereupon I mounted straightway on horseback and went to Florence, whence, pressed by the Duke, I went to Rome, in order to be present at the coronation of the new Pontiff and to take part in the preparation of the festivities. And so, arriving in Rome and dismounting at the house of Messer Bindo, I went to do reverence to his Holiness and to kiss his feet. Which done, the first words that he spoke to me were to remind me that what he had foretold of himself had not been false. Then, after he was crowned and settled down a little, the first thing that he wished to have done was to satisfy an obligation that he had to the memory of Antonio, the first and elder Cardinal di Monte, by means of a tomb to be made in S. Pietro a Montorio; of which the designs and models having been made, it was executed in marble, as has been related fully in another place. And meanwhile I painted the altar-picture of that chapel, in which I represented the Conversion of S. Paul, but, to vary it from that which Buonarroti had executed in the Pauline Chapel, I made S. Paul young, as he himself writes, and fallen from his horse, and led blind by the soldiers to Ananias, from whom by the imposition of hands he receives the lost sight of his eyes, and is baptized; in which work, either because the space was restricted, or whatever may have been the reason, I did not satisfy myself completely, although it was perhaps not displeasing to others, and in particular to Michelagnolo. For that Pontiff, likewise, I executed another altar-picture for a chapel in the Palace; but this, for reasons given elsewhere, was afterwards taken by me to Arezzo and placed at the high-altar of the Pieve. If, however, I