But of all Andrea’s quarrels, that which excited his greatest wrath was his breach with his Buscoldo neighbour, Francesco Aliprandi, whom he publicly accused of stealing five hundred quinces from a tree which grew in his garden. There is a singular combination of the pathetic and ludicrous in Mantegna’s description of the beauty of his fruit tree, with its branches so heavily laden that they touched the ground. Each day he looked upon it with fresh delight, until one September morning he found all the quinces gone, and the tree stripped and bare. His anger knew no bounds, and he did not hesitate to charge his nearest neighbours, the Aliprandi, who he was convinced bore him secret ill-will with the theft. Upon this Francesco Aliprandi, who seems to have been a citizen of good birth, denied the charge indignantly, saying that during the two hundred years his family had lived in Mantua, they had never been insulted by so vile an epithet as that of thief, and complaining of Mantegna’s disagreeable character as the real cause of all this disturbance. “No one,” Aliprandi continues, “can live near him in peace, and at the present moment he is engaged in lawsuits with no less than five of his neighbours.” Even the Marquis was forced to admit this time that Andrea was in the wrong, and, after carefully investigating the case, arrived at the conclusion that the quinces had been stolen by some unknown thief. This ruggedness of disposition and exaggerated susceptibility which, by attaching excessive importance to the trifling cares of daily life, proved a constant torment to Mantegna and those around him, remind us curiously of Michelangelo, whom in more ways than one our master resembled. Like the great Florentine in this also, he never stooped to flattery or servile expressions in addressing his patron. On the contrary, there is from the first an independent spirit and proud consciousness of his own merit which never deserts him, and he tells the Marquis repeatedly that his coming to Mantua was a great favour on his part, and that no other prince in Italy has so industrious an artist in his service. The boast may not have sounded well in Mantegna’s lips, but it was a true one. His activity was indefatigable, and whether he painted in chapels and palaces, or made studies for tapestry or designs from the turkey-cocks and hens which strutted in the court poultry-yard, his time and powers were unreservedly placed at Lodovico’s disposal. What we have to regret is that so little of all his splendid work is left, although when we consider the subsequent history of Mantua, it is rather to be wondered that anything has been saved from the general wreck.