Florence, just as he had done before in Rome for the tomb of Julius II, all the material which would be necessary for the entire undertaking, a veritable mountain of marble. He kept putting off the moment of beginning. Was it not the truth--though he did not admit it even to himself--that he was really afraid of the great architectural undertaking into which he had imprudently plunged and for which he had so little training? How, indeed, could he have acquired this new art which he had had no chance of practising? Had he not promised too much and did he not feel himself in a blind alley with no way out, where he no longer dared either to advance or retreat? All his efforts were unsuccessful, even those for the transportation of the marble. He was cheated by his workmen, and four of the six monolithic columns sent to Florence were shattered on the way, one of them at Florence itself. At last the pope and Cardinal de' Medici grew impatient at this useless loss of so much precious time in the marshes and quarries of Pietra Santa and on March 10, 1520, an order of the pope clearly and completely released Michelangelo from the agreement of 1518 concerning the façade of S. Lorenzo and from all obligations in regard to it. Michelangelo only knew of this through the arrival at Seravezza of the gangs of workmen sent by Cardinal Giulio to take his place. He was cruelly hurt. "I do not begrudge the cardinal," he says, "the three years which I have lost here. I do not blame him because I am exhausted by this work for S. Lorenzo. I do not blame him for the great affront of having ordered me to do this work and then of taking it away from me--I do not even know for what reason. I do not count against him all that I have spent, which amounts to this: Pope Leo takes back the quarry with the blocks already cut; I have left the money that I have in hand--500 ducats--and I am given my liberty." He could not hold his patrons responsible. The fault was his own, as he well knew, and that was his worst punishment. Justi has said, not unreasonably, that he committed the sin against the Holy Ghost in wasting so many years in such unimportant work. What did he accomplish from 1515 to 1520 in the fulness of his vigour? Plans which he could never carry out, plans for the façade of S. Lorenzo, plans for the tomb of Julius II, plans for the tomb of Dante, whose remains the Academicians of Florence wanted to bring back from Ravenna to his own country[37]--for in October, 1519, in the midst of the very worst of his difficulties he had not hesitated to offer his services to Leo X to "raise to the divine poet a monument worthy of him."