Two things drew him to Bertoldo: the hope of finding the tradition of Donatello and the fascination of the antique. He found something even more valuable there in the friendship of the prince and of the élite of the Florentine thinkers. Lorenzo took an interest in him, lodged him in the palace and admitted him to his son's table, and in this way Michelangelo found himself at the very heart of the Renaissance, in the midst of the humanists and the poets and in intimate relation with all whom Italy counted most noble; with Pico della Mirandola, with Pulci, Benevieni and especially with Poliziano, "who loved him greatly and urged him to study, although that was hardly necessary."[7] Surrounded by this atmosphere of lofty paganism he became intoxicated with the classic idea and became himself a pagan; he made the heroic forms of Greece live again while putting into them his own savage vigour. Following the suggestions of Poliziano he wrought the bas-relief of the Combat of the Centaurs and the Lapithæ of the Casa Buonarroti, in which the figures are athletic and struggling and the faces impassive and proud. He carved the bestial face of the Laughing Satyr with its violent and strained expression as of one who was not used to laughter, and a little later the relief of Apollo and Marsyas. Nevertheless this paganism did not touch his Christian faith at all. The struggle that was to endure almost all his life had already begun within him between those two hostile worlds which he vainly tried to reconcile. In 1489 and 1490 Savonarola began in Florence his fiery sermons on the Apocalypse and Michelangelo went to hear them with all the rest of Lorenzo's circle. He had been brought up very religiously by his father, a kind, God-fearing man of the old style, and his brother Lionardo in 1491, under the influence of Savonarola, entered the Monastery of the Dominicans at Pisa. He could not remain indifferent to the burning words of a prophet who was like an elder brother of the prophets of the Sistine and whose sombre visions and fiery purity must have pierced the heart of the youth who listened to the preaching in S. Marco or the Duomo. I am convinced, nevertheless, that historians have very much exaggerated the effect of this influence on Michelangelo. In the beginning he certainly did not feel very strongly the heroic grandeur of the frail little preacher who from his high pulpit launched his lightnings against pope and princes. His first impression seems to have been almost entirely one of terror; he did not escape from the contagion of fear which seized the entire city at the thunder of the gloomy prophecies which held the bloody sword of God suspended over Italy and which filled the streets of Florence with people weeping madly. When at last there came the new Cyrus, foretold by the monk of S. Marco, Charles VIII, King of France, Michelangelo was seized with panic and fled to Venice (1494).