He was always ailing in health, and several times very near death, particularly in 1544, when he was nursed by his friend Riccio in the house of the Strozzi, and in his later years he suffered cruelly from gout and stone. His indomitable nervous energy supported him, and at eighty-five he inspected the works of St. Peter's on horseback. In spite of a severe attack of gout in August, 1561, he would let no one take care of him and he still lived alone. His nephew Lionardo was least of all allowed to interfere with these arrangements, for Michelangelo attributed his anxiety to an interest in his inheritance and did not hesitate to tell him so. Both the Duke of Tuscany and the pope were anxious about the plans and drawings of his public works, which Michelangelo kept in his own house, for fear that they might be stolen after his death. So in June, 1563, at the instigation of Vasari, who saw that Michelangelo was failing rapidly, Cosmo de' Medici secretly directed his ambassador, Averado Serristori, to keep a strict watch on the domestic life of Michelangelo and on everyone who came to his house. In case of his sudden death an inventory was to be taken of all his possessions, drawings, cartoons, models, silver, etc., and a watch to be kept that nothing was taken in the first confusion. All that had to do with the construction of St. Peter's or the sacristy or the Laurentian library was to be put carefully aside. Weakened as he was, Michelangelo still worked. Since 1562 he had hardly written at all himself, and Daniele da Volterra did most of his correspondence, but he never relinquished his chisel. On February 12, 1564, he spent the whole day standing at work on his Pietà, and on the fourteenth, although he was seized with fever, he rode out on horseback into the country in the rain, and would not consent to stay in his bed until the sixteenth. On the eighteenth of February he died in full consciousness, with Daniele da Volterra and his faithful friend Tommaso dei Cavalieri beside him. Giunto è già 'l corso della vita mia Con tempestoso mar per fragil barca Al comus porto....[118] Cosmo de' Medici was at once notified by his ambassador, and the next day the governor of Rome made an inventory of Michelangelo's property in the presence of Pier Luigi Gaeta and Cavalieri. There was much less than had been expected, for he had burned almost all his drawings. They found a chest containing seven or eight thousand crowns and a trunk closed and sealed and full of papers, and also three statues, the unfinished Pietà,[119] a figure of Saint Peter just begun, and a little unfinished figure of Christ bearing the cross in the style of that in the Minerva, and yet different. There were besides ten cartoons as follows: 1. The plan of St. Peter's. 2. The façade of a palace(a small cartoon). 3. A window of St. Peter's. 4. The old plan for St. Peter's, after a drawing of San Gallo's. 5. Three sketches of little figures. 6. Windows.