So writes Vasari, but on this accusation we would pause. There may have been some sickness in Pietro's soul, we feel and see it in his work and portrait; but he had lived in terrible times and seen much evil and striven to paint much good. The fact that he was buried in unconsecrated ground proves literally nothing, for an old chronicler, describing the wretchedness of the times, combined with the terrors of the plague, tells us, "that such was the state of affairs, that the dead were paid as little attention to in those times as in our day we might give to goats or sheep; and that especially in the country where no one attended to anything, all died, almost without exception, not like men but almost like beasts; and as the consecrated ground did not suffice for burial they put the bodies into ditches, covering them up with a very little earth." Furthermore, "it was prohibited to visit the sick, and to attend the funerals of the dead." This being the case, how was it possible to find the corpse of one old man in order to lay it in consecrated ground? Pietro's sons tried hard to find it. We read of them: of Giambatisto, Francesco and Michaelangelo, searching diligently but in vain for their father's bones, that they might lay them in the Church of S. Agostino.[89] Mariotti the chronicler of Perugino, whose loving and infinitely careful search has soothed, if it could not obliterate Vasari's spiteful words, ends his notes on Perugino with the following quotation from a Latin poet:-- "Se pictus moreris, non moriturus obis." * * * * * It was just at the end of the period of Pietro's prime, namely, about the years 1499 to 1507, that he was commissioned to paint the walls of the Cambio. It is interesting to remember that at this time Perugino was in correspondence with the monks of Orvieto, who wished him to paint the frescoes in their Duomo. He had long dallied with his answer, he had certain other large works on hand, but when his fellow-citizens sent in their request that he should undertake this very considerable work for them he did not hesitate; he threw over his previous engagement, which, as we know, was magnificently taken up by Signorelli, and he at once set to work upon the walls of the Cambio.