It is in this frame of mind that he at last makes his decision. If in later years he attains to some eminence and is tempted to-write his memoirs, this business of his marriage will be one of the episodes he will be able to detail, for his own justification, with perfect composure. A dispensation of Providence was often necessary to bring him to the point. This dispensation manifested itself under the most diverse forms. The learned Tiraqueau, of whom we have already spoken, was struck one day with the fact that the Greeks and Romans had a very poor opinion of celibacy, and he culled from Valerius Maximus especially a number of convincing proofs on this head. Whereupon he crossed the street and demanded in marriage the young girl who lived opposite; he found that her name was Marie Cailler, that she was very well-bred, and that her parents were anxious to get her off their hands. But Tiraqueau was determined not to suggest a suspicion that a man of his stamp felt a real need of marriage, and so he dedicated to his father-in-law and to posterity the unparalleled account of his actual motives. The hand of Providence was sufficiently revealed in the will of the parents, or in the cash of an uncle from whom one had expectations, and who, not having himself taken the trouble to perpetuate his stock, was determined that the duty should be undertaken by another. It is curious enough to see Michelangelo in this rôle of the preachifying uncle. So far as he was concerned, he had long held such peculiar ideas about marriage that he would have nothing to do with it. At a time when he had come to years of discretion he worked himself up into a fine fury of indignation against his brother, who, to put an end to an old and vexatious law-suit, thought of marrying the daughter of the opposite party. Later, however, he took it into his head that the name of Buonarotti must not be allowed to disappear: “the world would not come to an end, but every living being does his best to preserve his species.” For this reason his nephew was to marry. But marry whom? Not money, said the uncle, but a girl of good stock: “to wed a good, well-bred, healthy woman, is to do a good day’s work,” and to assure peace and quietness at home.