While Michael Angelo was working at his picture of _The Last Judgment_,
he fell from the scaffold and seriously injured his leg. Soured by pain
and seized with an attack of misanthropy, the painter shut himself up in
his house and would not see any one.

But he reckoned without his physician; and the physician this time was
as stubborn as the invalid.

This excellent disciple of Æsculapius was named Baccio Rontini. Having
learned by chance of the accident that had befallen the great artist, he
presented himself before his house and knocked in vain at the door.

No response.

He shouted, he flew into a passion, and he called the neighbours and the
servants in a loud voice.

Complete silence.

He goes to find a ladder, places it against the front of the house, and
tries to enter by the casements. The windows are hermetically sealed and
the shutters are fast.

What is to be done? Any one else in the physician's place would have
given up; but Rontini was not the man to be discouraged for so little.
With much difficulty he enters the cellar and with no less trouble he
goes up into Buonarroti's room, and, partly by acquiescence and partly
by force, he triumphantly tends his friend's leg.

It was quite time: exasperated by his sufferings, the artist had