Max Nordau has a certain amount of basis for his proposition that genius and madness are near allied, but it will hardly do, however, to assume that they are the same thing. Cellini at times showed a fine flaring up of talent that might be called genius—he could do exquisite work—yet there were other times when he certainly was "queer." These queer periods might account for his occasional fusing of memory and imagination, and the lapses of recollection entirely concerning things he did not wish to remember. The Memoirs were begun when he was fifty-eight and finished when he was sixty-three: thus many years had elapsed between the doing and the recording. The Constable Bourbon was killed at the siege of Rome: Cellini was present at the siege and killed several men: therefore what more probable than that Cellini killed the Constable? Cellini calmly records that it was he who did the deed. He also tells that he killed William, Prince of Orange; in fact, he killed at least one man a day for many weeks. At this distance of time we should be quite willing to take his word for it, just as we would, most certainly, if he had told us these things face to face.
In one incidental paragraph he records that he christened a son, and adds: "So far as I can remember this was my first child." He drops the record there, never once alluding to the child's mother, nor what became of the child, which if it lived was a man grown at the time Cellini was writing.
His intense hatred toward all who were in direct competition with him, his references to them as cheese-mites, beasts, buzzards and brigands, his fears of poison, and suspicions that they had "curdled his bronze"; his visitations by spirits and angels, mark him as a man who trod the borderland of sanity. If he did not like a woman or she did not like him—the same thing—she was a troll, wench, scullion, punk, trollop or hussy. He had such a beautiful vocabulary of names for folks he did not admire, that the translator is constantly put to straits to produce a product that will not be excluded from the mails.
If you want to know how things were done when knighthood was in flower, you can find out here. Or should you be possessed of literary longing and have a desire to produce some such cheerful message for humanity as "A Gentleman of France," "Monsieur Beaucaire," or "Under the Red Robe," you can sink your shaft in Cellini's book and mine enough incidents in an hour to make a volume, with a by-product of slag for several Penny Shockers.
Yet Cellini has corroborated history on many points, and backed up the gossipy Vasari in a valuable way. It is very doubtful whether either of these gentlemen had ever the felicity of reading the other's book, unless there be books in Elysium—as Charles Lamb thought there were—but sure it is that they render sidelights on the times that are much to our profit. Vasari and Cellini had been close friends in youth, working and studying together. Vasari was a poor artist and a commonplace architect, but he seemed to have social qualities that bridged the gulf where his talent broke off short. In the Palazzo Vecchio are several large specimens of his work that must have been once esteemed for their own sake. Now their chief value lies in the fact that they are a Hop-Smith production, having been painted by a pleasing writer and a charming gentleman, and so we point them out with forefinger and bated breath.
Cellini's hate of Vasari proves, also, that the Gossipy One stood well with the reigning powers, otherwise Benvenuto would not have thought to condemn his work and allude to the man as a dough-face, trickster, lickspittle, slanderer, vulture, vagrom, villain, vilifier and gnat's hind-foot. Cellini threatened to kill the man several times: he denounced him in public and used to call after him on the street, referring to him cheerfully as a deep-dyed rogue. Had either of these men killed the other, it would have been a loss to letters; but certain it is that Vasari was much more of a gentleman than Cellini. That Vasari was judicial in his estimates of men is shown by his references to Cellini, whom he speaks of as "A skilled artist, of active, alert and industrious habits, who produced many valuable works of art, but who unfortunately was possessed of a most unpleasant temper."
Men are so fallible in their estimates of contemporaries that one man's statement that another is a rogue does not in the slightest change our views of that man. What we are, that we see: the epithets a man applies to another usually fit himself better, and this is the thought in mind when we read what Cellini says of Vasari and Bandinelli. These men were commonplace artists, but pretty good men; Cellini was a better artist than either, but not a desirable tenant for the upper flat in your house if you chanced to reside below.
Cellini was landed behind grated bars many times, but usually managed to speedily escape. However, in his thirty-eighth year, he found himself in a dungeon of Sant' Angelo, that grim fortress that he had fought so vigorously to defend.
More than one homicide the Recording Angel had marked up against him, but men took small note of these things, and even Pope Paul had personally blessed him and granted him absolution for all the murders he had committed or might commit—this in consideration of his distinguished services in defense of the Vatican.
The charge against him now was the very humdrum one of stealing treasure that he was supposed to guard. That he was innocent there is no doubt: whatever the man was, he was no thief. The charge against him was a trumped-up one to get him out of the way. He was painfully in evidence—he talked like a windmill, and in his swaggering he had become inconvenient, if not dangerous, to some who were close to political greatness. No one caring for the job of killing him, they locked him up, for the good of himself and society. It probably was the intention to keep him under key for only a few weeks, until his choler would subside; but he was so saucy, and sent out such a stream of threats to all concerned, that things reached a point where it was unsafe to liberate him.