SECUNDUS CURION.
SIXTEENTH CENTURY.
Cœlius Secundus Curion, a zealous Lutheran, having dared to give the lie in open church to a Jacobin who had heaped on him the most odious calumnies from the pulpit, was immediately arrested by order of the inquisitor of Turin. He was dragged from prison to prison, but he at last made his escape so cleverly that his enemies could only account for it by accusing him of magic. In order to exculpate himself from an accusation extremely dangerous at that time, he published an account of his escape in a little Latin dialogue, entitled “Probus,” from which we select the following passages for translation:—
“I had been shut up for eight days in my new prison,” says Curion, “with my feet fastened to enormous pieces of wood, when, by nothing less than a sudden inspiration from Heaven, I was urged to supplicate the young man in charge of me to release me from at least one of my fetters. The other, as I pointed out to him, would be quite heavy enough to ensure my safe custody. As he was merciful, and bore no malice against me, he at length suffered himself to be persuaded, and set one of my feet at liberty. He had no sooner left me than I set to work to carry out a plan I had already formed for my escape. I tore my shirt into shreds, and taking off my stocking and slipper, stuffed them with these rags till I had made a very fair model of a leg and foot. But though the form and contour of the flesh were there, you had only to touch the new limb to find that it was lamentably deficient in bone. What was to be done? I looked about everywhere, till at last my eye lighted on a stick hidden away under a settle. I seized it eagerly and soon fashioned bones for my leg; and then, hiding my real limb under my cloak, I sat calmly awaiting the success of my ruse. After a time the young man came in to pay me his usual visit and to ask me how I did. ‘I should feel better,’ I said, pointing to my dummy, ‘if you would kindly fasten this leg to the fetter and let me give the other a rest.’ He consented, and chained up my false limb with all imaginable care.”
The rest is soon told. The prisoner waited till nightfall, and as soon as he heard his attendants snoring, quietly parted company with his fettered leg, undressed it, clothed himself again, and softly stole out of his cell, which no one had taken the trouble to fasten on the outside. Even then his difficulties were not at an end; but he at length found means to scale the outer walls of his prison and to regain his liberty. (Ludovic Lalanne: Curiosities of Biography.)
BENVENUTO CELLINI.
1538.
Benvenuto Cellini lived nearly twenty years at Rome, producing those masterpieces of work in the precious metals which have immortalised his name. He was high in favour with Clement VII., and was sought after and entrusted with the most important commissions by the princes of the Church and other great personages who visited the Eternal City. He had won the especial regard of Clement by his courage in taking part in the defence of the castle of St. Angelo when it was besieged by the army of the Constable of Bourbon; and such was the confidence placed in him at that time that all the costliest things among the Papal treasures were given to him to be broken up, and he was allowed to hide the jewels for safe keeping in his own clothes. He afterwards engraved for the same Pope and his successor a series of coins, which have always been considered by the best judges to rival the finest productions of antiquity. But his was not the mild temper of the artist, nor was the history of his studio all the history of his life. He was brutal and ungovernable in his rage, and licentious in his love; and he was feared and hated almost as much as he was admired, although an easy tolerance of vice was the fashion of the time. A certain goldsmith, named Pompeo, had incurred his enmity by trying to deprive him of the favour of Clement VII.; and during the interregnum which followed the death of that Pope, he stabbed the unfortunate artist in open day and in the very midst of Rome. But he escaped the direct punishment due to this atrocious crime, for Paul III., who succeeded to the Papal throne, not only pardoned him, but gave him many important commissions. He was actively engaged in these labours when he was threatened by a new danger—probably the consequence of a former outrage. A workman accused him of having stolen some of the jewels entrusted to his keeping during the siege of Rome. Paul could afford to forgive the murder of a subject, but he could not look so lightly on a theft by which he himself was likely to be a sufferer, and he began to mistrust and to dislike Cellini before he had given himself much pains to examine into the truth of the accusation against him. Added to this, too, the artist had a mortal foe near the person of his patron in Peter Louis Farnese, the son of Paul. One such enemy would have been enough for his ruin; with two, he could hardly fail to be utterly lost.
“One morning,” says Cellini in his memoirs, “I put on my cloak to take a short walk, and was turning down the Julian street to enter the quarter called Chiavica, when Crispino, captain of the city guard, met me with his whole band of sbirri, and told me roughly I was the Pope’s prisoner. I answered him, ‘Crispino, you mistake your man.’ ‘By no means,’ said Crispino, ‘you are the clever artist Benvenuto; I know you very well, and have orders to conduct you to the Castle of St. Angelo, where noblemen and men of genius like yourself are confined.’ As four of his myrmidons were going to fall upon me and deprive me forcibly of a dagger which I had by my side, and of the rings on my fingers, Crispino ordered them not to offer to touch me. It was sufficient, he said, for them to do their office and prevent me from making my escape. Then coming up to me, he very politely demanded my arms. Whilst I was giving them up, I recollected that it was in that very place that I had formerly killed Pompeo. They conducted me to the castle, and locked me up in one of the upper apartments of the tower. This was the first time I ever tasted the inside of a prison; and I was then in my thirty-seventh year.”
It was not difficult for Benvenuto to disprove the charges against him; he was, nevertheless, kept in prison in spite of the good offices of Montluc, the ambassador of France, who begged for his release, in the name of Francis I. The governor of St. Angelo was a Florentine, and he showed every attention to his unfortunate fellow-citizen, even allowing him on parole a certain freedom of movement within the walls. But after a time he shut him up closely again; and then once more restored him to his state of partial liberty.
“When I found,” says Benvenuto, “that I was being treated with so much rigour, I reflected deeply on the matter; and I said to myself, ‘If this man should again happen to take such a freak, and not choose to trust me any longer, I should feel myself released from my word, and should make a trial of my own skill.’ I then began to get my servants to bring me new thick sheets, and did not send back the dirty ones; and when they asked me for them, I told them that I had given them away to some of the soldiers, but that they were not to speak about it or the poor fellows would run the risk of being sent to the galleys. I hid my sheets in the mattress that served me for a bed, and burnt the straw with which it was stuffed, bit by bit, in my chimney, to make room for them. I then tore them up into long bands, and when I had enough of these bands to reach to the bottom of the tower, I told my servants I did not mean to give away any more of my linen, adding that they were to bring me finer sheets in future, and I would return them the dirty ones.