It may be regretted that Cellini has not given a fuller account of the memorable sack of Borne. Yet, confining himself almost wholly to his own adventures, he presents a very vivid picture of the sad life led by the Pope and cardinals, vainly hoping for succour from Urbino, wrangling together about the causes of the tragedy, sewing the crown jewels into their doublets, and running the perils of the siege with common soldiers on the ramparts. When peace at last was signed, Cellini paid a visit to Florence, and found that his father and some other relatives had died of plague.[[362]] His brother Cecchino, however, who was a soldier in the Bande Nere of Giovanni de' Medici, and his sister Liperata survived. With them he spent a pleasant evening; for Liperata having "for a while lamented her father, her sister, her husband, and a little son that she had been deprived of, went to prepare supper, and during the rest of the evening there was not a word more spoken of the dead, but much about weddings. Thus we supped together with the greatest cheerfulness and satisfaction imaginable." In these sentences there is no avowal of hard-heartedness; only the careless familiarity with loss and danger, engendered by war, famine, plague, and personal adventures in those riotous times.[[363]] Cellini gladly risked his life in a quarrel for his friends; but he would not sadden the present by reflecting on inevitable accidents. This elastic temper permeates his character. His affections were strong, but transient. The one serious love-affair he describes, among a multitude of mere debaucheries, made him miserable for a few days. His mistress, Angelica, ran away, and left him "on the point of losing his senses or dying of grief." Yet, when he found her again, a short time sufficed to satisfy his longing, and he turned his back with jibes upon her when she bargained about money.
It is worthy of notice that, at the same time, he was an excellent son and brother. His sister was left a widow with two children; whereupon he took them all into his house, without bragging about what appears to have been the best action of his life. In the same spirit he conscientiously performed what he conceived to be his duty to Cecchino, murdered by a musketeer in Rome. After nursing his revenge till he was nearly mad, he stole out one evening and stabbed the murderer in the back.[[364]] So violent was the blow that he could not extricate his dagger from the man's spine, but had to leave it sticking in his nape. Next to his own egotism the strongest feelings in Cellini were domestic; and he showed them at one moment by charity to his sister's family, at another by a savage assassination.
After killing the musketeer, Cellini retired for refuge to the house of Alessandro de' Medici, Duke of Cività di Penna, who had been his brother's patron. The matter reached the Pope's ears, for whom Benvenuto was at work upon crown jewels. Clement sent for him, and simply said: "Now you have recovered your health, Benvenuto, take care of yourself." This shows how little they thought of homicide in Rome. After killing a man, some powerful protector had to be sought, who was usually a cardinal, since the cardinals had right of sanctuary in their palaces. There the assassin lay in hiding, in order to avoid his victim's friends and relatives, until such time as a pardon and safe-conduct and absolution had been obtained from his Holiness. When Cellini, soon after this occurrence, stabbed a private enemy, by name Pompeo, two cardinals were anxious to screen him from pursuit, and disputed the privilege of harbouring so talented a criminal.[[365]] The Pope, with marvellous good-humour, observed: "I have never heard of the death of Pompeo, but often of Benvenuto's provocation; so let a safe-conduct be instantly made out, and that will secure him from all manner of danger." A friend of Pompeo's who was present, ventured to insinuate that this was dangerous policy. The Pope put him down at once by saying, "You do not understand these matters; I would have you know that men who are unique in their profession, like Benvenuto, are not subject to the laws." Whether Paul really said these words, may be doubted; but it is clear that much was conceded to a clever workman, and that the laws were a mere brutum fulmen. No man of spirit appealed to them. Cellini, for example, was poisoned by a parish priest near Florence:[[366]] yet he never brought the man to justice; and in the case of his own murders, he only dreaded the retaliation of his victims' kinsmen. On one occasion, indeed, the civil arm came down upon him; when the city guard attempted to arrest him for Pompeo's assassination. He beat them off with swords and sticks; and, after all, it appeared that they were only acting at the instigation of Pier Luigi Farnese, whom Benvenuto had offended.
During his residence at Rome, Cellini witnessed an incantation conducted in the Colosseum by a Sicilian priest and necromancer. The conjurer and the artist, accompanied by two friends, and by a boy, who was to act as medium, went by night to the amphitheatre. The magic circle was drawn; fires were lighted, and perfumes scattered on the flames. Then the spirit-seer began his charms, calling in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, or what passed for such, upon the leaders of the hosts of hell. The whole hollow space now filled with phantoms, surging up by legions, rushing down from the galleries, issuing from subterranean caverns, and wheeling to and fro with signs of fury. All the party, says Cellini, were thrown into consternation, except himself, who, though terribly afraid, kept up the fainting spirits of the rest. At last the conjurer summoned courage to inquire when Cellini might hope to be restored to his lost love, Angelica;—for this was the trivial object of the incantation. The demons answered (how we are not told) that he would meet her ere a month had passed away. This prophecy, as it happened, was fulfilled. Then they redoubled their attacks; the necromancer kept crying out that the peril was most imminent, until the matin bells of Rome swung through the darkness, freeing them at last from fear. As they walked home, the boy, holding the Sicilian by his robe and Benvenuto by his mantle, told them that he still saw giants leaping with fantastic gestures on their path, now running along the house roofs, and now dancing on the earth. Each one of them that night dreamed in his bed of devils.[[367]]
The interest of this incident is almost wholly picturesque. It throws but little light upon the superstitions of the age.[[368]] The magnitude of the Colosseum, the popular legends concerning its magical origin, and the terrible uses of blood to which it had been put, invested this building with peculiar mystery. Robbers haunted the huge caves. Rubbish and weeds choked the passages. Sickly trees soared up from darkness into light among the porches, and the moon peered through the empty vomitories. If we call imagination to our aid, and place the necromancers and their brazier in the centre of this space;—if we fancy the priest's chaunted spells, the sacred names invoked in his unholy rites, the shuddering terror of the conscience-stricken accomplices, and Cellini with defiant mien but quailing heart, we can well believe that he saw more than the amphitheatre contained. Whether the spectres were projected by the conjurer from a magic lantern on the smoke that issued from his heaps of blazing wood, so that the volumes of vapour, agitated by the wind and rolling in thick spirals, showed them retreating and advancing, and varying in shape and number, is a matter for conjecture. Cellini firmly believed that he had been environed by living squadrons of the spirits of the damned.
The next four years were spent by Cellini chiefly in Rome, in peril of his life at several seasons, owing to the animosity of Pier Luigi Farnese. One journey he took at this period to Venice, passing through Ferrara, where he came to blows with the Florentine exiles. It is interesting to find the respectable historian Jacopo Nardi involved, if only as a peacemaker, in this affray.[[369]] He also visited Florence and cast dies for Alessandro's silver coinage. It was here that he found opportunities of observing the perilous intimacy between the Duke of Cività di Penna and his cousin—quel pazzo malinconico filosofo di Lorenzino.[[370]] In April 1537, having quarrelled with the Pope, who seems to have adopted Pier Luigi's prejudice against him, Cellini set out for France with two of his workmen. They passed through Florence, Bologna, Venice, and Padua, staying in the last place to model a medallion portrait of Pietro Bembo;[[371]] then they crossed the Grisons by the Bernina and Albula passes. We hear nothing about this part of the journey, except that the snow was heavy, and that they ran great danger of their lives. Cellini must have traversed some of the most romantic scenery of Switzerland at the best season of the year; yet not a word escapes him about the beauty of the Alps or the wonder of the glaciers, which he saw for the first time. The pleasure we derive from contemplating savage scenery was unknown to the Italians of the sixteenth century; the height and cold, the gloom and solitude of mountains struck them with a sense of terror or of dreariness. On the Lake of Wallenstadt Cellini met with a party of Germans, whom he hated as cordially as an Athenian of the age of Pericles might have loathed the Scythians for their barbarism.[[372]] The Italians embarked in one boat, the Germans in another; Cellini being under the impression that the Northern lakes would not be so likely to drown him as those of his own country. However, when a storm swept down the hills, he took a terrible fright, and compelled the boatmen at the point of the poniard to put him and his company ashore. The description of their struggles to drag their heavily laden horses over the uneven ground near Wesen, is extremely graphic, and gives a good notion of the dangers of the road in those days.[[373]] That night they "heard the watch sing at all hours very agreeably; and as the houses of that town were all of wood, he kept bidding them to take care of their fires." Next day they arrived, not without other accidents, at Zurich, "a marvellous city, as clear and polished as a jewel." Thence by Solothurn, Lausanne, Geneva, and Lyons, they made their way to Paris.
This long and troublesome journey led to nothing, for Cellini grew weary of following the French Court about from place to place; his health too failed him, and he decided that he would rather die in Italy than France.[[374]] Accordingly he returned to Rome, and there, not long after his arrival, he was arrested by the order of Pope Paul III.[[375]] The charge against him, preferred by one of his own prentices, was this. During the siege of Rome, he had been employed by Clement to melt down the tiaras and papal ornaments, in order that the precious stones might be conveyed away in secrecy. He did so; and afterwards confessed to having kept a portion of the gold filings found in the cinders of his brazier during the operation. For this crime Clement gave him absolution.[[376]] Now, however, he was accused of having stolen gold and jewels to the amount of nearly eighty thousand ducats. "The avarice of the Pope, but more that of his bastard, then called Duke of Castro," inclined Paul to believe this charge; and Pier Luigi was allowed to farm the case. Cellini was examined by the Governor of Rome and two assessors; in spite of his vehement protestations of innocence, the absence of any evidence against him, and the sound arguments adduced in his defence, he was committed to the castle of S. Angelo. When he received his sentence, he called heaven and earth to witness, thanking God that he had "the happiness not to be confined for some error of his sinful nature, as generally happens to young men." Whereupon "the brute of a Governor replied, Yet you have killed enough men in your time." This remark was pertinent; but it provoked a torrent of abuse and a long enumeration of his services from the virtuous Cellini.
The account of this imprisonment, and especially of the hypochondriacal Governor who thought he was a bat and used to flap his arms and squeak when night was coming on, is highly entertaining.[[377]] Not less interesting is the description of Cellini's daring escape from the castle. In climbing over the last wall, he fell and broke his leg, and was carried by a waterman to the palace of the Cardinal Cornaro. There he lay in hiding, visited by all the rank and fashion of Rome, who were not a little curious to see the hero of so perilous an escapade. Cornaro promised to secure his pardon, but eventually exchanged him for a bishopric. This remarkable proceeding illustrates the manners of the Papal Court. The cardinal wanted a benefice for one of his followers, and the Pope wished to get his son's enemy once more into his power. So the two ecclesiastics bargained together, and by mutual kind offices attained their several ends.