AFTER my conversation with the Greek, the whole day wore away, and at
night there came abundant provisions from the kitchen of the Pope; the
Cardinal Cornaro also sent good store of viands from his kitchen; and
some friends of mine being present when they arrived, I made them stay
to supper, and enjoyed their society, keeping my leg in splints beneath
the bed-clothes. An hour after nightfall they left me; and two of my
servants, having made me comfortable for the night, went to sleep in the
antechamber. I had a dog, black as a mulberry, one of those hairy ones,
who followed me admirably when I went out shooting, and never left my
side. During the night he lay beneath my bed, and I had to call out at
least three times to my servant to turn him out, because he howled so
fearfully. When the servants entered, the dog flew at them and tried to
bite them. They were frightened, and thought he must be mad, because he
went on howling. In this way we passed the first four hours of the
night. At the stroke of four the Bargello came into my room with a band
of constables. Then the dog sprang forth and flew at them with such
fury, tearing their capes and hose, that in their fright they fancied he
was mad. But the Bargello, like an experienced person, told them: “It is
the nature of good dogs to divine and foretell the mischance coming on
their masters. Two of you take sticks and beat the dog off; while the
others strap Benvenuto on this chair; then carry him to the place you
wot of.” It was, as I have said, the night after Corpus Domini, and
about four o’clock.
The officers carried me, well shut up and covered, and four of them went
in front, making the few passengers who were still abroad get out of the
way. So they bore me to Torre di Nona, such is the name of the place,
and put me in the condemned cell. I was left upon a wretched mattress
under the care of a guard, who kept all night mourning over my bad luck,
and saying to me: “Alas! poor Benvenuto, what have you done to those
great folk?” I could now form a very good opinion of what was going to
happen to me, partly by the place in which I found myself, and also by
what the man had told me. [1] During a portion of that night I kept
racking my brains what the cause could be why God thought fit to try me
so, and not being able to discover it, I was violently agitated in my
soul. The guard did the best he could to comfort me; but I begged him
for the love of God to stop talking, seeing I should be better able to
compose myself alone in quiet. He promised to do as I asked; and then I
turned my whole heart to God, devoutly entreating Him to deign to take
me into His kingdom. I had, it is true, murmured against my lot, because
it seemed to me that, so far as human laws go, my departure from the
world in this way would be too unjust; it is true also that I had
committed homicides, but His Vicar had called me from my native city and
pardoned me by the authority he had from Him and from the laws; and what
I had done had all been done in defence of the body which His Majesty
had lent me; so I could not admit that I deserved death according to the
dispensation under which man dwells here; but it seemed that what was
happening to me was the same as what happens to unlucky people in the
street, when a stone falls from some great height upon their head and
kills them; this we see clearly to be the influence of the stars; not
indeed that the stars conspire to do us good or evil, but the effect
results from their conjunctions, to which we are subordinated. At the
same time I know that I am possessed of free-will, and if I could exert
the faith of a saint, I am sure that the angels of heaven would bear me
from this dungeon and relieve me of all my afflictions, yet inasmuch as
God has not deemed me worthy of such miracles, I conclude that those
celestial influences must be wreaking their malignity upon me. In this
long struggle of the soul I spent some time; then I found comfort, and
fell presently asleep.
Note 1. Cellini thought he was going to have his throat cut. And indeed
the Torre di Nona was a suspicious place, it being one of the worst
criminal prisons in Rome.