DURING the following night there appeared to me in dreams a marvellous
being in the form of a most lovely youth, who cried, as though he wanted
to reprove me: “Knowest thou who lent thee that body, which thou wouldst
have spoiled before its time?” I seemed to answer that I recognized all
things pertaining to me as gifts from the God of nature. “So, then,” he
said, “thou hast contempt for His handiwork, through this thy will to
spoil it? Commit thyself unto His guidance, and lose not hope in His
great goodness!” Much more he added, in words of marvellous efficacy,
the thousandth part of which I cannot now remember.
I began to consider that the angel of my vision spoke the truth. So I
cast my eyes around the prison, and saw some scraps of rotten brick,
with the fragments of which, rubbing one against the other, I composed a
paste. Then, creeping on all fours, as I was compelled to go, I crawled
up to an angle of my dungeon door, and gnawed a splinter from it with my
teeth. Having achieved this feat, I waited till the light came on my
prison; that was from the hour of twenty and a half to twenty-one and a
half. When it arrived, I began to write, the best I could, on some blank
pages in my Bible, and rebuked the regents of my intellectual self for
being too impatient to endure this life; they replied to my body with
excuses drawn from all that they had suffered; and the body gave them
hope of better fortune. To this effect, then, by way of dialogue, I
wrote as follows:-
'Benvenuto in the body.
'Afflicted regents of my soul!
Ah, cruel ye! have ye such hate of life?
'The Spirits of his soul.
'If Heaven against you roll,
Who stands for us? who saves us in the strife?
Let us, O let us go toward better life!
'Benvenuto.
'Nay, go not yet awhile!
Ye shall be happier and lighter far-
Heaven gives this hope-than ye were ever yet!
'The Spirits.
'We will remain some little while,
If only by great God you promised are
Such grace that no worse woes on us be set.
After this I recovered strength; and when I had heartened up myself, I
continued reading in the Bible, and my eyes became so used to that
darkness that I could now read for three hours instead of the bare hour
and a half I was able to employ before.
With profound astonishment I dwelt upon the force of God’s Spirit in
those men of great simplicity, who believed so fervently that He would
bring all their heart’s desire to pass. I then proceeded to reckon in my
own case too on God’s assistance, both because of His divine power and
mercy, and also because of my own innocence; and at all hours, sometimes
in prayer and sometimes in communion with God, I abode in those high
thoughts of Him. There flowed into my soul so powerful a delight from
these reflections upon God, that I took no further thought for all the
anguish I had suffered, but rather spent the day in singing psalms and
divers other compositions on the theme of His divinity.
I was greatly troubled, however, by one particular annoyance: my nails
had grown so long that I could not touch my body without wounding it; I
could not dress myself but what they turned inside or out, to my great
torment. Moreover, my teeth began to perish in my mouth. I became aware
of this because the dead teeth being pushed out by the living ones, my
gums were gradually perforated, and the points of the roots pierced
through the tops of their cases. When I was aware of this, I used to
pull one out, as though it were a weapon from a scabbard, without any
pain or loss of blood. Very many of them did I lose in this way.
Nevertheless, I accommodated myself to these new troubles also; at times
I sang, at times I prayed, and at times I wrote by means of the paste of
brick-dust I have described above. At this time I began composing a
Capitolo in praise of my prison, relating in it all the accidents which
had befallen me. [1] This poem I mean to insert in its proper place.
Note 1. Capitolo is the technical name for a copy of verses in 'terza
rima' on a chosen theme. Poems of this kind, mostly burlesque or
satirical, were very popular in Cellini’s age. They used to be written
on trifling or obscene subjects in a mock-heroic style. Berni stamped
the character of high art upon the species, which had long been in use
among the unlettered vulgar. See for further particulars Symonds’
'Renaissance in Italy,' vol. v. chap. xiv.