IV

I bought a new pair of stirrups, although I still hoped to regain my

good pad by persuasion; and since I was very well mounted, and well

armed with shirt and sleeves of mail, and carried an excellent arquebuse

upon my saddle-bow, I was not afraid of the brutality and violence which

that mad beast was said to be possessed of. I had also accustomed my

young men to carry shirts of mail, and had great confidence in the

Roman, who, while we were in Rome together, had never left it off, so

far as I could see; Ascanio too, although he was but a stripling, was in

the habit of wearing one. Besides, as it was Good Friday, I imagined

that the madnesses of madmen might be giving themselves a holiday. When

we came to the Camollia gate, I at once recognised the postmaster by the

indications given me; for he was blind of the left eye. Riding up to him

then, and leaving my young men and companions at a little distance, I

courteously addressed him: “Master of the post, if I assure you that I

did not override your horse, why are you unwilling to give me back my

pad and stirrups?” The reply he made was precisely as mad and brutal as

had been foretold me. This roused me to exclaim: “How then! are you not

a Christian? or do you want upon Good Friday to force us both into a

scandal?” He answered that Good Friday or the Devil’s Friday was all the

same to him, and that if I did not take myself away, he would fell me to

the ground with a spontoon which he had taken up--me and the arquebuse I

had my hand on. Upon hearing these truculent words, an old gentleman of

Siena joined us; he was dressed like a citizen, and was returning from

the religious functions proper to that day. It seems that he had

gathered the sense of my arguments before he came up to where we stood;

and this impelled him to rebuke the postmaster with warmth, taking my

side, and reprimanding the man’s two sons for not doing their duty to

passing strangers; so that their manners were an offence to God and a

disgrace to the city of Siena. The two young fellows wagged their heads

without saying a word, and withdrew inside the house. Their father,

stung to fury by the scolding of that respectable gentleman, poured out

a volley of abusive blasphemies, and levelled his spontoon, swearing he

would murder me. When I saw him determined to do some act of bestial

violence, I pointed the muzzle of my arquebuse, with the object only of

keeping him at a distance. Doubly enraged by this, he flung himself upon

me. Though I had prepared the arquebuse for my defence, I had not yet

levelled it exactly at him; indeed it was pointed too high. It went off

of itself; and the ball, striking the arch of the door and glancing

backwards, wounded him in the throat, so that he fell dead to earth.

Upon this the two young men came running out; one caught up a partisan

from the rack which stood there, the other seized the spontoon of his

father. Springing upon my followers, the one who had the spontoon smote

Pagolo the Roman first above the left nipple. The other attacked a

Milanese who was in our company, and had the ways and manners of a

perfect fool. This man screamed out that he had nothing in the world to

do with me, and parried the point of the partisan with a little stick he

held; but this availed him naught: in spite of his words and fencing, he

received a flesh wound in the mouth. Messer Cherubino wore the habit of

a priest; for though he was a clockmaker by trade, he held benefices of

some value from the Pope. Ascanio, who was well armed, stood his ground

without trying to escape, as the Milanese had done; so these two came

off unhurt. I had set spurs to my horse, and while he was galloping, had

charged and got my arquebuse in readiness again; but now I turned back,

burning with fury, and meaning to play my part this time in earnest. I

thought that my young men had been killed, and was resolved to die with

them. The horse had not gone many paces when I met them riding toward

me, and asked if they were hurt. Ascanio answered that Pagolo was

wounded to the death. Then I said: “O Pagolo, my son, did the spontoon

then pierce through your armour?” “No,” he replied, “for I put my shirt

of mail in the valise this morning.” “So then, I suppose, one wears

chain-mail in Rome to swagger before ladies, but where there is danger,

and one wants it, one keeps it locked up in a portmanteau? You deserve

what you have got, and you are now the cause of sending me back to die

here too.” While I was uttering these words, I kept riding briskly

onward; but both the young men implored me for the love of God to save

myself and them, and not to rush on certain death. Just then I met

Messer Cherubino and the wounded Milanese. The former cried out that no

one was badly wounded; the blow given to Pagolo had only grazed the

skin, [2] but the old postmaster was stretched out dead; his sons with

other folk were getting ready for attack, and we must almost certainly

be cut to pieces: “Accordingly, Benvenuto, since fortune has saved us

from this first tempest, do not tempt her again, for things may not go

so favourably a second time.” To this I replied: “If you are satisfied

to have it thus, so also am I;” and turning to Pagolo and Ascanio, I

said: “Strike spurs to your horses, and let us gallop to Staggia without

stopping; [3] there we shall be in safety.” The wounded Milanese groaned

out: “A pox upon our peccadilloes! the sole cause of my misfortune was

that I sinned by taking a little broth this morning, having nothing else

to break my fast with.” In spite of the great peril we were in, we could

not help laughing a little at the donkey and his silly speeches. Then we

set spurs to our horses, and left Messer Cherubino and the Milanese to

follow at their leisure.

Note 1. The word I have translated by “pad” above is 'cucino' in the

original. It seems to have been a sort of cushion flung upon the saddle,

and to which the stirrups were attached.

Note 2. The Italian is peculiar: 'il colpo di Pagolo era ito tanto ritto

che non era isfandato.'

Note 3. Staggia is the next post on the way to Florence.

V

WHILE we were making our escape, the sons of the dead man ran to the

Duke of Melfi, and begged for some light horsemen to catch us up and

take us prisoners. [1] The Duke upon being informed that we were the

Cardinal of Ferrara’s men, refused to give them troops or leave to

follow. We meanwhile arrived at Staggia, where we were in safety. There

we sent for a doctor, the best who could be had in such a place; and on

his examining Pagolo, we discovered that the wound was only skin-deep;

so I felt sure [2] that he would escape without mischief. Then we

ordered dinner; and at this juncture there arrived Messer Cherubino and

that Milanese simpleton, who kept always muttering: “A plague upon your

quarrels,” and complaining that he was excommunicated because he had not

been able to say a single Paternoster on that holy morning. He was very

ugly, and his mouth, which nature had made large, had been expanded at

least three inches by his wound; so that what with his ludicrous

Milanese jargon and his silly way of talking, he gave us so much matter

for mirth, that, instead of bemoaning our ill-luck, we could not hold

from laughing at every word he uttered. When the doctor wanted to sew up

his wound, and had already made three stitches with his needle, the

fellow told him to hold hard a while, since he did not want him out of

malice to sew his whole mouth up. Then he took up a spoon, and said he

wished to have his mouth left open enough to take that spoon in, in

order that he might return alive to his own folk. These things he said

with such odd waggings of the head, that we never stopped from laughing,

and so pursued our journey mirthfully to Florence.

We dismounted at the house of my poor sister, who, together with her

husband, overwhelmed us with kind attentions. Messer Cherubino and the

Milanese went about their business. In Florence we remained four days,

during which Pagolo got well. It was lucky for us that whenever we

talked about that Milanese donkey, we laughed as much as our misfortunes

made us weep, so that we kept laughing and crying both at the same

moment.

Pagolo recovered, as I have said, with ease; and then we travelled

toward Ferrara, where we found our lord the Cardinal had not yet

arrived. He had already heard of all our accidents, and said, when he

expressed his concern for them: “I pray to God that I may be allowed to

bring you alive to the King, according to my promise.” In Ferrara he

sent me to reside at a palace of his, a very handsome place called

Belfiore, close under the city walls. There he provided me with all

things necessary for my work. A little later, he arranged to leave for

France without me; and observing that I was very ill pleased with this,

he said to me: “Benvenuto, I am acting for your welfare; before I take

you out of Italy, I want you to know exactly what you will have to do

when you come to France. Meanwhile, push on my basin and the jug with

all the speed you can. I shall leave orders with my factor to give you

everything that you may want.”

He then departed, and I remained sorely dissatisfied, and more than once

I was upon the point of taking myself off without license. The only

thing which kept me back was that he had procured my freedom from Pope

Paolo; for the rest, I was ill-contented and put to considerable losses.

However, I clothed my mind with the gratitude due to that great benefit,

and disposed myself to be patient and to await the termination of the

business. So I set myself to work with my two men, and made great

progress with the jug and basin. The air was unwholesome where we

lodged, and toward summer we all of us suffered somewhat in our health.

During our indisposition we went about inspecting the domain; it was

very large, and left in a wild state for about a mile of open ground,

haunted too by multitudes of peacocks, which bred and nested there like

wildfowl. This put it into my head to charge my gun with a noiseless

kind of powder; then I tracked some of the young birds, and every other

day killed one, which furnished us with abundance of meat, of such

excellent quality that we shook our sickness off. For several months

following we went on working merrily, and got the jug and basin forward;

but it was a task that required much time.

Note 1. The Duke of Melfi, or Amalfi, was at this time Alfonso

Piccolomini, acting as captain-general of the Sienese in the interests

of Charles V.

Note 2. 'Cognobbi.' The subject to this verb may be either Cellini or

the doctor.