Hearing this, Francesco, who was a very hot-blooded man, retorted: ‘My boy, what do you think is the good of coming now? If he’s dead, I’m even more upset than you are. But do you imagine that if I go back with you, and bring my medicine along, I can bring him back to life by blowing breath up his arse?’
Then seeing the poor young fellow was going away crying, he called him back and gave him some oil with which to anoint my wrists and chest. He told him to pinch my little toes and fingers hard, and if I came to to send for him at once. Felice did all that he had been told, but by the time it was nearly day there didn’t seem to be the slightest hope. So they gave orders for my shroud to be cut out and for the corpse to be washed. Then – suddenly – I regained consciousness, and shouted for Felice to come and drive out the old man who was trying to hurt me. Felice wanted to send for the doctor, but I told him instead of doing this to stand close byme, because the old man was moving away from him and was obviously frightened. When I touched Felice the old man appeared to run off in a rage, so I again pleaded with him to stay near me.
Soon after Francesco appeared, saying that he was determined to cure me at all costs and that he had never come across greater endurance in a young man. He wrote out a prescription for perfumes, lotions, unctions and plasters, and a host of other things; and when I came round I had more than twenty leeches stuck to my backside, and felt as if I had been pierced, crushed, and broken. Many of my friends flocked round to see the miraculous return to life, including a great number of very important men. In their presence I declared that what little money I had – about eight hundred crowns, reckoning all the gold, silver, jewels, and cash – should be given to my sister Liperata, who lived at Florence. All the rest of my property, my armour included, I left to dear Felice, and I also bequeathed him fifty ducats to buy mourning clothes. When he heard this he flung his arms round me, saying that all he wanted was that I should live.
Then I said to him: ‘If you want me to remain alive, hold me as you did before and threaten that old man who is so frightened of you.’
Some of those who were present were terrified out of their wits at this, for they knew I was speaking coherently, with a clear head, and that I was far from delirious.
My terrible illness continued to drag on, with little progress made, and that wonderful doctor, Francesco, came to visit me four or five times a day. But Gaddi, who was thoroughly ashamed of himself, did not trouble me again. My brother-in-law came from Florence to collect the bequest, but as he was a decent fellow he was overjoyed at finding me alive. It was a great comfort to see him, and on his arrival he embraced me, protesting that he had come merely to look after me himself – and so he did for several days. Then, fairly certain that I was on the verge of recovery, I sent him back home.
On his departure, he left with me Benedetto Varchi’s sonnet, which runs as follows:
ON THE SUPPOSED BUT FALSELY-REPORTED DEATH OF BENVENUTO CELLINI
Mattio, who shall cause our grief to cease,
Or who forbid our weeping that he’s dead?
For now, alas, that noble soul has fled
In youth, without us, up to Heaven’s peace.
So many loved his soul, here on this earth
Which saw his lofty genius nobly grow
To stature never equalled till his birth,
Nor ever to be rivalled, here below.
Now we have seen the greatest all depart.
O gentle soul! if then in Paradise
You love, behold the one who loved you weeps,
His loss has left him with a broken heart.
Now you in Heaven the Creator keeps
Whose image155 your own hand did once devise.
My illness had been so incredibly severe that it seemed impossible that I would ever recover; but that worthy man Francesco da Norcia exerted himself more than ever, every day bringing me new remedies in the endeavour to strengthen my poor exhausted frame, though for all the trouble he went to my persistent illness still showed no sign of ever coming to an end. As a result every one of the doctors was on the verge of despair, and they were baffled as to what to do next. I was suffering from a terrible thirst, but on their orders I had refrained from drinking for a good many days. Felice, who was pleased with himself beyond words for having saved me, never left my side; and although that old man visited me once or twice in my dreams, he never worried me as he did before.
One day Felice had gone out and left an apprentice and a servant girl called Beatrice to look after me. I asked the apprentice what had happened to my shopboy, Cencio, and what was the reason for my never seeing him when I needed him. The apprentice replied that Cencio had been much more ill than I was, and that he was at death’s door. Felice had ordered them not to tell me about this. When I heard about it I was tremendously upset; then I called the servant girl, Beatrice, who was from Pistoia, and begged her to bring me, full of clear fresh water, the large crystal water-cooler that was standing near by. She ran off at once and brought it back to me, filled to the brim. I told her to hold it to my mouth, and that if she let me drink a mouthful or so, as I wanted, I would give her a dress.
As it happened, this servant had stolen a few little things of some importance from me, and in her fear of being found out she would have been only too pleased to see me die. As a result twice running she let me drink as much as I could of the water, and so I greedily swallowed more than a flask of it. Then I covered myself up, began to sweat and fell asleep.
I must have been sleeping for more than an hour when Felice came back and asked the boy how I was.
He replied: ‘I don’t know. Beatrice brought him that jug full of water and he drank nearly all of it. I’m not sure now whether he’s dead or alive.’
They say that Felice almost fell down unconscious, he was so mortified. Then he grabbed hold of an ugly-looking stick and began to beat the girl madly, shouting at her: ‘Oh, you traitress! So you’ve killed him!’
While Felice was thrashing her, and she was screaming, I had a dream. I dreamed that the old man was there, holding some pieces of rope, and as he was about to tie me up, Felice had rushed up and set about him with an axe, with the result that he ran away crying: ‘Let me go, and I shan’t come back for a long time.’
Meanwhile Beatrice had come running into my room, screaming her head off. This woke me up, and I cried out:
‘Leave her alone, instead of doing me the harm she meant she may have done me a great deal of good – more than you have ever been able to do, for all your efforts. Now give me a hand, because I’m covered with sweat – and be quick about it.’
At this Felice brightened up, dried me, and then made me comfortable. Feeling very much better I promised myself that I would recover my health. Then Francesco appeared on the scene, to find me much better, the servant crying, the apprentice running here, there, and everywhere, and Felice in smiles; all this uproar made the doctor think that something really extraordinary must have happened to account for my great improvement. Meanwhile the other doctor, Bernardino – the one who at the beginning had been unwilling to bleed me – came in. Francesco, like the learned man he was, said:
‘Oh, the powers of Nature! She knows what we need, and the doctors know nothing.’
That numskull Bernardino immediately added:
‘If he had drunk one flask more, he would have been cured at once.’
Francesco da Norcia, who was an old man and a doctor of great authority, said:
‘That would have been a tremendous misfortune, and I hope to God it happens to you.’
Then he turned to me and asked if I could have drunk more. I replied, no, because I had completely quenched my thirst. Then he turned to Bernardino and said:
‘Do you see how Nature has taken exactly what she needed, and neither more nor less? In the same way she was asking for what she needed when this poor young man asked you to bleed him. If you knew he would recover if he drank two flasks of water, why didn’t you say so before? Then yo
u would have got the credit for it.’
At these words the quack went off in a huff, and he never turned up again. Francesco said that I must be taken out of the room I had been in, and that they must have me carried up to one of the hills in Rome. Cardinal Cornaro, hearing of my recovery, had me taken to one of his estates on Monte Cavallo; that very evening I was carried carefully away on a chair, well protected and muffled up. When I arrived there I began to vomit, and as I was doing so I brought up a hairy worm, a quarter of a cubit in length. It was covered with long hairs, and looked repulsive, spotted with various colours, green, black, and red.
They kept it to show the doctor, who exclaimed that he had never seen anything like it, and then said to Felice:
‘Take care of your Benvenuto now that he’s cured; and don’t allow him any excesses, because although he has survived one illness another would kill him. You see, his illness was so serious that if we had brought him extreme unction we would have been too late. Now I’m certain that with a little patience and time he’ll be turning out beautiful works of art again.’
Then he turned to me and added: ‘My dear Benvenuto, be sensible and don’t indulge in any excess; and when you’re cured I want you to make me a Madonna with your own hands as I want to pray to her from now on, because of my affection for you.’
I promised I would do this, and went on to ask if it would be all right for me to go back to Florence. He said that I should wait till I was a little better, and then we would see what Nature would do.
My state of health had so little improved, after a week’s waiting, that I was thoroughly sick of myself. I had put up with that terrible suffering for more than fifty days. So I made up my mind and prepared to leave. In a pair of litters, my dear Felice and I myself were carried off to Florence.156 I had not written at all, and therefore when I arrived at my sister’s house she started laughing and crying over me at one and the same time.
The day I returned a large number of my friends came to see me, including Piero Landi, the greatest and dearest friend I ever had in the world. The next day, Niccolò da Monte Aguto, another close friend of mine, called on me. He had heard the Duke say:
‘Benvenuto would have done far better to have died, since he has come here to have a rope put round his neck, and I shall never forgive him for what he has done.’
When Niccolò joined me, he said in despair:
‘My dear Benvenuto, what have you come here for? Don’t you know how much you’ve offended the Duke? I heard him swear that you were certainly putting a rope round your own neck.’
I answered: ‘Niccolò, remind his Excellency that Pope Clement once wanted to do as much to me, and that he was just as much in the wrong. Tell him that I must be taken care of, and that he should let me get better, because then I shall show him that I’ve been the most faithful servant he’ll ever have in his life. Some envious enemy of mine must have done me this bad turn – so let him wait till I’m recovered, and then I’ll be able to give an account of myself that will astonish him.’
In fact this bad turn had been done me by the Aretine painter, little Giorgio Vasari,157 perhaps to repay me for the many good turns I had done him. I had, to tell the truth, entertained him in Rome and paid for his expenses, and he had turned my house topsy-turvy. This came of his having a dry skin-disease, and he was always tearing himself and scratching away with his hands. He had slept with a good-natured young man I had, called Manno,158 and thinking that he was scratching himself he had taken the skin off one of Manno’s legs, with those filthy little claws whose nails he never cut. Manno had left my service and sworn to kill him. I made it up between them, and then got Giorgio a position with Cardinal de’ Medici, and I never left off helping him in one way or another.
So, in return for this, he told Duke Alessandro that I had spoken ill of his Excellency, and that I boasted of wanting to be the first to leap up on to the walls of Florence with the Duke’s exiled enemies. According to what I heard later all this had been put into his mouth by that fine gentleman, Ottaviano de’ Medici, who wanted to get his revenge for the Duke’s anger with him because of the coins and my leaving Florence. But, as I was innocent of the treachery they accused me of, I was not the slightest bit afraid.
That able doctor, Francesco da Montevarchi,159 treated me with great skill. He had been brought to me by my dear friend, Luca Martini,160 who used to keep me company during most of the day.
Meanwhile I had sent my faithful Felice back to Rome, to look after the business there. Then, at the end of a fortnight, when I could raise my head off the pillow a little, though I could not stand on my own feet, I had myself carried to the Medici palace, up to where the little terrace is; they left me resting there, waiting for the Duke to come past. A good few friends of mine from the court came up and chatted with me. They were astonished at my having suffered the discomfort of being carried there in that way, after I had been so weakened by my illness. They said that I should wait till I was better, and then visit the Duke. Quite a crowd gathered round, all staring at me as if they were looking at a miracle, not so much because they had heard I was dead as because at the time I had the appearance of a corpse.
Then, in front of them all, I explained how some wicked scoundrel had told his Excellency the Duke that I had boasted of intending to be the first to scale his Excellency’s walls and that besides this I had spoken ill of him. As a result, I said, I didn’t care whether I lived or died till I had cleared myself of this monstrous charge and found out who was the rash scoundrel guilty of such slander. Hearing what I was saying a large number of those nobles gathered round me, expressing great sympathy, and some saying one thing, and others another. I repeated that I did not intend to leave that spot till I had found out who had accused me. At this the Duke’s tailor, Maestro Agustino, made his way through all those gentlemen and said:
‘If that is all you want to know, I can tell you this very minute.’
Just then Giorgio, the painter I mentioned, passed by. Agustino said:
‘There’s the man who accused you. Now you can find out for yourself whether it’s true or not.’
Then, unable to move, as fiercely as I could I asked Giorgio whether what had been said was true. He replied, no, that it wasn’t true, and that he had never said such a thing. Agustino retorted:
‘You gallows-bird – don’t you realize I know it for certain?’
Giorgio instantly made off, still saying, no, that he had done no such thing. A little later, and the Duke came past. I at once had myself raised up in front of his Excellency, and he stopped. Then I told him that I had come there in that fashion merely to clear my name. The Duke stared at me, expressed his astonishment at my being still alive, and then told me to make sure I remained an honest man, and to get better.
After I had returned home Niccolò da Monte Aguto came in search of me to say although he would not have believed it I had weathered one of the worst storms he had ever seen; for he had seen me marked down irrevocably as a doomed man. He advised me to build up my health as quickly as possible, and then to clear out of Florence, because I was threatened from a quarter and a certain man who would do me great harm. He went on to say that I must be very careful, and then he added: ‘What injury have you done that great scoundrel Ottaviano de’ Medici?’
I answered that I had never done him any harm but that he had done a great deal to me, and I told him all about what had happened at the Mint.
He said: ‘Clear out as soon as you can, but don’t worry – you’ll have your revenge sooner than you think.’
I concentrated on restoring my health; gave instructions to Pietro Pagolo about stamping the coins; and then cleared out of Florence and made my way back to Rome, without a word to the Duke or anyone else.
On my return to Rome I relaxed for a while in the company of my friends, and then I started on the Duke’s medal. At the end of a few days I had already finished the head, in steel, and it proved the finest work of that kind that I had ever d
one. At least once every day a great oafish lout called Francesco Soderini used to visit me. Once or twice, when he saw what I was doing, he remarked:
‘What a cruel man you must be to want to immortalize that ferocious tyrant. Since you’ve never made anything so beautiful before, you must be as much our bitter enemy as you are their great friend. And this even though both he and the Pope have twice wanted to have you hanged without reason. That was the doing of the Father and the Son – now you look out for the Holy Ghost!’
It was, by the way, held as certain that Duke Alessandro was the son of Pope Clement.161
Francesco also solemnly swore that if he could he would have robbed me of the dies for the medal. I replied that it was just as well he had told me, and I would take care that he never set eyes on them again.
I then let it be known in Florence that Lorenzo should be told to send me the reverse of the medal. Niccolò de Monte Aguto, to whom I had written, replied that he had asked that mad, brooding philosopher, Lorenzo, and had been told in reply that he never thought of anything else, night or day, and that he would do it as soon as he possibly could. But he added that I was not to rely on him, and that I should make one for myself, from my own design; then, when it was finished, I should bring it boldly to the Duke, and it would prove well worth my while.
After I had made what I thought was a suitable design for the reverse I pushed on with the work as carefully as I could. However, as I had still not completely recovered from my terrible illness, I used to find enjoyment by going off on shooting expeditions with my dear Felice. He was hopeless as far as helping me with my art was concerned, but because we were always together, day and night, everyone imagined that he was an expert craftsman. He was a very agreeable and amusing fellow, and so we were always laughing together over the great reputation he had won. As his name was Felice Guadagni, he used to joke: ‘I would call myself Felice Guadagni-poco, if you hadn’t won me such a great reputation that I can call myself Felice de’ Guadagni-assai…’162
The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini Page 21