The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini追书网更新最快,(请牢记追书网网址:https://www.zhuishu5.com)

    XC

    I NOW began to attend to my shop, and did se business, not however of much ment, because I had still to think about my health, which was not yet established after that grave illness I had undergone. About this time the Emperor returned victorious fr his expedition against Tunis, and the Pope sent for me to take my advice concerning the present of honour it was fit to give him. I answered that it seemed to me most appropriate to present his Imperial Majesty with a golden crucifix, for which I had almost finished an ornament quite to the purpose, and which would confer the highest honour upon his Holiness and me. I had already made three little figures of gold in the round, about a palm high; they were those which I had begun for the chalice of Pope Clement, representing Faith, Hope, and Charity. To these I added in wax what was wanting for the basement of the cross. I carried the whole to the Pope, with the Christ in wax, and many other exquisite decorations which gave him cplete satisfaction. Before I took leave of his Holiness, we had agreed on every detail, and calculated the price of the work.

    This was one evening four hours after nightfall, and the Pope had ordered Messer Latino Juvenale to see that I had money paid to me next morning. This Messer Latino, who had a pretty big dash of the fool in his cposition, bethought him of furnishing the Pope with a new idea, which was, however, wholly of his own invention. So he altered everything which had been arranged; and next morning, when I went for the money, he said with his usual brutal arrogance: “It is our part to invent, and yours to execute; before I left the Pope last night we thought of sething far superior.” To these first words I answered, without allowing him to proceed farther: “Neither you nor the Pope can think of anything better than a piece of which Christ plays a part; so you may go on with your courtier's nonsense till you have no more to say.”

    Without uttering one word, he left me in a rage, and tried to get the work given to another goldsmith. The Pope, however, refused, and sent for me at once, and told me I had spoken well, but that they wanted to make use of a Book of Hours of Our Lady, which was marvellously illuminated, and had cost the Cardinal de' Medici more than two thousand crowns. They thought that this would be an appropriate present to the Empress, and that for the Emperor they would afterwards make what I had suggested, which was indeed a present worthy of him; but now there was no time to l

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