The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini追书网更新最快，(请牢记追书网网址：https://www.zhuishu5.com)
CXXV
AFTER the lapse of a few days, the castellan, who now believed that I was at large and free, succumbed to his disease and departed this life. In his ro remained his brother, Messer Antonio Ugolini, who had informed the deceased governor that I was duly released. Fr what I learned, this Messer Antonio received cmission fr the Pope to let me occupy that cmodious prison until he had decided what to do with me.
Messer Durante of Brescia, wh I have previously mentioned, engaged the soldier (formerly druggist of Prato) to administer se deadly liquor in my food; the poison was to work slowly, producing its effect at the end of four or five months. They resolved on mixing pounded diamond with my victuals. Now the diamond is not a poison in any true sense of the word, but its incparable hardness enables it, unlike ordinary stones, to retain very acute angles. When every other stone is pounded, that extreme sharpness of edge is lost; their fragments becing blunt and rounded. The diamond alone preserves its trenchant qualities; wherefore, if it chances to enter the stach together with food, the peristaltic motion needful to digestion brings it into contact with the coats of the stach and the bowels, where it sticks, and by the action of fresh food forcing it farther inwards, after se time perforates the ans. This eventually causes death. Any other sort of stone or glass mingled with the food has not the power to attach itself, but passes onward with the victuals. Now Messer Durante entrusted a diamond of trifling value to one of the guards; and it is said that a certain Lione, a goldsmith of Arezzo, my great enemy, was cmissioned to pound it. The man happened to be very poor, and the diamond was worth perhaps se scores of crowns. He told the guard that the dust he gave him back was the diamond in question properly ground down. The morning when I took it, they mixed it with all I had to eat; it was a Friday, and I had it in salad, sauce, and pottage. That morning I ate heartily, for I had fasted on the previous evening; and this day was a festival. It is true that I felt the victuals scrunch beneath my teeth; but I was not thinking about knaveries of this sort. When I had finished, se scraps of salad remained upon my plate, and certain very fine and glittering splinters caught my eye among these remnants. I collected them, and took them to the window, which let a flood of light into the ro; and while I was examining them, I remembered that the food I ate that morning had scrunched more than usual. On applying my senses strictly to the matter, the verdict of my eyesight was that they were certainly fragments of pounded diamond. Upon this I gave myself up without doubt as dead, and in my sorrow had recourse with pious heart to holy prayers. I had resolved the question, and thought that I was doed. For the space of a whole hour I prayed fervently to God, returning thanks to Him for so merciful a death. Since my stars had sentenced me to die, I thought it no bad bargain to escape fr life so easily. I was resigned, and blessed the world and all the years which I had passed in it. Now I was returning to a better kingd with the grace of God, the which I thought I had most certainly acquired.
While I stood revolving these thoughts in my mind, I held in my hand se flimsy particles of the reputed diamond, which of a truth I firmly believed to be such. Now hope is immortal in the human breast; therefore I felt myself, as it were, lured onward by a gleam of idle expectation. Accordingly, I took up a little knife and a few of those particles, and placed them on an iron bar of my prison. Then I brought the knife's point with a slow strong grinding pressure to bear upon the stone, and felt it crumble. Examining the substance with my eyes, I saw that it was so. In a ment new hope took possession of my soul, and I exclaimed: “Here I do not find my true foe, Messer Durante, but a piece of bad soft stone, which cannot do me any harm whatever!” Previously I had been resolved to remain quiet and to die in peace; now I revolved other plans, but first I rendered thanks to God and blessed poverty; for though poverty is oftentimes the cause of bringing men to death, on this occasion it had been the very cause of my salvation. I mean in this way: Messer Durante, my enemy, or whoever it was, gave a diamond to Lione to pound for me of the worth of more than a hundred crowns; poverty induced him to keep this for himself, and to pound for me a greenish beryl of the value of two carlins, thinking perhaps, because it also was a stone, that it would work the same effect as the diamond.
CXXV
AFTER the lapse of a few days, the castellan, who now believed that I was at large and free, succumbed to his disease and departed this life. In his ro remained his brother, Messer Antonio Ugolini, who had informed the deceased governor that I was duly released. Fr what I learned, this Messer Antonio received cmission fr the Pope to let me occupy that cmodious prison until he had decided what to do with me.
Messer Durante of Brescia, wh I have previously mentioned, engaged the soldier (formerly druggist of Prato) to administer se deadly liquor in my food; the poison was to work slowly, producing its effect at the end of four or five months. They resolved on mixing pounded diamond with my victuals. Now the diamond is not a poison in any true sense of the word, but its incparable hardness enables it, unlike ordinary stones, to retain very acute angles. When every other stone is pounded, that extreme sharpness of edge is lost; their fragments becing blunt and rounded. The diamond alone preserves its trenchant qualities; wherefore, if it chances to enter the stach together with food, the peristaltic motion needful to digestion brings it into contact with the coats of the stach and the bowels, where it sticks, and by the action of fresh food forcing it farther inwards, after se time perforates the ans. This eventually causes death. Any other sort of stone or glass mingled with the food has not the power to attach itself, but passes onward with the victuals. Now Messer Durante entrusted a diamond of trifling value to one of the guards; and it is said that a certain Lione, a goldsmith of Arezzo, my great enemy, was cmissioned to pound it. The man happened to be very poor, and the diamond was worth perhaps se scores of crowns. He told the guard that the dust he gave him back was the diamond in question properly ground down. The morning when I took it, they mixed it with all I had to eat; it was a Friday, and I had it in salad, sauce, and pottage. That morning I ate heartily, for I had fasted on the previous evening; and this day was a festival. It is true that I felt the victuals scrunch beneath my teeth; but I was not thinking about knaveries of this sort. When I had finished, se scraps of salad remained upon my plate, and certain very fine and glittering splinters caught my eye among these remnants. I collected them, and took them to the window, which let a flood of light into the ro; and while I was examining them, I remembered that the food I ate that morning had scrunched more than usual. On applying my senses strictly to the matter, the verdict of my eyesight was that they were certainly fragments of pounded diamond. Upon this I gave myself up without doubt as dead, and in my sorrow had recourse with pious heart to holy prayers. I had resolved the question, and thought that I was doed. For the space of a whole hour I prayed fervently to God, returning thanks to Him for so merciful a death. Since my stars had sentenced me to die, I thought it no bad bargain to escape fr life so easily. I was resigned, and blessed the world and all the years which I had passed in it. Now I was returning to a better kingd with the grace of God, the which I thought I had most certainly acquired.
While I stood revolving these thoughts in my mind, I held in my hand se flimsy particles of the reputed diamond, which of a truth I firmly believed to be such. Now hope is immortal in the human breast; therefore I felt myself, as it were, lured onward by a gleam of idle expectation. Accordingly, I took up a little knife and a few of those particles, and placed them on an iron bar of my prison. Then I brought the knife's point with a slow strong grinding pressure to bear upon the stone, and felt it crumble. Examining the substance with my eyes, I saw that it was so. In a ment new hope took possession of my soul, and I exclaimed: “Here I do not find my true foe, Messer Durante, but a piece of bad soft stone, which cannot do me any harm whatever!” Previously I had been resolved to remain quiet and to die in peace; now I revolved other plans, but first I rendered thanks to God and blessed poverty; for though poverty is oftentimes the cause of bringing men to death, on this occasion it had been the very cause of my salvation. I mean in this way: Messer Durante, my enemy, or whoever it was, gave a diamond to Lione to pound for me of the worth of more than a hundred crowns; poverty induced him to keep this for himself, and to pound for me a greenish beryl of the value of two carlins, thinking perhaps, because it also was a stone, that it would work the same effect as the diamond.