Page:The Life of Benvenuto Cellini Vol 1.djvu/64

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His own attitude with regard to truth can well be studied in the somewhat comic episode of the Duchess of Tuscany's pearls. She was anxious to coax her husband into buying some pearls for her, and entreated Cellini to tell a fib or two in their favour for her sake. "Now," says Cellini, "I have always been the devoted friend of truth and the enemy of lies; yet I undertook the office, much against my will, for fear of losing the good graces of so great a princess." Accordingly, he went with "those confounded pearl" to the Duke, and having once begun to lie, exaggerated his falsehoods so clumsily that he raised suspicion. The Duke at last begged him, as he was an honest man, to say what he really thought. This appeal upset him: "I blushed up to the eyes, which filled with tears;" and on the instant he made a clean breast of the whole matter, losing thereby the favour of the Duchess, who had been shown in an unpleasing light to her lord and master. The minute accounts he has left of all his negotiations for the payment of the Perseus prove in like manner that the one thing Cellini could not do was to gain his ends by artifice and underhand transactions. On the contrary, he blurted out the bitter truth, as he conceived it, in hot blood, and clamoured with egregious presumption for what his vanity demanded. Not lying, not artfulness, but arrogance and overweening self-importance are the vices of his character.