Page:The Life of Benvenuto Cellini Vol 1.djvu/77

Rh added to our conception of Clement VII, Paul III., Francis I., and Cosimo de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany. Clement driven to his wits' end for cash during the sack of Rome; Paul granting favours to a cardinal at the end of a copious repast, when wine was in his head; Francis interrupting the goldsmiths in their workshop at the Petit Nesle; Cosimo indulging in horse-play with his buffoon Bernardone—these detach themselves, as living personages, against the grey historic background. Yet the same great people, on more ceremonious occasions, or in the common transactions of life, talk, move, and act precisely as we learn to know them from the most approved documentary sources. Take, for example, the singular interview between Paul III. and the Marquis del Vasto, which Cellini interrupted, and when he was used by the former to exhaust the patience of the Spanish envoy. Our authorities tell us much about the fox-like shifty nature of the Pope; and we know that, precisely at this moment, he was eager to preserve his own neutrality between the courts of France and Spain. Cellini, thinking only of his personal affairs, withdraws the curtain from a scene which we feel at once to be the very truth and inner life of history.

It was not only in dealing with the greatest actors on the world's stage that Cellini showed this keen fidelity to fact. His portraits of the bestial Pier Luigi Farnese, of the subtle and bizarre Lorenzino de' Medici, of the Ferrarese minister Giliolo, of the Florentine majordomo Ricci, of the proud Comte de