Page:The Life of Benvenuto Cellini Vol 1.djvu/81

Rh reputation; although I am inclined to trust his narrative on all points openly related. Now there are two important passages in his life which might be challenged as imperfectly explained by him, and which are therefore ex hypothesi suspicious. The first of these is the long imprisonment in S. Angelo at Rome; the second is his final departure from France.

The account which Cellini gives of the former episode is that he had been calumniated to Pope Paul III., and had furthermore incurred the hatred of Pier Luigi Farnese. At the same time he states that his first examination before judges turned upon a charge of having stolen crown jewels amounting to eighty thousand ducats, while employed to melt their settings down for Clement VII. It seems that a Perugian workman in Cellini's employ informed against him; and Pier Luigi obtained from his Papal father a grant of this value when it should be recovered. Cellini successfully disposed of the accusation by appealing to the books of the Apostolic Camera, upon which all the articles belonging to the regalia were duly inscribed. He also asked what he could have done with so large a sum as eighty thousand ducats. Upon this point it is worth noticing that when Cellini made his nuncupatory will some months previous to this imprisonment, he possessed nothing at all approaching to the amount of eighty thousand ducats. Also, he relates how he confessed, during the lifetime of Pope Clement, to having kept back