Page:The Life of Benvenuto Cellini Vol 2.djvu/90

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I meanwhile continued to pray as usual, and to write my Capitolo, and every night I was visited with the gladdest and most pleasant dreams that could be pos- sibly imagined. It seemed to me while dreaming that I was always in the visible company of that being whose voice and touch, while he was still invisible, I had so often felt. To him I made but one request, and this I urged most earnestly, namely, that he would bring me where I could behold the sun. I told him that this was the sole desire I had, and that if I could but see the sun once only, I should die con- tented. All the disagreeable circumstances of my prison had become, as it were, to me friendly and companionable ; not one of them gave me annoyance. Nevertheless, I ought to say that the castellan's par- asites, who were waiting for him to hang me from the battlement whence I had made my escape, when they saw that he had changed his mind to the exact opposite of what he previously threatened, were un- able to endure the disappointment. Accordingly, they kept continually trying to inspire me with the fear of imminent death by means of various terrifying hints. But, as I have already said, I had become so well acquainted with troubles of this sort that I was incapable of fear, and nothing any longer could dis- turb me ; only I had that one great longing to behold the sphere of the sun, if only in a dream.

Thus then, while I spent many hours a day in prayer with deep emotion of the spirit toward Christ, I used always to say : "Ah, very Son of God ! I pray