Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 3.djvu/318

310 disciples of Rosso, a youth of a most beautiful aspect called Battistino, at whose lightest sign the animal understood all that was required of him, and did everything that his dear Battistino commanded. Now against the wall of the back rooms of Rosso’s house which was that turned towards the gardens of the monks, there grew a vine belonging to the Intendant, and which was covered with fine large grapes of the kind called San Colombo. The vine was at a considerable distance from the windows of the painter, but his youngmen sending down their ape, to which they had fastened a rope, drew him up again by this means, when he ever returned with his hands filled with grapes.

Now the Intendant soon remarked that his vine was thinned of its grapes without knowing who had done it, and suspecting that mice had been there, he set a trap for them accordingly: but one day he beheld the monkey of Rosso in the very act of descending, and, falling into a fury of rage, he seized a stick, and rushing towards him, prepared with uplifted hands to administer the cudgelling which he thought necessary. Then the monkey, perceiving well that if he attempted to ascend to his home, the Intendant would reach him, while if he remained still he would be equally in danger of the stick, began to spring about and destroy the vine, making at the same time as though he would throw himself upon the monk, and holding fast by his hands to the external bars of the trellis. The Intendant meanwhile approached with uplifted stick, and the monkey, shaking the trellis mightily, tore the staves and rods loose from their fastenings, and brought the whole down with the vine and himself, all falling together on the monk. The latter instantly set up loud outcries, calling for mercy with all the force of his lungs, while Battistino and the others drawing the rope, enabled the monkey to ascend in safety to the room whence he had departed.

But the Monk having disentangled himself from the ruins, got away to a certain terrace which he had there, and began to say things that are not in the mass; full of anger and ill-will he then set off to the council of eight, a tribunal much feared in Florence, and having there made his complaint. Rosso was summoned to appear, v/hen the monkey was jestingly condemned to wear a weight fastened to his tail, to the end that he might no more be able to leap as he had before