Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 4.djvu/342

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The Signor Duke made no further remark, but in a few days he caused a mantle of the very finest cloth to be made, with the parts put together in such a manner that the inside was not to be distinguished from the outside; the collar was trimmed with an edge which was exactly the same within as without, and in like manner was arranged the bordering of the cloak. This he sent by one of his attendants to Cristofano, commanding the man to present it to that artist on the part of the Duke. The latter having, therefore, received the mantle early one morning, tried it at once, without making further ceremony, and finding that it was exactly what he wanted, he said to the messenger, “The Duke is a sensible man, tell him that this cloak suits me perfectly.”

Cristofano being thus careless of his person, and hating nothing so much as new clothes, or the feeling himself too much straitened and confined in what he wore, it was the custom of Vasari, who knew this peculiarity, to observe when he required any kind of new garment, and he would then get the requisite article made for him in secret; taking it some morning early into his room, and carrying off the old dress he would leave the new, Cristofano being thus compelled to put on what he found. But it was a marvellous piece of sport to hear him while he was angrily clothing himself with these new vestments: “Look at this,” he would cry, “what a murder is here, why can’t a man live at his ease in this world? and why the devil should these enemies of all comfort give themselves so much trouble to invent these torments? ”

One morning among others, he had put on a pair of white nether hose, when it chanced that Domenico Benci, who was extensively employed in the palace as an assistant to Vasari, persuaded him to go with himself and other young people to the Madonna dell’ Improneta. Here they walked about and amused themselves all day, and it was not until after supper in the evening, that they returned to the house. Being weary, Cristofano at once went off to his room and to bed, but when he would have drawn off his hose, they being new and himself very much heated, he could by no means get off* more than one of them.

Entering his room to see how he had got on, Vasari thus found him fast asleep with one leg clothed and the other unclothed, whereupon he made one servant hold him by the