he was laughing, I struck him so hard upon the temple that he fell down
stunned. Then turning to his cousins, I said, That is how I treat cowardly
thieves like you; and when they began to show fight, being many together,
I, finding myself on flame, set hand to a little knife I had, and cried,
If one of you leaves the shop, let another run for the confessor, for a
surgeon won't find anything to do here." Nor was he contented with this
truculent behaviour; for when Gherardo recovered from his blow, and the
matter had come before the magistrates, Cellini went to seek him in his
own house. There he stabbed him in the midst of all his family, raging
meanwhile, to use his own phrase, "like an infuriated bull."[353] It
appears that on this occasion no one was seriously hurt; but the affair
proved perilous to Cellini, since it was a mere accident that he had not
killed more than one of the Guasconti. These affrays recur continually
among the adventures recorded by Cellini in his Life. He says with comical
reservation of phrase that he was "naturally somewhat choleric;" and then,
describes the access of his fury as a sort of fever, lasting for days,
preventing him from taking food or sleep, making his blood boil in his
veins, inflaming his eyes, and never suffering him to rest till he
revenged himself by murder or at least by blows. To enumerate all the
people he killed or wounded, or pounded to a jelly in public brawls or
private quarrels, in the pursuit of deliberate _vendetta_ or under a
sudden impulse of ungovernable rage, would take too long. We are forced by
an effort to recall to mind the state of society at that time in Italy, in
order to understand how it is that he can talk with unconcern and even
self-complacency about his homicides. He makes himself accuser, judge, and
executioner, and is quite satisfied with the goodness of his cause, the
justice of his sentence, and the equity of his administration. In a sonnet
written to Bandinelli, he compares his own victims with the mangled
statues of that sculptor, much to his own satisfaction.[354]

There is the same callousness of conscience in his record of spiteful acts
that we should blush to think of--stabs in the dark, and such a piece of
revenge as cutting the beds to bits in the house of an innkeeper who had
offended him.[355] Nor does he speak with any shame of the savage cruelty
with which he punished a woman who was sitting to him as a model, and whom
he hauled up