d.

The next four years were spent by Cellini chiefly in Rome, in peril of his
life at several seasons, owing to the animosity of Pier Luigi Farnese. One
journey he took at this period to Venice, passing through Ferrara, where
he came to blows with the Florentine exiles. It is interesting to find the
respectable historian Jacopo Nardi involved, if only as a peacemaker, in
this affray.[369] He also visited Florence and cast dies for Alessandro's
silver coinage. It was here that he found opportunities of observing the
perilous intimacy between the Duke of Civita di Penna and his
cousin--_quel pazzo malinconico filosofo di Lorenzino._[370] In April
1537, having quarrelled with the Pope, who seems to have adopted Pier
Luigi's prejudice against him, Cellini set out for France with two of his
workmen. They passed through Florence, Bologna, Venice, and Padua, staying
in the last place to model a medallion portrait of Pietro Bembo;[371] then
they crossed the Grisons by the Bernina and Albula passes. We hear nothing
about this part of the journey, except that the snow was heavy, and that
they ran great danger of their lives. Cellini must have traversed some of
the most romantic scenery of Switzerland at the best season of the year;
yet not a word escapes him about the beauty of the Alps or the wonder of
the glaciers, which he saw for the first time. The pleasure we derive from
contemplating savage scenery was unknown to the Italians of the sixteenth
century; the height and cold, the gloom and solitude of mountains struck
them with a sense of terror or of dreariness. On the Lake of Wallenstadt
Cellini met with a party of Germans, whom he hated as cordially as an
Athenian of the age of Pericles might have loathed the Scythians for their
barbarism.[372] The Italians embarked in one boat, the Germans in
another; Cellini being under the impression that the Northern lakes would
not be so likely to drown him as those of his own country. However, when a
storm swept down the hills, he took a terrible fright, and compelled the
boatmen at the point of the poniard to put him and his company ashore. The
description of their struggles to drag their heavily laden horses over the
uneven ground near Wesen, is extremely graphic, and gives a good notion of
the dangers of the road in those days.[373] That night they "heard the
watch sing at all hours very agreeably; and as the houses of that town
were all of wood, he kept bidding them to take care of