he hero of so perilous an escapade. Cornaro promised to
secure his pardon, but eventually exchanged him for a bishopric. This
remarkable proceeding illustrates the manners of the Papal Court. The
cardinal wanted a benefice for one of his followers, and the Pope wished
to get his son's enemy once more into his power. So the two ecclesiastics
bargained together, and by mutual kind offices attained their several
ends.

Cellini with his broken leg went back to languish in his prison. He found
the flighty Governor furious because he had "flown away," eluding his
bat's eyes and wings. The rigour used towards him made him dread the worst
extremities. Cast into a condemned cell, he first expected to be flayed
alive; and when this terror was removed, he perceived the crystals of a
pounded jewel in his food. According to his own account of this mysterious
circumstance, Messer Durante Duranti of Brescia, one of Cellini's numerous
enemies, had given a diamond of small value to be broken up and mixed with
a salad served to him at dinner. The jeweller to whom this charge was
entrusted, kept the diamond and substituted a beryl, thinking that the
inferior stone would have the same murderous properties. To the avarice of
this man Cellini attributed his escape from a lingering death by
inflammation of the mucous membrane.[378]

During his first imprisonment he had occupied a fair chamber in the upper
turret of the castle. He was now removed to a dungeon below ground where
Fra Fojano, the reformer, had been starved to death. The floor was wet and
infested with crawling creatures. A few reflected sunbeams slanting from a
narrow window for two hours of the afternoon, was all the light that
reached him. Here he lay, alone, unable to move because of his broken leg,
with his hair and teeth falling away, and with nothing to occupy him but a
Bible and a volume of Villani's "Chronicles." His spirit, however, was
indomitable; and the passionate energy of the man, hitherto manifested in
ungoverned acts of fury, took the form of ecstasy. He began the study of
the Bible from the first chapter of Genesis, and trusting firmly to the
righteousness of his own cause, compared himself to all the saints and
martyrs of Scripture, men of whom the world was not worthy. He sang
psalms, prayed continually, and composed a poem in praise of his prison.
With a piece of charcoal he made a great drawing of angels surrounding God
the Father on the wall. Once only his