a
savage beast," and talks of him as "that poor man Pope Clement."[380] Of
Paul he says that he "believed neither in God nor in any other article of
religion;" he sincerely regrets not having killed him by accident during
the siege of Rome, abuses him for his avarice, casts his bastards in his
teeth, and relates with relish the crime of forgery for which in his youth
he was imprisoned in the castle of S. Angelo.[381] Indeed, the Italians
treated the Pope as negroes treat their fetishes. If they had cause to
dislike him, they beat and heaped insults on him--like the Florentines who
described Sixtus IV. as "leno matris suae, adulterorum minister, diaboli
vicarius," and his spiritual offspring as "simonia, luxus, homicidium,
proditio, haeresis." On the other hand, they really thought that he could
open heaven and shut the gates of hell.

At the end of the year 1539, the Cardinal Ippolito d'Este appeared in Rome
with solicitations from Francis I. that the Pope would release Cellini and
allow him to enter his service.[382] Upon this the prison door was opened.
Cellini returned to his old restless life of violence and pleasure. We
find him renewing his favourite pastimes--killing, wantoning, disputing
with his employers, and working diligently at his trade. The temporary
saint and visionary becomes once more the bravo and the artist. A more
complete parallel to the consequences of revivalism in Italy could not be
found.[383] Meanwhile the first period of his history is closed and the
second begins.

Cellini's account of his residence in France has much historical interest
besides the charm of its romance. When he first joined the Court, he found
Francis travelling from city to city with a retinue of eighteen thousand
persons and twelve thousand horses. Frequently they came to places where
no accommodation could be had, and the suite were lodged in wretched
tents. It is not wonderful that Cellini should complain of the French
being less civilised than the Italians of his time. Francis among his
ladies and courtiers, pretending to a knowledge of the arts, sauntering
with his splendid train into the goldsmith's workshop, encouraging
Cellini's violence with a boyish love of mischief, vain and flattered,
peevish, petulant, and fond of show, appears upon these pages with a
life-like vividness.[384] When the time came for settling in Paris, the
King presented his goldsmith with a castle called Le Petit Nesle, and made
him lord the