Sansovino, who also lived near, was not a member of this rollicking club; he was one of Andrea's more serious friends, and served as companion when his most exalted moods were upon him. Perhaps Rustici's rooms did not please Sansovino, for strange inmates were there--a hedgehog, an eagle, a talking raven, snakes and reptiles, in a kind of aquarium; besides all these gruesome familiar spirits, Rustici was addicted to necromancy. The Society of the Cauldron seems only a natural outgrowth from such a character. It consisted of twelve members, all artists, goldsmiths, or musicians, each of whom was allowed to bring four friends to the supper, and bound to provide a dish. Any two members bringing similar dishes were fined, but the droll part of it was that the suppers were eaten in a huge cauldron large enough to put table and chairs into; the handle served as an arched chandelier, the table was on a lift, and when one course was finished it disappeared from their midst, and descended to be replenished. As for the viands, the sculptors displayed their talents in moulding classical subjects in pastry, and turning boiled fowls into figures of Ulysses and Laertes. The architects built up temples and palaces of jellies, cakes, and sausages; the goldsmith, Robetta, produced an anvil and accoutrements made of a calf's head, the painters treated roast pig to represent a scullery-maid spinning. Andrea del Sarto built up the model of the Baptistery with all kinds of eatables, with a reading desk of veal, and book with letters inlaid with truffles, at which the choristers were roast thrushes with open beaks, while the canons were pigeons in red mantles of beetroot--an idea more droll than reverential. After this, in 1512, another club, called that of the "Trowel," was instituted, of which Andrea was not a member, but was chosen as an associate. The first supper was arranged by Giuliano Bugiardini, and was held on the _aja_ or threshing floor of S. Maria Nuova, where the bronze gates of the Baptistery had been cast. In this no two members were allowed to wear the same style of dress under penalty of a fine. The members were in two ranks, the "lesser" and the "greater," a parody on the guilds of the city. They were shown the plan of a building, and the "greater" members, furnished with trowels, were obliged to build it in edibles, the "lesser" acting as hodmen, and bringing materials. Pails of ricotta or goat's milk cheese served for mortar, grated cheese for sand, sugar plums for gravel, cakes and pastry for bricks, the basement was of meats, the pillars fowls or sausages.