admirable collets and diminutive figures so exquisitely formed and some of them so curious and fanciful that nothing finer can be conceived.” His father would have preferred that he should apply himself to music, but Benvenuto stuck to his trade and, as he tells us, “so great was my inclination to improve that in a few months I rivalled the most skilful journeyman in the business.... I continued however to play sometimes through complacence, either upon the flute or the horn, and I constantly drew tears and deep sighs from him when he heard me. From a feeling of filial piety I often gave him that satisfaction, endeavouring to persuade him that it also gave me particular pleasure.” Benvenuto being concerned with his brother in a serious affray, was banished from Florence and wandered through some of the northern cities following his trade, but returned and was invited to England in the employment of King Henry VII. He would not leave his native city, however, where he became the victim of envious rivals “who robbed and calumniated him, doing him the greatest injustice.” He says: “They declared loudly they would make me repent, but I, being a stranger to fear, little regarded their menaces.” A fierce quarrel soon followed, Benvenuto was injured and retaliated by striking one of his assailants to the ground where he lay motionless and insensible. Drawing a knife he cried: “Some one run for a confessor as there will be no necessity for a surgeon.” Benvenuto was arrested and carried before the council of eight, who would have sent him to prison, but through the good offices of friends only a penalty of a fine was imposed. His passionate temper would not suffer him to sink his differences, and running to his workshop, he took up a dagger, meaning to make short work of his adversaries. Single handed he attacked the whole family of the man who had been the originator of the quarrel. They were a dozen in number, all armed with cudgels, hammers and scraps of iron. “Rushing amongst them like a mad bull,” he says, “I threw down four or five and fell to the ground along with them, now aiming my dagger at one, now at another.” No fatal consequences ensued, however, for Benvenuto adds, “Upon looking about for the wounded and slain, it appeared that none of them had sustained any injury.” After this disturbance, Benvenuto knew that he must fly, for the authorities vowed vengeance. The magistrates assembled, decreed his immediate arrest, and threatened the severest penalties against any one who dared to grant him an asylum or be privy to his concealment. Cellini’s father pleaded for mercy and begged hard that his youthful but hot-headed son might be spared, but was peremptorily bidden to take himself off. There could be no safety for Benvenuto, who forthwith left the city, disguised as a friar accompanied by a lay brother. Outside the walls horses were provided, and the fugitive galloped away to Sienna on the road to Rome.