"The boy perceiving this, once more ventured to raise his head, and,
seeing me laugh, began to take courage, and said, 'The devils are
flying away with a vengeance.' In this condition we staid, till the
bell rang for morning prayers. The boy again told us, that there
remained but few devils, and those were at a great distance. When the
magician had performed the rest of his ceremonies, he stripped off his
gown, and took up a wallet full of books, which he had brought with
him. We all went out of the circle together, keeping as close to each
other as we possibly could, especially the boy, who placed himself in
the middle, holding the necromancer by the coat, and me by the cloak.
"As we were going to our houses in the quarter of Banchi, the boy told
us, that two of the demons whom we had seen at the amphitheatre, went
on before us leaping and skipping, sometimes running upon the roofs of
the houses, and sometimes on the ground. The priest declared that, as
often as he had entered magic circles, nothing so extraordinary had
ever happened to him. As we went along, he would fain have persuaded
me to assist at the consecrating a book, from which he said we should
derive immense riches. We should then ask the demons to discover to us
the various treasures with which the earth abounds, which would raise
us to opulence and power; but that those love-affairs were mere
follies from which no good could be expected. I made answer, that I
would readily have accepted his proposal if I had understood Latin. He
assured me that the knowledge of Latin was nowise material; but that
he could never meet with a partner of resolution and intrepidity equal
to mine, and that that would be to him an invaluable acquisition."
Immediately subsequent to this scene, Cellini got into one of those
scrapes, in which he was so frequently involved by his own violence
and ferocity; and the connection was never again renewed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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