While I stood revolving these thoughts in my mind, I held in my hand some flimsy particles of the reputed diamond, which of a truth I firmly believed to be such. Now hope is immortal in the human breast; therefore I felt myself, as it were, lured onward by a gleam of idle expectation. Accordingly, I took up a little knife and a few of those particles, and placed them on an iron bar of my prison. Then I brought the knife’s point with a slow strong grinding pressure to bear upon the stone, and felt it crumble. Examining the substance with my eyes, I saw that it was so. In a moment new hope took possession of my soul, and I exclaimed: “Here I do not find my true foe, Messer Durante, but a piece of bad soft stone, which cannot do me any harm whatever!” Previously I had been resolved to remain quiet and to die in peace; now I revolved other plans, but first I rendered thanks to God and blessed poverty; for though poverty is oftentimes the cause of bringing men to death, on this occasion it had been the very cause of my salvation. I mean in this way: Messer Durante, my enemy, or whoever it was, gave a diamond to Lione to pound for me of the worth of more than a hundred crowns; poverty induced him to keep this for himself, and to pound for me a greenish beryl of the value of two carlins, thinking perhaps, because it also was a stone, that it would work the same effect as the diamond. Note 1. For Messer Durante, see above, p. 180. For the druggist of Prato employed as a warder in S. Angelo, see above, p. 216. Note 2. 'In quel girare che e’ fanno e’ cibi.' I have for the sake of clearness used the technical phrase above. Note 3. The name of Leone Leoni is otherwise known as a goldsmith and bronze-caster. He made the tomb for Giangiacomo de’ Medici, Il Medighino, in the Cathedral of Milan. CXXVI AT this time the Bishop of Pavia, brother of the Count of San Secondo, and commonly called Monsignor de’ Rossi of Parma, happened to be imprisoned in the castle for some troublesome affairs at Pavia. [1] Knowing him to be my friend, I thrust my head out of the hole in my cell, and called him with a loud voice, crying that those thieves had given me a pounded diamond with the intention of killing me. I also sent some of the splinters which I had preserved, by the hand of one of his servants, for him to see. I did not disclose my discovery that the stone was not a diamond, but told him that they had most assuredly poisoned me, after the death of that most worthy man the castellan. During the short space of time I had to live, I begged him to allow me one loaf a day from his own stores, seeing that I had resolved to eat nothing which came from them. To this request he answered that he would supply me with victuals.