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 thereof by letters of naturalisation.  This house stood where the Institute has since been built; of its extent we may judge from the number of occupations carried on within its precincts when Cellini entered into possession.  He found there a tennis-court, a distillery, a printing press, and a factory of saltpetre, besides residents engaged in other trades.  Cellini’s claims were resisted.  Probably the occupiers did not relish the intrusion of a foreigner.  So he stormed the place and installed himself by force of arms.  Similar violence was needed in order to maintain himself in possession; but this Cellini loved, and had he been let alone, it is probable he would have died of ennui.