As this is the first of Cellini’s homicidal quarrels, it is worth while to transcribe what he says about it.  “One day as I was leaning against the shop of these Guasconti, and talking with them, they contrived that a load of bricks should pass by at the moment, and Gherardo Guasconti pushed it against me in such wise that it hurt me.  Turning suddenly and seeing that he was laughing, I struck him so hard upon the temple that he fell down stunned.  Then turning to his cousins, I said, That is how I treat cowardly thieves like you; and when they began to show fight, being many together, I, finding myself on flame, set hand to a little knife I had, and cried, If one of you leaves the shop, let another run for the confessor, for a surgeon won’t find anything to do here.”  Nor was he contented with this truculent behaviour; for when Gherardo recovered from his blow, and the matter had come before the magistrates, Cellini went to seek him in his own house.  There he stabbed him in the midst of all his family, raging meanwhile, to use his own phrase, “like an infuriated bull."[353] It appears that on this occasion no one was seriously hurt; but the affair proved perilous to Cellini, since it was a mere accident that he had not killed more than one of the Guasconti.  These affrays recur continually among the adventures recorded by Cellini in his Life.  He says with comical reservation of phrase that he was “naturally somewhat choleric;” and then, describes the access of his fury as a sort of fever, lasting for days, preventing him from taking food or sleep, making his blood boil in his veins, inflaming his eyes, and never suffering him to rest till he revenged himself by murder or at least by blows.  To enumerate all the people he killed or wounded, or pounded to a jelly in public brawls or private quarrels, in the pursuit of deliberate vendetta or under a sudden impulse of ungovernable rage, would take too long.  We are forced by an effort to recall to mind the state of society at that time in Italy, in order to understand how it is that he can talk with unconcern and even self-complacency about his homicides.  He makes himself accuser, judge, and executioner, and is quite satisfied with the goodness of his cause, the justice of his sentence, and the equity of his administration.  In a sonnet written to Bandinelli, he compares his own victims with the mangled statues of that sculptor, much to his own satisfaction.[354]

There is the same callousness of conscience in his record of spiteful acts that we should blush to think of—­stabs in the dark, and such a piece of revenge as cutting the beds to bits in the house of an innkeeper who had offended him.[355] Nor does he speak with any shame of the savage cruelty with which he punished a woman who was sitting to him as a model, and whom he hauled up and down his room by the hair of her head, kicking and beating her till he was tired.[356] It is true that on this occasion he regrets having spoiled, in a moment of blind passion, the best arms and legs that he could find to draw from.  Such episodes, to which it is impossible to allude otherwise than very briefly, illustrate with extraordinary vividness what I have already had occasion to say about the Italian sense of honour at this period.[357]