Difficulties of all kinds, due in part to his ungovernable temper, in part to his ill-regulated life, in part to his ignorance of French habits, gathered round him.  He fell into disfavour with Madame d’Estampes, the mistress of the King; and here it may be mentioned that many of his troubles arose from his inability to please noble women.[385] Proud, self-confident, overbearing, and unable to command his words or actions, Cellini was unfitted to pay court to princes.  Then again he quarrelled with his brother artists, and made the Bolognese painter, Primaticcio, his enemy.  After being attacked by assassins and robbers on more than one occasion, he was involved in two lawsuits.  He draws a graphic picture of the French courts of justice, with their judge as grave as Plato, their advocates all chattering at once, their perjured Norman witnesses, and the ushers at the doors vociferating Paix, paix, Satan, allez, paix.  In this cry Cellini recognised the gibberish at the beginning of the seventh canto of Dante’s “Inferno.”  But the most picturesque group in the whole scene presented to us is that made by Cellini himself, armed and mailed, and attended by his prentices in armour, as they walked into the court to browbeat justice with the clamour of their voice.  If we are to trust his narrative, he fought his way out of one most dangerous trial by simple vociferation.  Afterwards he took the law, as usual, into his own hands.  One pair of litigants were beaten; Caterina was nearly kicked to death; and the attorneys were threatened with the sword.

In the midst of these disturbances, Cellini began some important works for Francis.  At Paris the King employed him to make huge silver candelabra, and at Fontainebleau to restore the castle gate.  For the chateau of Fontainebleau Cellini executed the nymph in bronze, reclining among trophies of the chase, which may still be seen in the Louvre.  It is a long-limbed, lifeless figure, without meaning—­a snuff-box ornament enlarged to a gigantic size.  Francis, who cannot have had good taste in art, if what Cellini makes him say be genuine, admired these designs above the bronze copies of the Vatican marbles he had recently received.  He seems to have felt some personal regard for Benvenuto, and to have done all he could to retain him in his service.  The animosity of Madame d’Estampes, and a grudge against his old patron, Ippolito d’Este, however, determined the restless craftsman to quit Paris.  Leaving his castle, his unfinished works, and other property behind him in the care of Ascanio, his friend and pupil, he returned alone to Italy.  This step, taken in a moment of restless pique, was ever after regretted by Cellini, who looked back with yearning from Florence to the generosity of Francis.