|
Book FirstPart XI
Part XI
This letter fell into the hands of my master Ulivieri, and he read it
unknown to me. Afterwards he avowed that he had read it, and added: "So then,
my Benvenuto, your good looks did not deceive me, as a letter from your father
which has come into my hands gives me assurance, which proves him to be a man
of notable honesty and worth. Consider yourself then to be at home here, and
as though in your own father`s house."
While I stayed at Pisa, I went to see the Campo Santo, and there I found
many beautiful fragments of antiquity, that is to say, marble sarcophagi. In
other parts of Pisa also I saw many antique objects, which I diligently
studied whenever I had days or hours free from the labour of the workshop. My
master, who took pleasure in coming to visit me in the little room which he
had allotted me, observing that I spent all my time in studious occupations,
began to love me like a father. I made great progress in the one year that I
stayed there, and completed several fine and valuable things in gold and
silver, which inspired me with a resolute ambition to advance in my art.
My father, in the meanwhile, kept writing piteous entreaties that I
should return to him; and in every letter bade me not to lose the music he had
taught me with such trouble. On this, I suddenly gave up all wish to go back
to him; so much did I hate that accursed music; and I felt as though of a
truth I were in paradise the whole year I stayed at Pisa, where I never played
the flute.
At the end of the year my master Ulivieri had occasion to go to Florence,
in order to sell certain gold and silver sweepings which he had; ^1 and
inasmuch as the bad air of Pisa had given me a touch of fever, I went with the
fever hanging still about me, in my master`s company, back to Florence. There
my father received him most affectionately, and lovingly prayed him, unknown
by me, not to insist on taking me again to Pisa. I was ill about two months,
during which time my father had me most kindly treated and cured, always
repeating that it seemed to him a thousand years till I got well again, in
order that he might hear me play a little. But when he talked to me of music,
with his fingers on my pulse, seeing he had some acquaintance with medicine
and Latin learning, he felt it change so much if he approached that topic,
that he was often dismayed and left my side in tears. When I perceived how
greatly he was disappointed, I bade one of my sisters bring me a flute; for
though the fever never left me, that instrument is so easy that it did not
hurt me to play upon it; and I used it with such dexterity of hand and tongue
that my father coming suddenly upon me, blessed me a thousand times,
exclaiming that while I was away from him I had made great progress, as he
thought; and he begged me to go forwards, and not to sacrifice so fine an
accomplishment.
[Footnote 1: I have translated spazzature by sweepings. It means all refuse of
the precious metals left in goldsmith`s trays.]
|
