because, albeit she had harboured some angry feelings toward me, she had in her a certain way of dealing which was generous.
XCVI
About that time I was very intimate with Girolamo degli Albizzi,[1] commissary of the Duke's militia. One day this friend said to me: "O Benvenuto, it would not be a bad thing to put your little difference of opinion with the Duke to rights; and I assure you that if you repose confidence in me, I feel myself the man to settle matters. I know what I am saying. The Duke is getting really angry, and you will come badly out of the affair. Let this suffice; I am not at liberty to say all I know." Now, subsequently to that conversation with the Duchess, I had been told by some one, possibly a rogue, that he had heard how the Duke said upon some occasion which offered itself: "For less than two farthings I will throw Perseus to the dogs, and so our differences will be ended." This, then, made me anxious, and induced me to en trust Girolamo degli Albizzi with the negotiations, telling him anything would satisfy me provided I retained the good graces of the Duke. That honest fellow was excellent in all his dealings with soldiers, especially with the militia, who are for the most part rustics; but he had no taste for statuary, and therefore could not understand its conditions. Consequently, when he spoke to the Duke, he began thus: "Prince, Benvenuto has
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- ↑ A warm partisan of the Medici. He was a cousin of Maria Salviati, Cosimo's mother. It was rumoured that he caused the historian Francesco Guicciardinis death by poison. We find him godfather to one of Cellini's children.
