travelled through Bologna, and arrived one evening at Ferrara. There we halted at the inn of the Piazza, while Lamentone went in search of some Florentine exiles, to take them letters and messages from their wives. The Duke had given orders that only the courier might talk to them, and no one else, under penalty of incurring the same banishment as they had. Meanwhile, since it was a little past the hour of twenty-two, Tribolo and I went to see the Duke of Ferrara come back from Belfiore, where he had been at a jousting match. There we met a number of exiles, who stared at us as though they wished to make us speak with them. Tribolo, who was the most timorous man that I have ever known, kept on saying: "Do not look at them or talk to them, if you care to go back to Florence." So we stayed, and saw the Duke return; afterwards, when we regained our inn, we found Lamentone there. After nightfall there appeared Niccolò Benintendi, and his brother Piero, and another old man, whom I believe to have been Jacopo Nardi,[1] together with some young fellows, who began immediately to ask the courier news, each man of his own family in Florence.[2] Tribolo and I kept at a distance, in order to avoid speaking with them. After they had talked a while with Lamentone, Niccolo Benintendi[3] said: "I know those two men there very well; what's the
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- ↑ Jacopo Nardi was the excellent historian of Florence, a strong anti-Medicean partisan, who was exiled in 1530.
- ↑ I have translated the word brigata by family above, because I find Cellini in one of his letters alluding to his family as la mia brigatina.
- ↑ Niccolò Benintendi, nvho had been a member of the Eight in 1529, was exiled by the Medici in 1530.
