legs. The friends who were with him, remaining on the border of the
broken vault took no harm, but were astounded and full of wonder,
especially because of the prophecy which he had just contemptuously
repeated to them. When my father heard of this, he took his sword, and
went to see the man. There, in the presence of his father, who was
called Niccolaio da Volterra, a trumpeter of the Signory, he said, "O
Piero, my dear pupil, I am sorely grieved at your mischance; but if you
remember it was only a short time ago that I warned you of it; and as
much as I then said will come to happen between your children and mine."
Shortly afterwards, the ungrateful Piero died of that illness. He left a
wife of bad character and one son, who after the lapse of some years
came to me to beg for alms in Rome. I gave him something, as well
because it is my nature to be charitable, as also because I recalled
with tears the happy state which Pierino held when my father spake those
words of prophecy, namely, that Pierino's children should live to crave
succour from his own virtuous sons. Of this perhaps enough is now said;
but let none ever laugh at the prognostications of any worthy man whom
he has wrongfully insulted; because it is not he who speaks, nay, but
the very voice of God through him.

Note 1. This Cardinal and Pope was Giulio, a natural son of Giuliano,
Lorenzo de' Medici's brother, who had been killed in the Pazzi
conspiracy, year 1478. Giulio lived to become Pope Clement VII., to
suffer the sack of Rome in 1527, and to make the concordat with Charles
V. at Bologna in 1529-30, which settled for three centuries the destiny
of Italy. We shall hear much more of him from Cellini in the course of
this narrative.