Michaelmas day, I went with my Lord Mowbray (eldest son to the Earl of Arundel, and a most worthy person) to see the collection of a noble Venetian, Signor Rugini. He has a stately palace, richly furnished with statues and heads of Roman Emperors, all placed in an ample room. In the next, was a cabinet of medals, both Latin and Greek, with divers curious shells and two fair pearls in two of them; but, above all, he abounded in things petrified, walnuts, eggs in which the yoke rattled, a pear, a piece of beef with the bones in it, a whole hedgehog, a plaice on a wooden trencher turned into stone and very perfect, charcoal, a morsel of cork yet retaining its levity, sponges, and a piece of taffety part rolled up, with innumerable more. In another cabinet, supported by twelve pillars of oriental agate, and railed about with crystal, he showed us several noble intáglios of agate, especially a head of Tiberius, a woman in a bath with her dog, some rare cornelians, onyxes, crystals, etc., in one of which was a drop of water not congealed, but moving up and down, when shaken; above all, a diamond which had a very fair ruby growing in it; divers pieces of amber, wherein were several insects, in particular one cut like a heart that contained in it a salamander without the least[Pg 212] defect, and many pieces of mosaic. The fabric of this cabinet was very ingenious, set thick with agates, turquoises, and other precious stones, in the midst of which was an antique of a dog in stone scratching his ear, very rarely cut, and comparable to the greatest curiosity I had ever seen of that kind for the accurateness of the work. The next chamber had a bedstead all inlaid with agates, crystals, cornelians, lazuli, etc., esteemed worth 16,000 crowns, but, for the most part, the bedsteads in Italy are of forged iron gilded, since it is impossible to keep the wooden ones from the cimices.
From hence, I returned to Padua, when that town was so infested with soldiers, that many houses were broken open in the night, some murders committed, and the nuns next our lodging disturbed, so as we were forced to be on our guard with pistols and other firearms to defend our doors; and indeed the students themselves take a barbarous liberty in the evenings when they go to their strumpets, to stop all that pass by the house where any of their companions in folly are with them. This custom they call chi vali, so as the streets are very dangerous, when the evenings grow dark; nor is it easy to reform this intolerable usage, where there are so many strangers of several nations.
Using to drink my wine cooled with snow and ice, as the manner here is, I was so afflicted with an angina and sore throat, that it had almost cost me my life. After all the remedies Cavalier Veslingius, chief professor here, could apply, old Salvatico (that famous physician) being called, made me be cupped, and scarified in the back in four places; which began to give me breath, and consequently life; for I was in the utmost danger; but, God being merciful to me, I was after a fortnight abroad again, when, changing my lodging, I went over against Pozzo Pinto; where I bought for winter provision 3,000 weight of excellent grapes, and pressed my own wine, which proved incomparable liquor.
This was on 10th of October. Soon after came to visit me from Venice Mr. Henry Howard, grandchild to the Earl of Arundel, Mr. Bramstone, son to the Lord Chief Justice, and Mr. Henshaw, with whom I went to another part of the city to lodge near St. Catherine's over against the monastery of nuns, where we hired the whole house,[Pg 213] and lived very nobly. Here I learned to play on the theorb, taught by Signor Dominico Bassano, who had a daughter married to a doctor of laws, that played and sung to nine several instruments, with that skill and address as few masters in Italy exceeded her; she likewise composed divers excellent pieces: I had never seen any play on the Naples viol before. She presented me afterward with two recitativos of hers, both words and music.