I fell a-crying, while he, soothing me with
caresses, spoke these words: 'My dear child, I do not give you
that blow for any fault you have committed, but that you may
recollect that the little creature you see in the fire is a
salamander; such a one as never was beheld before to my
knowledge.' So saying he embraced me, and gave me some money."
It seems unreasonable to doubt a story of which Signor Cellini was
both an eye and ear witness. Add to which the authority of
numerous sage philosophers, at the head of whom are Aristotle and
Pliny, affirms this power of the salamander. According to them,
the animal not only resists fire, but extinguishes it, and when he
sees the flame charges it as an enemy which he well knows how to
vanquish.
That the skin of an animal which could resist the action of fire
should be considered proof against that element is not to be
wondered at. We accordingly find that a cloth made of the skin of
salamanders (for there really is such an animal, a kind of lizard)
was incombustible, and very valuable for wrapping up such articles
as were too precious to be intrusted to any other envelopes. These
fire-proof cloths were actually produced, said to be made of
salamander's wool, though the knowing ones detected that the
substance of which they were composed was asbestos, a mineral,
which is in fine filaments capable of being woven into a flexible
cloth.
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