"Well, well!" exclaimed Dame Perrine; "that's not a long way from something like coquetry. There is no doubt, young man, that you talk like a book. Yes, yes, one can but believe that you Italians have secret means of fascinating people. No stronger proof is needed than this,—that you have enlisted me on your side at once, and 'pon honor, I find myself wishing that Messire le Prévôt will not deal too hardly with you. Au revoir, young man, and bid your master be on his guard. Warn him that Messire d'Estourville is as hard of heart as the devil, and wields great influence at court. For which reason, if your master will take my advice, he will abandon all thought of living at the Grand-Nesle, and especially of taking forcible possession of it. As for you—but we shall see you again, shall we not? Above all, do not believe Colombe; the property of her deceased mother is sufficient to enable her to indulge in baubles twenty times more costly than those you offer her. And look you, bring also some less elaborate articles; it may occur to her to make me a little present. I am not yet, thank God! so old that I need decline a little flirtation. You understand, do you not?"
Deeming it necessary, the better to make her meaning clear, to enforce her words with a gesture, she laid her hand upon the young man's arm. Ascanio jumped like one suddenly awakened from a sound sleep. Indeed, it seemed to him as if it were all a dream. He could not realize that he was under Colombe's roof, and he doubted whether the white apparition whose melodious voice was still whispering in his ear, whose slender form had just vanished from his sight, was really she for one glance from whose eyes he would have given his life that morning.
Overflowing with his present happiness and his future prospects, he promised Dame Perrine whatever she wished, without even listening to what she asked him to do. What mattered it to him? Was he not ready to give all that he possessed to see Colombe once more?
Thinking that to prolong his visit would be unbecoming, he took leave of Dame Perrine, promising to return the next day.
As he left the Petit-Nesle, Ascanio almost collided with two men who were about to enter. By the way in which one of them stared at him, even more than by his costume, he felt sure that it was the provost.
His suspicion was changed to certainty when he saw them knock at the same door by which he had just come out, and he regretted that he had not sooner taken his leave; for who could say that his imprudence would not be visited upon Colombe?
To negative the idea that his visit was of any importance, assuming that the provost noticed it, Ascanio walked away without once turning to look back toward the only corner of the world of which he would at that moment have cared to be king.
When he returned to the studio, he found Benvenuto absorbed in thought. The man who stopped them in the street was Primaticcio, and he was on his way, like the honorable confrère he was, to inform Cellini that, during the visit François I. paid him that morning, the imprudent artist had succeeded in making a mortal enemy of Madame la Duchesse d'Etampes.