"On my word," he said, as they crossed the courtyard leading from the Petit to the Grand-Nesle, "on my word, the little one will do very well; she is just such a woman as I need, my dear D'Estourville, virtuous, well-bred, and ignorant. When the first storm has passed over, time will straighten out everything, believe me. I know how it is; every little girl dreams of a young, handsome, clever, and wealthy husband. Mon Dieu! I have at least half of the requisite qualities. Few men can say as much, so that's a great point in my favor." Passing from his future wife to the property he was to occupy, and speaking with the same shrill, greedy accent of the one as of the other, "This old Nesle," he continued, "is a magnificent habitation, on my honor! and I congratulate you upon it. We shall be marvellously comfortable here, my wife and I, and my whole treasury. Here we will have our own apartments, there will be my offices, and over yonder the servants' quarters. The place as a whole has been allowed to run to seed. But with the expenditure of a little money, which we will find a way to make his Majesty pay, we will give a good account of ourselves. By the way, D'Estourville, are you perfectly sure of retaining the property? You should take steps to perfect your title to it; so far as I now remember, the king did not give it you, after all."
"He did not give it me, true," replied the provost with a laugh, "but he let me take it, which is much the same thing."
"Very good; but suppose that some other should play you the trick of making a formal request for it from him."
"Ah! such a one would be very ill received, I promise you, when he should come to take possession, and, being sure as I am of Madame d'Etampes's support and yours, I would make him sorely repent his pretensions. No, no, my dear fellow, my mind is at ease, and the Hôtel de Nesle belongs to me as truly as my daughter Colombe belongs to you; go, therefore, without fear on that score, and return quickly."
As the provost uttered these words, the truth of which neither he nor his interlocutor had any reason to doubt, a third personage, escorted by Raimbault the gardener, appeared upon the threshold of the door leading from the quadrangular courtyard into the gardens of the Petit-Nesle. It was the Vicomte de Marmagne.
He also was a suitor for Colombe's hand, but by no means a favored one. He was a fair-haired scamp, with a pink face, consequential, insolent, garrulous, forever boasting of his relations with women, who often used him as a cloak for their serious amours, overflowing with pride in his post of secretary to the king, which permitted him to approach his Majesty in the same way in which his greyhounds and parrots and monkeys approached him. The provost, therefore, was not deceived by his apparent favor and the superficial familiarity of his relations with his Majesty, which favor and familiarity he owed, so it was said, to his decidedly unmoral additions to the duties of his post. Furthermore, the Vicomte de Marmagne had long since devoured all his patrimony, and had no other fortune than the liberality of François. How it might happen any day that this liberal disposition would cease, so far as he was concerned, and Messire Robert d'Estourville was not fool enough to rely, in matters of such importance, upon the caprice of a very capricious monarch. He had therefore gently denied the suit of the Vicomte de Marmagne, admitting to him confidentially and under the seal of secrecy that his daughter's hand had long been promised to another. Thanks to this confidential communication, which supplied a motive for the provost's refusal, the Vicomte de Marmagne and Messire Robert d'Estourville had continued to be in appearance the best friends in the world, although from that day the viscount detested the provost, and the provost was suspicious of the viscount, who could not succeed in concealing his rancor beneath an affable and smiling exterior from a man so accustomed as Messire Robert to peer into the dark corners of courts, and the deepest depths of men's hearts. So it was that, whenever the viscount made his appearance, the provost expected to find in him, notwithstanding his invariably affable and engaging demeanor, a bearer of bad news, which he would always impart with tears in his eyes, and with the feigned, premeditated grief which squeezes out poison upon a wound, drop by drop.
As for Comte d'Orbec, the Vicomte de Marmagne had wellnigh come to an open rupture with him; it was one of the rare instances of court enmities visible to the naked eye. D'Orbec despised Marmagne, because Marmagne had no fortune and could make no display. Marmagne despised D'Orbec, because D'Orbec was old and had consequently lost the power of making himself agreeable to women; in fine, they mutually detested each other, because, whenever they met upon the same path, one of them had taken something from the other.
So it was that when they met on this occasion the two courtiers greeted each other with that cold, sardonic smile which is never seen save in palace antechambers, and which means, "Ah! if we weren't a pair of cowards, how long ago one of us would have ceased to live!"
Nevertheless, as it is the historian's duty to set down everything, good and bad alike, it is proper to state that they confined themselves to this salutation and this smile, and that Comte d'Orbec, escorted by the provost, and without exchanging a word with Marmagne, left the house immediately by the same door by which his enemy entered.
Let us hasten to add, that, notwithstanding the hatred which kept them asunder, these two men were ready, in case of need, to unite temporarily to destroy a third.