"This Benvenuto, for instance, who had the assurance to deem my daughter so fair; has he never tried to buy you?" "Good lack! he would have been more likely to try to fly to the moon. I would have received him prettily, I promise you." "I am to understand, then, that you have never admitted a man, a young man, to the Petit-Nesle?" "A young man! Merciful Heaven! a young man! Why not the devil himself?" "Pray who is the handsome boy," said Pulchérie, "who has knocked at the door at least ten times since I have been here, and in whose face I have shut the door as often?" "A handsome boy? Your sight must be poor, my dear, unless it was Comte d'Orbec. Ah, bon Dieu! I know: you may mean Ascanio. You know Ascanio, Messire? the young fellow who saved your life. Yes, I did give him my shoe-buckles to repair. But he, that apprentice! Wear glasses, my love! May these walls and pavements speak, if they ever saw him here!" "Enough," interposed the provost severely. "If you have betrayed my confidence, Dame Perrine, I swear that you shall pay me for it! I am going now to this Benvenuto; God knows how the clown will receive me, but go I must." Contrary to his expectation Benvenuto received the provost with perfect civility. In the face of his cool and easy manner and his good humor, Messire d'Estourville did not dare mention his suspicions. But he said that his daughter, having been unnecessarily alarmed the evening before, had fled in her panic terror like a mad girl; that it was possible that she might have taken refuge in the Grand-Nesle without Benvenuto's knowledge,--or else that she might have fainted somewhere in the grounds as she was passing through. In short, he lied in the most bungling way imaginable. But Cellini courteously accepted all his fables and all his excuses; indeed, he was so obliging as to appear to notice nothing out of the way. He did more, he sympathized with the provost with all his heart, declaring that he would be happy to assist in restoring his daughter to a father who had always hedged her around with such touching affection. To hear him, one might suppose the fugitive was very much in the wrong, and could not too soon return to so pleasant a home and so loving a parent. Moreover, to prove the sincerity of his interest in Messire d'Estourville's affliction, he placed himself at his disposal to assist him in his search in the Grand-Nesle and elsewhere.