The provost, half convinced, and the more deeply affected by these eulogiums, in that he knew in his heart that he did not deserve them, began a careful search of his former property, of which he knew all the ins and outs. There was not a door that he did not open, not a wardrobe nor a chest into which he did not peer, as if by inadvertence. Having inspected every nook and corner of the hotel itself, he went into the garden, and searched the arsenal, foundry, stables and cellar, scrutinizing everything most rigorously. Benvenuto, faithful to his first offer, accompanied him throughout his investigations, and assisted him to the utmost of his ability, offering him all the keys, and calling his attention to this or that corridor or closet which the provost overlooked. He advised him to leave one of his people on guard in each spot as he left it, lest the fugitive should evade him by stealing from place to place. Having continued his perquisitions for two hours to no purpose, Messire d'Estourville, feeling sure that he had omitted nothing, and overwhelmed by his host's politeness, left the Grand-Nesle, with profuse thanks and apologies to its master. "Whenever it suits your pleasure to return," said the goldsmith, "and if you desire to renew your investigations here, my house is open to you at all times, as when it was your own. Indeed it is your right, messire; did we not sign a treaty whereby we agreed to live on neighborly terms?" The provost thanked Benvenuto, and as he knew not how to return his courtesy, he loudly praised, as he went away, the colossal statue of Mars, which the artist was at work upon, as we have said. Benvenuto led him around it, and complacently called his attention to its amazing proportions; it was more than sixty feet high and nearly twenty in circumference at its base. Messire d'Estourville withdrew much dejected. As he had failed to find his daughter in the precincts of the Grand-Nesle, he was convinced that she had found shelter somewhere in the city. But even at that time the city was sufficiently large to make his own task as chief officer of the police an embarrassing one. Then, too, there was this question to be solved. Had she been kidnapped, or had she fled? Was she the victim of some other person's violence, or had she yielded to her own impulse? There was nothing to set at rest his uncertainty upon this point. He hoped that in the first event she would succeed in escaping, and in the second would return of her own volition. He therefore waited with what patience he could muster, none the less questioning Dame Perrine twenty times a day, who passed her time calling upon the saints in paradise, and swearing by all the gods that she had admitted no one; and indeed she was no more suspicious than Messire d'Estourville himself of Ascanio.