"How did you come in? Who gave you that key, Pagolo?" she cried, rising from her chair. "There are only two keys to that door,--one is in my possession and the other in Cellini's." "Ah! my dear Catherine," laughed Pagolo, "you're a capricious creature: sometimes you open your door to a fellow, and again you keep it closed; and when one attempts to enter by force, even though you have given him a right to do it, you threaten to call for help. So you see I had to resort to stratagem." "Oh yes! tell me that you stole the key from Cellini, without his knowledge; tell me that he doesn't know you have it, for if he gave it to you I should die of shame and chagrin." "Set your mind at rest, my lovely Catherine," said Pagolo, locking the door, and sitting down near the girl, whom he forced to a seat beside him. "No, Benvenuto doesn't love you, it is true: but he's like those misers who have a treasure of which they make no use themselves, but which they won't allow anybody else to touch. No, I made the key myself. He who can do great things can do small things. Tell me if I love you, Catherine, when my hands, which are accustomed to making pearls and diamonds bloom on golden stalks, consented to shape an ignoble piece of iron. It is true, wicked one, that the ignoble piece of iron was a key, and that the key unlocked the door of paradise." With that, Pagolo would have taken Catherine's hand, but, to the vast amazement of Cellini, who did not lose a word or a gesture of this scene, Catherine repulsed him. "Well, well," said Pagolo, "is this whim likely to last long, pray?" "Look you, Pagolo," said Catherine, in a melancholy tone, which went to Cellini's heart; "I know that when a woman has once yielded she has no right to draw back afterward; but if the man for whom she has been so weak has a generous heart,--when she says to him that she was acting in good faith at the time, because she had lost her reason, but that she was mistaken,--it is that man's duty, believe me, not to take an unfair advantage of her momentary error. Well, Pagolo, I tell you this: I yielded to you, and yet I did not love you; I loved another, and that other Cellini. Despise me you may,--indeed you ought,--but torment me no more, Pagolo." "Good!" exclaimed Pagolo, "good! you arrange the matter marvellously well, upon my word! After the time you compelled me to wait for the favor with which you now reproach me, you think that I will release you from a definite engagement which you entered into of your own free will? No, no! And when I think that you are doing all this for Benvenuto, for a man who is twice your age or mine, for a man who doesn't love you, for a man who despises you, for a man who treats you as a courtesan!" "Stop, Pagolo, stop!" cried Scozzone, blushing with shame and jealousy and rage. "Benvenuto doesn't love me any more, that is true; but he did love me once, and he esteems me still." "Very good! Why doesn't he marry you, as he promised to do?"