But in all Ascanio's embarrassment there was a certain amount of joy. He had not expected to see Colombe again until the following Sunday, and he was to see her that very day. Thus he had gained six days, and six days of waiting are, as everybody knows, six centuries according to a lover's reckoning. And so, as he approached his destination, the affair became more simple in his eyes. He it was, to be sure, who had advised Benvenuto to ask the king for the Hôtel de Nesle for his studio, but could Colombe take it ill of him that he had desired to be near her? This installation of the Florentine goldsmith in the old palace of Amaury could not, it was true, be carried out without interference with Colombe's father, who looked upon it as his own; but would any real injury be inflicted upon Messire Robert d'Estourville when he did not occupy it? Moreover, there were a thousand ways in which Benvenuto could pay for his occupancy;--a chased cup for the provost, a necklace for his daughter (and Ascanio would undertake to make the necklace), might, and undoubtedly would, in that artistic age, make the rough places smooth. Ascanio had seen grand dukes, kings, and popes ready to give their coronets, sceptres, or tiaras as the price of one of the marvellous examples of his master's art. After all, then, supposing that matters should take that course, Messire Robert would eventually be in Master Benvenuto's debt; for Master Benvenuto was so generous that, if Messire Robert showed a disposition to be courteous and compliant, Ascanio was certain that he, Master Benvenuto, would deal right royally with him. By the time he reached the end of Rue Saint-Martin, Ascanio looked upon himself as a messenger of peace, chosen by the Lord to maintain harmonious relations between two powers. And yet, notwithstanding that conviction, Ascanio was not sorry--surely lovers are strange creatures--to lengthen his journey by ten minutes, and instead of crossing the Seine by boat, he walked the whole length of the quays, and crossed by the Pont aux Moulins. It may be that he chose that road because it was the same he had taken the evening before when following Colombe. Whatever his motive for making the detour, he finally found himself in front of the Hôtel de Nesle in about twenty minutes. But when he saw the little ogive door that he must pass through, when he saw the turrets of the lovely little Gothic palace boldly raising their heads above the wall, when he thought that behind those jalousies, half closed because of the heat, was his beautiful Colombe, the whole card-house of happy dreams which he had built on the road vanished like the structures one sees in the clouds, and which the wind overturns with one blow of its wing; he found himself face to face with reality, and reality did not seem to him the most reassuring thing in the world.