"Undeceive yourself, my dear provost, undeceive yourself; the Hôtel de Nesle is no longer your property at this moment. Pardon me for afflicting you thus, but I thought, knowing your somewhat hasty nature, that it would be better for you to learn the news from the mouth of a friend, who would spare your feelings in the telling as much as possible, rather than from some malicious fellow, who would take a keen delight in your misfortune, and brutally east it in your faee, Alas! no, my friend, the Grand-Nesle is yours no longer." "Who has taken it from me, I pray to know?" "His Majesty." "His Majesty!" "Himself, so you see that the disaster is irreparable." "When was it done?" "This morning. If I had not been detained by my duties at the Louvre, you would have been sooner apprised of it." "You are mistaken, Marmagne; it's some false report set afloat by my enemies, and which you are in too great haste to repeat." "I would be glad for many reasons if it were so, but unfortunately I was not told of it; I heard it." "You heard it? what?" "I heard the king with his own month present the Grand-Nesle to another." "Who is this other?" "An Italian adventurer, a paltry goldsmith, whose name you perhaps have heard; an intriguing rascal named Benvenuto Cellini, who came from Florence some two months since, whom the king has taken upon his shoulders for some unknown reason, and to whom he paid a visit to-day with his whole court at the Cardinal of Ferrara's hotel, where this pretended artist has established his studio." "And you say that you were present, viscount, when the king presented the Grand-Nesle to this wretch?" "I was," replied Marmagne, pronouncing the words very slowly and distinctly, and dwelling upon them with evident relish. "Oho!" said the provost, "very good! I am ready for your adventurer: let him come and take possession of his royal gift." "Do you mean that you would offer resistance?" "To be sure!" "To an order of the king?" "To an order of God or the devil,--to any order, in short, which should undertake to eject me from this place." "Softly, provost, softly," said Marmagne, "over and above the king's wrath, to which you expose yourself, this Benvenuto Cellini is in himself more to be feared than you think." "Do you know who I am, viscount?" "First of all, he stands very high in his Majesty's good graces,--only for the moment, to be sure,--but it is none the less true." "Do you know that I, the Provost of Paris, represent his Majesty at the Châtelet, that I sit there beneath a canopy, in a short coat and a cloak with a collar, with my sword at my side, a hat with waving plumes on my head, and in my hand a staff covered with blue velvet?" "Secondly, I will tell you that this accursed Italian makes no scruple of offering combat, as if he stood on equal terms with them, to princes, cardinals, and popes."