On the day following that on which this story was told in the garden of the Petit-Nesle, by the moon's pale light, Benvenuto's studio wore its accustomed aspect. The master was working at the gold salt dish, the material for which he had so valiantly defended against the four bravos, who strove to take it from him, and his life with it. Ascanio was chiselling Madame d'Etampes's lily; Jacques Aubry, reclining lazily on a lounging-chair, was putting question after question to Cellini, who paid no attention to him, and imposed upon the inquisitive student the necessity of framing his own replies. Pagolo was gazing at Catherine, who was busy with some woman's work. Hermann and the others were filing, welding, chiselling, and Scozzone's joyous singing furnished the element of cheerfulness in this tranquil, busy scene.
The Petit-Nesle was by no means so tranquil, for Colombe had disappeared.
There all was excitement and apprehension; they were seeking her everywhere, and calling her name. Dame Perrine was shrieking at the top of her voice, and the provost, who had been sent for in hot haste, was trying to lay hold upon something, in the midst of the good woman's lamentations, which might put him on the track of the absent one, who was in all probability a fugitive.
"Look you, Dame Perrine; do you say that you last saw her a few moments after I went away last night?" demanded the provost.
"Alas! yes, messire. Jésus Dieu! what a misfortune! The poor, dear child seemed a bit cast down as she went to take off all her beautiful court fixings. She put on a simple white dress—saints in Paradise, have pity on us!—and then she said to me, 'Dame Perrine, it's a lovely evening, and I will go and take a turn or two in my path.' It might have been about seven o'clock. Madame here," added Perrine, pointing to Pulchérie, the woman who had been installed as her assistant or superior,—"Madame here had already gone to her room, doubtless to work at those lovely dresses which she makes so well, and I was at work sewing in the room below. I don't know how long I remained there,—it is possible that after a while my poor tired eyes closed in spite of me, and that I lost myself a moment."
"As usual," interposed Pulchérie sharply.
"At all events," continued Dame Perrine, not deigning to reply to this insidious slander, "about ten o'clock I left my chair and went to the garden to see if Colombe had not forgotten herself. I called and found no one: I supposed then that she had gone to her own room and to bed without disturbing me, as the dear child has done a thousand times. Merciful Heaven! who would have thought—Ah! Messire le Prévôt, I can safely say that she followed no lover, but some ravisher. I reared her in the way—"
"And this morning," the provost broke in impatiently, "this morning?"
"This morning when I found that she didn't come down—Holy Virgin help us!"
"To the devil with your litanies!" cried Messire d'Estourville. "Say what you have to say simply and without all these jeremiads. This morning?"
"Ah! Monsieur le Prévôt, you can't prevent my weeping until she is found. This morning, messire, being alarmed at not seeing her (she is always so early!) I knocked at her door to wake her, and, as she did not answer, I opened the door. No one. The bed was not even rumpled, messire. With that I called and cried, and lost my head, and you want me not to weep!"
"Dame Perrine," said the provost sternly; "have you admitted any one here during my absence?"
"I admit any one! the idea!" rejoined the governess with every indication of stupefaction, feeling a little conscience-stricken in that regard. "Didn't you forbid me, messire? Since when, pray, have I allowed myself to disobey your orders? Admit some one? Oh yes, of course!"
"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.
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.
That day and the next passed without news. The provost thereupon put all his agents in the field: a thing he had hitherto omitted to do, in order that the unfortunate occurrence, in which his reputation was so deeply interested, might not be noised abroad. To be sure he simply gave them Colombe's description, without giving them her name, and their investigations were made upon an entirely different pretext from the real one. But although he resorted to all his secret sources of information, all their searching was without result.
Surely he had never been an affectionate or gentle father, but if he was not in despair, he was in a bad temper, and his pride suffered if his heart did not. He thought indignantly of the fine match which the little fool would perhaps miss by reason of this escapade, and with furious rage of the witticisms and sarcasms with which his misadventure would be greeted at court.
He had to make up his mind at last to confide his woful tale to Comte d'Orbec. Colombe's fiancé was grieved by the news, in the same way as a merchant is grieved who learns that part of his cargo has been jettisoned, and not otherwise. He was a philosopher, was the dear count, and promised his worthy friend that, if the affair did not make too much noise, the marriage should come off none the less; and, as he was a man who knew how to strike when the iron was hot, he seized the opportunity to whisper to the provost a few words as to the plans of Madame d'Etampes regarding Colombe.
The provost was dazzled at the honor which might be in store for him: his anger redoubled, and he cursed the ungrateful girl who was ruining her own chances of such a noble destiny. We spare our readers the details of the conversation between the two old courtiers to which this avowal of Comte d'Orbec led; we will say simply that grief and hope were combined therein in a curiously touching way. As misfortune brings men together, the prospective father-in-law and son-in-law parted more closely united than ever, and without making up their minds to renounce the brilliant prospects of which they had caught a glimpse.
They agreed to keep the occurrence secret from everybody; but the Duchesse d'Etampes was too intimate a friend, and too deeply interested as an accomplice, not to be let into their confidence. It was a wise move on their part, for she took the thing much more to heart than the father and husband had done, and, as we know, she was better qualified than any other to give the provost information and direct his search.
She knew of Ascanio's love for Colombe, and she had herself forced him, so to speak, to listen to the whole conspiracy. The young man, realizing that a blow was to be aimed at the honor of his beloved, had perhaps resolved upon some desperate act. But Ascanio had himself told her that Colombe did not love him, and not loving him she would be unlikely to lend herself to such a design. Now the Duchesse d'Etampes knew him upon whom her suspicion first fell sufficiently well to be sure that he would never have the courage to defy his mistress's scorn and her resistance; and yet, despite all her reasoning, and although in her eyes all the probabilities pointed to Ascanio's innocence, her jealous instinct told her that Colombe must be sought at the Hôtel de Nesle, and that they must make sure of Ascanio before everything.
But, on the other hand, Madame d'Etampes could not tell her friends the source of that conviction, for she must in that case confess her love for Ascanio, and that, in the imprudence of her passion, she had made known to him all her designs upon Colombe. She simply said to them that she would be very much mistaken if Benvenuto were not the culprit, Ascanio his accomplice, and the Grand-Nesle the place of concealment. To no purpose did the provost argue with her, and swear that he had inspected and searched every corner, she would not yield her point, saying that she had her reasons for the faith that was in her, and she was so obstinate in her opinion that she ended by arousing suspicion in the mind of Messire d'Estourville, who was certain nevertheless that he had made a thorough search.
"However," said the duchess, "I will send for Ascanio, I will see him and question him myself, never fear."
"O madame! you are too kind," said the provost.
"And you too stupid," muttered the duchess between her teeth. She dismissed them, and set about reflecting upon the method she should adopt to induce the young man to come to her; but before she had decided upon any, Ascanio was announced; it was as if he had anticipated her wish.
He was cold and calm. The gaze with which Madame d'Etampes received him was so piercing that you would have said she wished to read to the very bottom of his heart; but Ascanio did not seem to notice it.
"Madame," said he, as he saluted her, "I have come to show you your lily, which is almost finished; almost nothing is lacking to complete it save the two hundred thousand crown dewdrop you promised to furnish me."
"Very well! and your Colombe?" was the only reply vouchsafed by Madame d'Etampes.
"If you mean Mademoiselle d'Estourville, madame," rejoined Ascanio gravely, "I will beg you on my knees not to pronounce her name again before me. Yes, madame, I most humbly and earnestly implore you that this subject may never be mentioned between us, in pity's name!"
"Aha! spite!" said the duchess, who did not remove her penetrating gaze from Ascanio's face for an instant.
"Whatever the feeling which influences me, madame, and though I were to be disgraced in your eyes, I shall venture to decline hereafter to talk with you upon this subject. I have sworn a solemn oath that everything connected with that memory shall be dead and buried in my heart."
"Am I mistaken?" thought the duchess; "and has Ascanio no part in this transaction? Can it be that the child has followed some other adorer, voluntarily or perforce, and, although lost to my ambitious schemes, has served the interests of my passion by her flight?"
Having indulged in these reflections beneath her breath, she continued, aloud:—
"Ascanio, you beg me not to speak of her again, but you will at least allow me to speak of yourself. You see that in obedience to your entreaty I do not insist, but who knows if this second subject will not be even more disagreeable to you than the first? Who knows—"
"Forgive me for interrupting you, madame," said the young man, "but your kindness in granting me the favor I ask emboldens me to ask another. Although of noble birth, I am simply a poor, obscure youth, reared in the gloom of a goldsmith's workshop, and from that artistic cloister I am suddenly transported to a brilliant sphere, involved in the destiny of empires, and, weak creature that I am, having powerful noblemen for enemies, and a king for rival. And such a king, madame! François I., one of the most powerful princes in Christendom! I have suddenly found myself elbow to elbow with the most illustrious names of the age. I have loved hopelessly, I have been honored with a love I could not return! And with whose love? Great God! yours, madame, one of the loveliest and noblest women on earth! All this has sown confusion within me and without; it has bewildered and crushed me, madame.
"I am as terrified as a dwarf awaking to find himself among giants: I haven't an idea in its place, not a feeling which I can explain. I feel lost among all these terrible animosities, all these implacable passions, all these soaring ambitions. Madame, give me time to breathe, I conjure you; permit the poor shipwrecked wretch to collect his thoughts, the convalescent to recover his strength. Time, I hope, will restore order in my mind and my life. Time, madame, give me time, and in pity's name see in me to-day only the artist who comes to ask if his lily is to your taste."
The duchess stared at Ascanio in doubt and amazement; she had not supposed that this young man, this child, was capable of speaking in this grave, stern, poetic fashion; she felt morally constrained to obey him, and confined her conversation to the lily, praising and advising Ascanio, and promising to do her utmost to send him very soon the large diamond to complete his work. Ascanio thanked her, and took his leave with every mark of gratitude and respect.
"Can that be Ascanio?" said Madame d'Etampes to herself, when he had gone; "he seems ten years older. What gives him this almost imposing gravity? Is it suffering? is it happiness? Is he sincere, in short, or acting under the influence of that accursed Benvenuto? Is he playing a part with the talent of a consummate artist, or is he simply following his own nature?"
Anne was perplexed. The strange vertigo which gradually overpowered all those who contended with Benvenuto Cellini began to steal over her, despite her strength of mind. She set spies upon Ascanio, who followed him on the rare occasions when he left the studio, but that step led to no result. At last she sent for the provost and Comte d'Orbec, and advised them, as another would have ordered, to make a second and unexpected domiciliary visit to the Grand-Nesle.
They followed her advice; but although surprised at his work, Benvenuto received them even more cordially than he received the provost alone on the former occasion. One would have said, so courteous and expansive was he, that their presence implied no suspicions that were insulting to him. He told Comte d'Orbec good-humoredly of the ambush that he fell into as he left his house with his golden burden a few days before,—on the same day, he observed, on which Mademoiselle d'Estourville disappeared. This time as before he offered to accompany his visitors through the château, and to assist the provost in recovering his authority as a father, whose sacred duties he understood so well. He was very happy that he happened to be at home to do honor to his guests, for he was to start that same day within two hours for Romorantin, having been named by François I., in his condescension, as one of the artists who were to go to meet the Emperor.
For events in the world of politics had moved on as rapidly as those of our humble narrative. Charles V., emboldened by his rival's public promise, and by the secret undertaking of Madame d'Etampes, was within a few day's journey of Paris. A deputation had been selected to go out to receive him, and D'Orbec and the provost found Cellini in travelling costume.
"If he leaves Paris with the rest of the escort," D'Orbec whispered to the provost, "in all probability he didn't carry off Colombe, and we have no business here."
"I told you so before we came," retorted the provost.
However, they decided to go through with their perquisition, and set about it with painstaking minuteness. Benvenuto accompanied them at first, but as he saw that their investigations were likely to be very prolonged, he asked their permission to leave them, and return to the studio to give some orders to his workmen, as he was to take his leave very soon, and desired to find the preparations for casting his Jupiter finished at his return.
He did in fact return to the studio, and distributed the work among his men, bidding them obey Ascanio as if he were himself. He then said a few words in Italian in Ascanio's ear, bade them all adieu, and prepared to take his departure. A horse all saddled, and held by little Jehan, awaited him in the outer courtyard.
At that moment Scozzone went up to Benvenuto and took him aside.
"Do you know, master," she said with a sober face, "that your departure leaves me in a very difficult position?"
"How so, my child?"
"Pagolo is becoming fonder of me all the time."
"Ah! is it so?"
"And he is forever talking to me about his love."
"What do you reply?"
"Dame! as you bade me, master. I say that I will see, and that perhaps it may be arranged."
"Very well."
"How is it very well? You don't understand, Benvenuto, that he takes everything that I say to him most seriously, and that I may be entering into a real engagement with him. It's a fortnight since you laid down a rule of conduct for me to adopt, is it not?"
"Yes, I think so; I hardly remember."
"But I have a better memory than you. During the first five days I replied by reasoning gently with him: I told him he must try to conquer his passion, and love me no more. The next five days I listened in silence, and that was a very compromising kind of an answer; but you bade me do it, so I did it. Since then I have been driven to talk of my duty to you, and yesterday, master, I reached a point where I besought him to be generous, while he pressed me to confess my love for him."
"If that is so, it puts a different face on the matter," said Benvenuto.
"Ah, at last!" said Scozzone.
"Yes, now listen, little one. During the first three days of my absence, you will let him think that you love him; during the next three, you will confess your love."
"What, you bid me do that, Benvenuto!" cried Scozzone, deeply wounded at the master's too great confidence in her.
"Never you fear. What have you to reproach yourself for when I authorize you to do it?"
"Mon Dieu! nothing, I know," said Scozzone; "but being placed as I am between your indifference and his love, I may end by falling in love with him outright."
"Nonsense! in six days? Aren't you strong enough to remain indifferent to him six days?"
"Yes, indeed! I give you six days; but don't remain away seven, I beg you."
"No fear, my child, I will return in time. Adieu, Scozzone."
"Adieu, master," returned Scozzone, sulking, smiling, and weeping all at once.
While Cellini was giving Catherine these instructions, the provost and D'Orbec returned to the studio.
When they were left to themselves, with unrestricted freedom of movement, they went about their search in a sort of frenzy; they explored the garrets and cellars, sounded all the walls, moved all the furniture; they detained all the servants they met, and displayed the ardor of creditors with the patience of hunters. A hundred times they retraced their steps, examining the same thing again and again, like a sheriff's officer with a writ to serve, and when they had finished they were flushed and excited, but had discovered nothing.
"Well, messieurs," said Benvenuto, preparing to mount his horse, "you found nothing, eh? So much the worse! so much the worse! I understand what a painful thing it must be for turn sensitive hearts like yours, but notwithstanding my sympathy with your suffering and my desire to assist in your search I must begone. If you feel called upon to visit the Grand-Nesle in my absence, do not hesitate, but make yourself perfectly at home here. I have given orders that the house be open to you at all times. My only consolation for leaving you in so anxious a frame of mind is the hope that I shall learn upon my return that you have found your daughter, Monsieur le Prévôt, and you your fair fiancée , Monsieur d'Orbec. Adieu, messieurs."
Thereupon he turned to his companions, who were standing in a group at the door, all save Ascanio, who doubtless did not care to stand faee to face with his rival.
"Adieu, my children," he said. "If during my absence Monsieur le Prévôt desires to inspect my house a third time, do not forget to receive him as its former master."
With that little Jehan threw open the door, and Benvenuto galloped away.
"You see that we are idiots, my dear fellow," said Comte d'Orbec to the provost. "When a man has kidnapped a girl, he doesn't go off to Romorantin with the court."