"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."
"Do you know that I have a private seal which imparts the fullest authority to those documents to which it is affixed?"
"It is said, furthermore, that the damned bully wounds or kills recklessly every one who ventures to oppose him."
"Do you not know that a bodyguard of twenty-four men-at-arms is at my orders night and day?"
"They say that he attacked a goldsmith against whom he had a grudge, although he was surrounded by a guard of sixty men."
"You forget that the Hôtel de Nesle is fortified, that the walls are crenellated, and there are machicoulis above the doors, to say nothing of the city fortifications which render it impregnable on one side."
"It is said that he is as thoroughly at home in the science of sieges as Bayard or Antonio de Leyra."