"Ah! yes, you do not know her. Colombe is the daughter of the provost, Messire d'Estourville himself. Is she not beautiful?" he said again.
"No," rejoined Benvenuto, "no, it's not Colombe. 'T is Hebe, Ascanio, the goddess of youth; the Hebe whom my great King François has ordered at my hands; the Hebe of whom I have dreamed, for whom I have prayed to God, and who has come down from above in response to my prayer."
Regardless of the incongruity of the idea of Hebe reading her missal, and pouring out her heart in prayer, Benvenuto continued his hymn to beauty simultaneously with his devotion and his military plans: the goldsmith, the Catholic, and the strategist predominated in his mind by turns.
"Our Father who art in heaven—Look, Ascanio, what clean-cut, expressive features!—Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven—How fascinatingly graceful the undulating outline of her figure!—Give us this day our daily bread—And thou sayest that such a lovely child is the daughter of that rascally provost whom I propose to exterminate with my own hand?—And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us—Even though I have to burn down the Hôtel to do it—Amen!"
And Benvenuto crossed himself, having no doubt that he had just concluded a most expressive rendering of the Lord's prayer.
The mass came to an end while he was still absorbed in these heterogeneous ideas, which might seem somewhat profane in the case of a man of different temperament at a different epoch, but which were altogether natural in so reckless a nature as Cellini's, at a time when Clement Marot was putting the seven penitential psalms into gallant verse.
As soon as the Ite, missa est, was pronounced, Benvenuto and Catherine exchanged a warm grasp of the hand. Then, while the girl, wiping away a tear, remained on the spot where she was to await the result of the combat, Cellini and Ascanio, their eyes still fixed upon Colombe, who had not once looked up from her book, went with their companions to take a drop of holy water; after which they separated, to meet in a deserted cul-de-sac about half-way from the church to the Hôtel de Nesle.
Catherine, in accordance with the prearranged plan, remained to the celebration of high mass, as did Colombe and Dame Perrine, who had simply arrived a little early, and had listened to the first service only as a preparation for the more solemn ceremony to follow; nor had they any reason to suspect that Benvenuto and his apprentices were upon the point of cutting all the lines of communication with the house they had so imprudently quitted.