“They told me on my way,” said Ulenspiegel, “that he has to name Julius the Third, that he is wanton, gay, and dissolute, a good talker and quick in repartee. They told me, too, that he had conceived an extraordinary friendship for a little beggar fellow, black, dirty, and forbidding, who begged for alms with a monkey, and that on his arriving at the pontifical throne, he made him cardinal of the Mount, and that he is ill whenever a day goes by without seeing him.”
“Drink,” said she, “and do not speak so loud.”
“They told me, too,” said Ulenspiegel, “that he swore like a trooper: Al dispetto di Dio, potta di Dio; one day when at supper he did not find a cold peacock he had had kept for himself, saying, ‘I, the Vicar of God, may very well swear over a peacock since my master lost his temper for an apple!’ You see, my dear, that I know the Pope and what he is.”
“Alas!” said she, “but don’t speak of it to other people. And in any case you will never see him.”
“I shall speak with him,” said Ulenspiegel.
“If you do, I give you a hundred florins.”
“They are mine already,” said Ulenspiegel.
The next day, although he was leg-weary, he went about the town and discovered where the Pope would say mass that day, at St. John Lateran. Ulenspiegel went thither and stationed himself as near and as plain to the Pope as he could compass, and every time the Pope raised the chalice or the host, Ulenspiegel turned his back upon the altar.
Beside the Pope was a cardinal serving, brown of visage, cunning and portly, who, with an ape on his shoulder, gave the people the sacrament with many wanton gestures. He called the Pope’s attention to Ulenspiegel, and as soon as the mass was completed, His Holiness sent four famous soldiers such as are known in these warlike lands, to seize the pilgrim.
“What is your belief?” the Pope asked him.