Tistet Védène was already in the courtyard, pretending to weep and tear out his hair.
“Ah! Holy Father, what is the matter? There is your mule.... Mon Dieu! what will happen to us! Your mule has gone up into the belfry!”
“All by herself?”
“Yes, Holy Father, all by herself. Stay! Look there, up high. Don’t you see her ears waving? They look like two swallows.”
“Mercy on us!” cried the poor Pope on raising his eyes. “But she must have gone mad! Why, she will kill herself. Will you come down, you unhappy creature!”
Pécaïre! She could have asked nothing better than to come down; but how? The stairs—they were not to be thought of: one could mount those things, but as to coming down, one could break one’s legs a hundred times. And the poor mule was disconsolate; but as she roamed about the platform with her great eyes filled with vertigo she thought of Tistet Védène.
“Ah, bandit, if I escape—what a kick tomorrow morning!”
That idea of a kick restored a little courage to her heart; except for that she could not have held out. At last they succeeded in getting her down, but it was not an easy affair. They had to lower her in a litter, with ropes and windlass, and you may imagine what a humiliation it must have been for a Pope’s mule to see herself hanging at that height, afloat with her legs in the air like a beetle at the end of a string. And all Avignon looking on!
The unhappy beast did not sleep that night. It seemed to her as though she were forever turning upon that accursed platform, with the laughter of the city below. Then she thought of that infamous Tistet Védène, and of the delightful kick that she proposed to turn loose the next morning. Ah, my friends, what a kick! They could see the smoke at Pampérigouste.
But, while this pretty reception was being prepared for him at the stable, do you know what Tistet Védène was doing? He was going singing down the Rhône on one of the papal galleys, on his way to the Court of Naples with a company of young nobles whom the city sent every year to Queen Joanna for exercise in diplomacy and in manners. Tistet was not of noble birth; but the Pope desired to recompense him for what he had done for his mule, and above all for the activity he had shown throughout the day of the rescue.