“Proceed, son,” said the Pope; “we will not be deterred from providing for the public weal by the ribaldry of a ratcatcher.”

“He scoffed at what he termed your Holiness’s absurd position, and affirmed that the world had seldom beheld, or would soon behold again, so ridiculous a spectacle as a Pope besieged by rats.  ‘I can help your master,’ he continued, ’and am willing; but my honour, like his, is aspersed in the eyes of the multitude, and he must come to my aid, if I am to come to his.’

“I prayed him to be more explicit, and offered to be the bearer of any communication to your Holiness.

“‘I will unfold myself to no one but the Pope himself,’ he replied, ’and the interview must take place when and where I please to appoint.  Let him meet me this very midnight, and alone, in the fifth chamber of the Appartamento Borgia.’

“‘The Appartamento Borgia!’ I exclaimed in consternation.  ’The saloons which the wicked Pope Alexander the Sixth nocturnally perambulates, mingling poisons that have long lost their potency for Cardinals who have long lost their lives!’

“‘Have a care!’ he exclaimed sharply.  ’You speak to his late Holiness’s most intimate friend.’

“‘Then,’ I answered, ’you must obviously be the Devil, and I am not at present empowered to negotiate with your Infernal Majesty.  Consider, however, the peril and inconvenience of visiting at dead of night rooms closed for generations.  Think of the chills and cobwebs.  Weigh the probability of his Holiness being devoured by rats.’

“‘I guarantee his Holiness absolute immunity from cold,’ he replied, ’and that none of my subjects shall molest him either going or returning.’

“‘But,’ I objected, ’granting that you are not the Devil, how the devil, let me ask, do you expect to gain admittance at midnight to the Appartamento Borgia?’

“‘Think you I cannot pass through a stone wall?’ answered he, and vanished in an instant.  A tremendous scampering of rats immediately ensued, then all was silence.

“On recovering in some measure from my astounded condition, I caused strict search to be made throughout the shop.  Nothing came to light but herbalists’ stuff and ordinary medicines.  And now, Holy Father, your Holiness’s resolution?  Reflect well.  This Rattila may be the King of the Rats, or he may be Beelzebub in person.”

Alexander the Eighth was principally considered by his contemporaries in the light of a venerable fox, but the lion had by no means been omitted from his composition.

“All powers of good forbid,” he exclaimed, “that a Pope and a Prince should shrink from peril which the safety of the State summons him to encounter!  I will confront this wizard, this goblin, in the place of his own appointing, under his late intimate friend’s very nose.  I am a man of many transgressions, but something assures me that Heaven will not deem this a fit occasion for calling them to remembrance.  Time presses; I lead on; follow, Cardinal Barbadico, follow!  Yet stay, let us not forget temporal and spiritual armouries.”