“Do not move,” cried the blushing Imperia, more lovely with passion than she was with love, because now she was possessed both with passion and love.  “Stop, my friend.  Here you are in your own house.”  Then he knew that he was really loved by her.

“It is it not in the breviary, and an evangelical regulation, that you should be equal with God in the valley of Jehoshaphat?” asked she of the bishop.

“’Tis is an invention of the devil, who has adulterated the holy book,” replied the great numskull of a bishop in a hurry to fall to.

“Well then, be equal now before me, who am here below your goddess,” replied Imperia, “otherwise one of these days I will have you delicately strangled between the head and shoulders; I swear it by the power of my tonsure which is as good as the pope’s.”  And wishing that the trout should be added to the feast as well as the sweets and other dainties, she added, cunningly, “Sit you down and drink with us.”  But the artful minx, being up to a trick or two, gave the little one a wink which told him plainly not to mind the German, whom she would soon find a means to be rid of.

The servant-maid seated the Bishop at the table, and tucked him up, while Philippe, wild with rage that closed his mouth, because he saw his plans ending in smoke, gave the archbishop to more devils than ever were monks alive.  Thus they got halfway through the repast, which the young priest had not yet touched, hungering only for Imperia, near whom he was already seated, but speaking that sweet language which the ladies so well understand, that has neither stops, commas, accents, letters, figures, characters, notes, nor images.  The fat bishop, sensual and careful enough of the sleek, ecclesiastical garment of skin for which he was indebted to his late mother, allowed himself to be plentifully served with hippocras by the delicate hand of Madame, and it was just at his first hiccough that the sound of an approaching cavalcade was heard in the street.  The number of horses, the “Ho, ho!” of the pages, showed plainly that some great prince hot with love, was about to arrive.  In fact, a moment afterwards the Cardinal of Ragusa, against whom the servants of Imperia had not dared to bar the door, entered the room.  At this terrible sight the poor courtesan and her young lover became ashamed and embarrassed, like fresh cured lepers; for it would be tempting the devil to try and oust the cardinal, the more so as at that time it was not known who would be pope, three aspirants having resigned their hoods for the benefit of Christianity.  The cardinal, who was a cunning Italian, long bearded, a great sophist, and the life and soul of the Council, guessed, by the feeblest exercise of the faculties of his understanding, the alpha and omega of the adventure.  He only had to weigh in his mind one little thought before he knew how to proceed in order to be able to hypothecate his manly vigour.  He arrived with the appetite of a hungry monk, and to obtain its satisfaction he was just the man to stab two monks and sell his bit of the true cross, which were wrong.