ty of cardinal upon
Messires Jacopo and Pietro de Colonna. As to the sixth favor and
promise, that I shall reserve to speak to thee thereof in its time and
place."

Bertrand de Got swore to the promises and favors known, and to the
promise and favor unknown. This last, which the King had not dared to
mention in connection with the others, was the abolition of the Knights
Templar. Besides the promises made on the Corpus Domini, Bertrand de Got
gave as hostages his brother and two of his nephews. The King swore on
his side that he should be elected pope.

This scene, set in the deep shadows of a crossroad in the forest,
resembled rather an evocation between magician and demon than an
agreement entered upon between king and pope.

Also the coronation of the King, which took place shortly afterward
at Lyons, and which began the Church's captivity, seemed but little
agreeable to God. Just as the royal procession was passing, a wall
crowded with spectators fell, wounding the King and killing the Duc de
Bretagne. The Pope was thrown to the ground, and his tiara rolled in the
mud.

Bertrand de Got was elected pope under the name of Clement V.

Clement V. paid all that Bertrand de Got had promised. Philippe was
absolved, Holy Communion restored to him and his, the purple again
descended upon the shoulders of the Colonna, the Church was obliged
to defray the expenses of the war in Flanders and Philippe de Valois's
crusade against the Greek Empire. The memory of Pope Boniface VIII. was,
if not destroyed and annulled, at least besmirched; the walls of the
Temple were razed, and the Templars burned on the open space of the Pont
Neuf.

All these edicts--they were no longer called bulls from the moment the
temporal power dictated them--all these edicts were dated at Avignon.

Philippe le Bel was the richest of all the kings of the French monarchy;
he possessed an inexhaustible treasury, that is to say, his pope. He had
purchased him, he used him, he put him to the press, and as cider flows
from apples, so did this crushed pope bleed gold. The pontificate,
struck by the Colonna in the person of Boniface VIII., abdicated the
empire of the world in the person of Clement V.

We have related the advent of the king of blood and the pope of gold.
We know how they ended. Jacques de Molay, from his funeral pyre, adjured
them both to appear before God within the year. _Ae to geron sithullia_,
says Aristophanes. "Dying hoary heads poss