A poor boy named Matthew Schinner, who was at the school of Sion in the Valais, (it was toward the middle of the latter half of the fifteenth century,) singing before the houses, as young Martin Luther shortly after did, heard himself called by an old man, who, being struck with the frankness with which the child answered his questions, said to him with that prophetic spirit with which man is said to be sometimes endowed when on the brink of the grave, "Thou art to be a bishop and a prince."[625] The expression sunk deep into the young mendicant, and from that moment boundless ambition took possession of his heart. At Zurich and Como the progress he made astonished his masters. Having become curate of a small parish in Valais, he rose rapidly, and being sent at a later period to ask from the pope the confirmation of a bishop of Sion, who had just been elected, he obtained the bishopric for himself, and girt his brow with the episcopal mitre. This man, ambitious and crafty, but often noble and generous, always considered any dignity bestowed upon him as only a step destined to raise him to some still higher dignity. Having offered his services to Louis XII, and named his price, "It is too much for one man," said the king. "I will show him," replied the bishop of Sion, offended, "that I am a man worth several men." In fact he turned towards pope Julius II, who gladly received him, and Schinner succeeded in 1510 in linking the whole Swiss confederation to the policy of this ambitious pontiff. The bishop having been rewarded with a cardinal's hat smiled when he saw that there was now only one step between him and the papal throne. [625] Helvet Kirch Gesch. von Wirz, iii, p. 314. [Sidenote: ZUINGLIUS' POEM, "THE LABYRINTH."]