Another example of scant regard for truth is his disowning of the _Julius Exclusus_. This was a witty dialogue, in Erasmus' best style, on the death of Pope Julius II. The Pope is shown arriving at the gate of heaven, accompanied by his Genius, a sort of guardian angel, and amazed to find it locked, with no preparation at all for his reception. His amazement grows when St. Peter at length appears and makes it plain that the gate is not going to be opened, and that there is no room in heaven for Julius with his record of wars and other unchristian deeds; whereupon there is a fine set-to, and each party receives some hard knocks. That Erasmus was its author there can be no doubt; for there is evidence in two directions of the existence of a copy or copies of it in his handwriting, and we cannot suppose that at that period of his life, when he regularly had one or more servant-pupils in his employ, he would have troubled to copy out with his own hand a work of that length by another. There was nothing very outrageous in the dialogue, nothing much more than there was in the _Moria_; but it was not the sort of thing for a man to write who was so closely connected as Erasmus was with the Papal see, and who wished to stand well with it in the future. The _Julius_ appeared in print in 1517, of course anonymously, and Erasmus was pleased with its reception; but he soon found that people who were not in the secret were attributing it to him. That would never do; so he set to work to repudiate it. The friends that knew he exhorted to know nothing; the rest he endeavoured to persuade that he was not the author, using many forms of equivocation. He rises to his greatest heights in addressing cardinals. To Campegio, then in London, he writes on 1 May 1519: