Then Philippe le Bel had a strange idea; so strange that it must, at first, have seemed an hallucination. It was to withdraw the papacy from Rome, to install it in France, to put it in jail, and force it to coin money for his profit. The reign of Philippe le Bel was the advent of gold. Gold! that was the sole and unique god of this king who had slapped a pope. Saint Louis had a priest, the worthy Abbé Suger, for minister; Philippe le Bel had two bankers, two Florentines, Biscio and Musiato. Do you expect, dear reader, that we are about to fall into the philosophical commonplace of anathematizing gold? You are mistaken. In the thirteenth century gold meant progress. Until then nothing was known but the soil. Gold was the soil converted into money, the soil mobilized, exchangeable, transportable, divisible, subtilized, spiritualized, as it were. So long as the soil was not represented by gold, man, like the god Thermes, that landmark of the fields, had his feet imprisoned by the earth. Formerly the earth bore man, to-day man bears the earth. But this gold had to be abstracted from its hiding-place, and it was hidden far otherwise than in the mines of Chile or Mexico. All the gold was in the possession of the churches and the Jews. To extract it from this double mine it needed more than a king; it required a pope. And that is why Philippe le Bel, that great exploiter of gold, resolved to have a pope of his own. Benedict XI. dead, a conclave was held at Perugia; at this conclave the French cardinals were in the majority. Philippe le Bel cast his eyes upon the Archbishop of Bordeaux, Bertrand de Got, and to him he gave rendezvous in a forest near Saint-Jean d’Angely. Bertrand de Got took heed not to miss that appointment. The King and the Archbishop heard mass there, and at the moment when the Host was elevated, they bound themselves by this God they glorified to absolute secrecy. Bertrand de Got was still ignorant of the matter in question. Mass over, Philippe le Bel said: “Archbishop, I have it in my power to make thee pope.” Bertrand de Got listened no longer, but cast himself at the King’s feet, saying: “What must I do to obtain this?” “Accord me the six favors which I shall ask of thee,” replied Philippe le Bel. “It’s for thee to command and for me to obey,” said the future Pope. The vow of servitude was taken. The King raised Bertrand de Got, and, kissing him on the mouth, said: