When they arrived at the city Ulenspiegel got down from the wagon, and straightway noticed a charming-looking woman standing at the door of an inn. She smiled when she saw him looking at her. Taking this kindly humour of hers for a good omen: "Hostess," says he, "will you give asile, pray, to a poor pilgrim on pilgrimage who has carried his full time and is about to be delivered of his sins?" "We give asile to all such as pay us for it," said the woman. I have a hundred ducats in my purse," said Ulenspiegel (who, in fact, had no more than one), "and I would dearly like to spend the first of them in your pleasant company and over a bottle of old Roman wine." "Wine is not dear in these holy parts," she answered. "Come in and drink your fill. It will only cost you a soldo." And they twain drank together for so long, and emptied so many bottles of wine and all to the tune of such pleasant conversation, that the hostess was constrained to order her servant to serve the customers in her place, while she and Ulenspiegel retired into a room at the back of the inn, a marble chamber, cool as a winter's day, where, leaning her head on her new friend's shoulder, she demanded of him who he might be. And Ulenspiegel answered her: "I am Lord of Geeland, Count of Gavergeëten, Baron of Tuchtendeel. I was born at Damme, in Flanders, and I hold there for my estate five and twenty acres of moonlight." "What land is that whence you come?" the hostess asked him, drinking from Ulenspiegel's tankard. "It is a misty land," he told her, "a land of illusion, where are sown the seeds of false hopes and of castles in the air. But you, sweet hostess mine, were born in no such land of moonlight, you with your amber skin and your eyes that shine like pearls. For bright is the sunshine that has coloured that browned gold of your hair, and it is Lady Venus herself who, without a single pang of jealousy, has formed your soft shoulders, and your prancing breasts, your rounded arms, your delicate sweet hands. Say, shall we sup together this night?" "Fine pilgrim that you are from Flanders," says she, "say, why are you come hither?" "To have a talk with the Pope," said Ulenspiegel. "Heavens!" she cried, clasping her hands together, "and that is something that even myself, a native of the country, have never been able to do!" "Yet shall I," said Ulenspiegel. "But know you where the Pope lives, what he is like, what are his habits and his ways of life?" "I heard all about him on the way," answered Ulenspiegel. "His name is Julius III. Wanton he is, and gay and dissolute, a good talker, that never falters for a clever repartee. I have also heard that he has taken an extraordinary fancy to a little dirty beggar of a man--a dark fellow and a rude who used to wander about with a monkey asking for alms. He came to the Pope, and the Pope, it seems, has made a Cardinal of him, and now gets quite ill if a single day passes without their meeting."