One day a veiled woman, a pretended lay-sister of Sainte-Petronille at Perugia, came to him while he was at table, offering him a basket of figs.

Did it conceal an asp like Cleopatra's?
The fact is that on the morrow the Holy See was vacant.
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 Abbe 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.