But when those twenty-four hours of grace had elapsed, it would have
been easy for them to hang all who remained of those robbers themselves.
So they took the best of their horses and their ill-gotten gold and rode
on again, leaving the murderers murdered by a stronger power than man.
They went through desolate villages, where the crops rotted in the
fields; they went through stricken towns whereof the moan and the stench
rose in a foul incense to heaven; they crossed rivers where the very
fish had died by thousands, poisoned of the dead that rolled seaward
in their waters. The pleasant land had become a hell, and untouched,
unharmed, they plodded onward through those deeps of hell. But a night
or two before they had slept in a city whereof the population, or those
who remained alive of them, seemed to have gone mad. In one place they
danced and sang and made love in an open square. In another bands
of naked creatures marched the streets singing hymns and flogging
themselves till the blood ran down to their heels, while the passers-by
prostrated themselves before them. These were the forerunners of the
"Mad Dancers" of the following year.
In a field outside of this city they came upon even a more dreadful
sight. Here forty or fifty frenzied people, most of them drunk, were
engaged in burning a poor Jew, his wife and two children upon a great
fire made of the staves of wine-casks, which they had plundered from
some neighbouring cellars.
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