He returns to England, where he finds preparations making for a solemn sacrifice. He hears, not without emotion, that the victim selected for this occasion is the stately man who once stood with him in front of the great cathedral. He visits the place chosen for the celebration, and sees the pile of wood prepared to feed the fire, over which the victim is to be suspended by an iron chain. He cannot bring himself to witness the sacrifice, but he afterwards hears that it was performed with great pomp in the presence of many illustrious persons. The king himself, it seems, once superintended a similar ceremony in the lifetime of his father, by whom this species of sacrifice had been reinstituted after a very long disuse. It is customary to choose the victim from among the Lollards, as it is thought that the chance of serving on these occasions will contribute to deter people from adopting, or at least from proclaiming, the unsafe opinions of that sect. The African traveller's last visit is to France. He made an earlier attempt to see that country, but, finding it ravaged by invasion and by civil war, deferred his design to a quieter time. Such a time does not arrive; but he cannot leave one of the most important countries of Europe unseen. On landing in France, he finds the condition of things even worse than he had anticipated. But he resolves to penetrate to Paris, in spite of the dangers of the road. He passes through desolated regions, where only the smoke rising from black heaps gives sign of former villages, and where the remaining trees, serving as gibbets, still bear the trophies of the reciprocal justice which the nobles and gentlemen of the country have been executing on each other.