The present season is prosperous at St. Aliquis. Furthermore, there has just been such an open house at the castle that one would expect even the most luckless to be satiated for a while. Nevertheless, the very day after the guests have departed Adela is informed that there are more than thirty people before the drawbridge, chanting their "Alms! For the sake of Christ, alms!" The baroness, suppressing a sigh, quits her maids, to whom she is just assigning their weaving, and goes to the bailey. With her attends lay-brother Gensenius, an assistant to Father Grégoire, who acts as castle almoner. The crowd contains many familiar faces. Yonder old man on one leg, the blind woman led by a little girl, the lad with a withered arm, the woman disfigured by goiter, the widow whose husband was slain in a brawl, leaving her with eight children, the harmless idiot--all these Adela immediately recognizes. But the excitement of the fêtes has attracted others whom she and Brother Gensenius scan closely. This melancholy fellow on crutches possibly can run very fast if he sees that the provost's men are after him. His companion, who seems covered with sores and who claims to be on a pilgrimage to a healing shrine, is clearly a scamp and malingerer. Right before the baroness a strange woman falls down foaming at the mouth, as if she had epilepsy. Gensenius shakes his crafty head. "She is the same impostor," he whispers, "who tried her trick with a bit of soap yesterday in the village." So the sheep gradually are separated from the goats. Some of the charlatans are chased away. Some of those who receive loaves of bread and broken meat are perhaps no more deserving than the rejected. But dare one really be too critical? After all, the reason why great folk give to beggars is to cancel sins. If the beggars are undeserving, that hardly diminishes the credit with the saints for Conon and Adela. It would be calamitous if there were suddenly to be no poor, worthy or unworthy, for how then, by parting with some of their abundance, could the rich buy peace for their souls? Fortunately, however, there is no such danger. Our Lord has directly said, "The poor ye have always with you," a most comforting word of Scripture. Poverty, then, is a blessed institution even for the fortunate in this world; it enables them to procure entrance to heaven by acts of charity. As for persons who are needy, of course, if they bear their lot with Christian resignation they accumulate a blessed stock of indulgence which will cut short their durance in purgatory. [Sidenote: Physical Severity of Mediaeval Life]