The morning dole is a regular feature at St. Aliquis, as at every other castle and monastery. The amount of food given away is really very great. But there is next to no attempt on the part of the average seigneury really to remedy this mendicancy--to devise honest work within the capacities of the blind or the lame; to give systematic relief to the widow; to put the idiot lad in some decent institution. Every premium is placed upon the idlers, the impostors, and the low-browed rogues who prefer anything to honest toil. In the times of real famine, even, the temptation to cease prematurely struggling against hard times and to lapse into beggardom is very dangerous. Despite, therefore, much genuine kindness on the part of many donors, charity in the Feudal Age is allowed more than ordinarily to cover a multitude of sins--alike those of the givers and the receivers. Upon the St. Aliquis barony there is an astonishing number of unabashed drones and parasites. These miserable folk, however, have some excuse. Conditions of life in the Feudal Age, even for the cavaliers, are very severe. Men and women begin the duties of life young, mature young, grow old young. Henry II of Anjou and England was only forty-seven when they began to call him "old." Philip Augustus was only fifteen when he was capable of assuming the actual duties of a responsible monarch. Many a baron is gray headed at forty. When he is fifty his sons may often be intriguing to supplant their superannuated father. If this is true of the nobility, what of the toiling peasantry? We have seen how Georges and Jeanne are aged before their time. Grinding toil by weakening the body, of course, leaves it exposed to many ordinary diseases. But certainly conditions in castle and village open the doors to extraordinary plagues as well. The age is happily ignorant of sanitary precautions which more sophisticated mortals will consider a matter of course. The peasants "almost live on the manure heap." The clergy (though not themselves so uncleanly) seldom preach the virtues of bathing; indeed, their discourses on "despising the body" apparently discourage the practice. It is hard to keep meat any length of time unless it is salted, and the vast amounts of salt meat consumed everywhere are direct promoters of scurvy and gangrene. We have seen that nearly all the clothing worn close to the body is woolen. This retains filth, is hard to wash, and irritates the skin, another cause for frequent dermal diseases--scrofula, the itch, and things even worse. [Illustration: A LEPER Holding in his hand the bones with which these unfortunates were compelled to signal their approach from a distance. From a window in the cathedral of Bourges (thirteenth century).] [Sidenote: Fearful Plagues and Mortality]