order to extract sums of money from them. This is all done in order to obtain supplies for their prodigality, their luxuries, their superfluities, their mad expenditure on the vanities of the century, to pay their usurers, to support mimes, singers, actors, jugglers, parasites, and flatterers, veritable dogs of their courtyards.” “This sketch,” says Dulaure, “traced by a man of serious character, proves how great was the evil, how excessive was the disorder, how entirely all principles were subverted. Such were the knights of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, whose loyalty, so much exalted in novels, in poetical compositions, and on our modern stage, is constantly disproved by history. These men, to whom so many glorious exploits, so many generous actions are attributed, were merciless brigands, wretches who would now figure at the hulks or in the dungeons of Bicêtre.” [Illustration: PLACE DU PANTHÉON.] Some idea of the extreme corruption of the French clergy in the thirteenth century may be formed from a letter written by Pope Innocent III. in 1203 to the Abbé of Saint-Denis, close to Paris. “There are,” he said, “in your town priests who, abusing the clerical privilege, go through the streets at night and visit the most disreputable houses, breaking in the doors and taking the same liberties with the daughters of respectable citizens. The provost and the officers of justice, from respect for the liberties of the clerical order, do not dare to lay hands on them; and if you, my son, wish to stop these disorders, the culprits at once appeal to us, invoke our authority, ignore your jurisdiction, escape the canonical punishment, and continue with audacity their lawless habits.” The Pope then authorises the Abbé of Saint-Denis to exercise against these “priestly libertines” all ecclesiastical powers, without attending to their appeals. The period of religious and warlike fanaticism was also a period of licentiousness and persecution. The Jews, at the chivalrous time of the Crusades, were particularly unhappy. Their faith, their wealth, their usurious practices, exposed them at all times to persecution, and the Crusaders, before starting for the Holy Land, habitually massacred them. Kings drove them from the country, and then, on payment of large sums, allowed them to return. Dulaure (“Singularités Historiques”) attributes simply to avarice the accusations, always justified by the fanaticism of the people, which rulers brought against them, and which were withdrawn on payment of money.