Ah, God; the fortress! Sullen and brown, with crumbling battlements and towers dark among the barren hills, it scowled on the procession sweeping past in the dusty road below. The iron teeth of the portcullis were drawn down over the mouth of the gate; and as a beast crouched on the mountain-side, the fortress guarded its prey. Yet, be the teeth clenched never so fast, they shall be broken and riven asunder; and the grave in the courtyard within shall yield up her dead. For the Christian hosts are marching, marching in mighty procession to their sacramental feast of blood, as marches an army of famished rats to the gleaning; and their cry is: “Give! Give!” and they say not: “It is enough.” “Wilt thou not be satisfied? For these men was I sacrificed; thou hast destroyed me that they might live; and behold, they march everyone on his ways, and they shall not break their ranks. “This is the army of Christians, the followers of thy God; a great people and a strong. A fire devoureth before them, and behind them a flame burneth; the land is as the garden of Eden before them, and behind them a desolate wilderness; yea, and nothing shall escape them.” “Oh, yet come back, come back to me, beloved; for I repent me of my choice! Come back, and we will creep away together, to some dark and silent grave where the devouring army shall not find us; and we will lay us down there, locked in one another's arms, and sleep, and sleep, and sleep. And the hungry Christians shall pass by in the merciless daylight above our heads; and when they howl for blood to drink and for flesh to eat, their cry shall be faint in our ears; and they shall pass on their ways and leave us to our rest.” And It answered yet again: “Where shall I hide me? Is it not written: 'They shall run to and fro in the city; they shall run upon the wall; they shall climb up upon the houses; they shall enter in at the windows like a thief?' If I build me a tomb on the mountain-top, shall they not break it open? If I dig me a grave in the river-bed, shall they not tear it up? Verily, they are keen as blood-hounds to seek out their prey; and for them are my wounds red, that they may drink. Canst thou not hear them, what they sing?” And they sang, as they went in between the scarlet curtains of the Cathedral door; for the procession was over, and all the roses were strewn: “Ave, verum Corpus, natum De Maria Virgine: Vere passum, immolatum In cruce pro homine! Cujus latus perforatum Undam fluxit cum sanguinae; Esto nobis praegustatum Mortis in examinae.”