starving to death, with a mastiff at each heel, in order that he might be partially eaten before death. [Illustration: PUBLIC EXECUTIONS] No less awful a sight, and no less frequent in certain places, such as Marseilles, was the galley-slave, naked except for a pair of breeches, shaven, dragging behind him when ashore the chain fixed to his feet, treated worse than a beast, and yet not necessarily criminal: at Leghorn was a tent, at Naples a certain stone, where a man might stake his liberty against a few shillings on a throw of the dice. Among the few who obtained their release by being bought out were those who, on that condition, acted as deputies in the processions of flagellants which tourists often mention: Montaigne witnessed one at Rome with five hundred persons in it. He, like others, was astonished to note their unconcern; the scourging was genuine: their backs were raw and bloody, the thongs of the scourges adhering to each other with the blood; yet so far from showing signs of pain, they marched along, careless and talkative, in an every-day mood. Other forms of slavery were ordinarily met with: at Naples an open slave-market was held; at Lisbon, too, where men and monkeys were sold side by side. And here and there one might come across settlements of those who could not claim all the benefits of the law. Zinzerling picked up a cagot servant near Toulouse, a young man, well-informed, who told him how his brother-outcasts had just petitioned for permission to marry whom they chose, offering to have their blood tested to prove it no different from other men's. Those who did not act as servants, lived by handicraft, carpentering mostly; they were forced to dwell in the suburbs, and nothing they owned was heritable except furniture, which was looked on as sharing their taint. But he does not mention the goose-foot badge which distinguished them from "clean" persons. The badge of the Jew, on the other hand, often seen, is often mentioned, varying according to the extent they had acquired influence and used it. In Poland, thanks to the Jewish mistress of one of their kings, they had almost equal rights with Christians. Elsewhere, except in those places, such as England, which they were nominally forbidden to enter, a badge was compulsory; lightest in Mantua, merely a bit of yellow lace tacked on inside their cloaks, but generally a red hat for the men and a red garment for the women: red as betokening their guiltiness of Christ's blood. An alternative colour was yellow, as in Rome, where a short-sighted cardinal once mistook a red-hatted Jew for a brother cardinal and obtained a change of colour in order to safeguard himself against being so polite again.