h animal food as they
eat, they make the Saracens, or others who are not of their own religion,
play the butcher.

It is their practice that every one, male and female, do wash the whole
body twice every day; and those who do not wash are looked on much as we
look on the Patarins. [You must know also that in eating they use the
right hand only, and would on no account touch their food with the left
hand. All cleanly and becoming uses are ministered to by the right hand,
whilst the left is reserved for uncleanly and disagreeable necessities,
such as cleansing the secret parts of the body and the like. So also they
drink only from drinking vessels, and every man hath his own; nor will any
one drink from another's vessel. And when they drink they do not put the
vessel to the lips, but hold it aloft and let the drink spout into the
mouth. No one would on any account touch the vessel with his mouth, nor
give a stranger drink with it. But if the stranger have no vessel of his
own they will pour the drink into his hands and he may thus drink from his
hands as from a cup.]

They are very strict in executing justice upon criminals, and as strict in
abstaining from wine. Indeed they have made a rule that wine-drinkers and
seafaring men are never to be accepted as sureties. For they say that to
be a seafaring man is all the same as to be an utter desperado, and that
his testimony is good for nothing.[1] Howbeit they look on lechery as no
sin.

[They have the following rule about debts. If a debtor shall have been
several times asked by his creditor for payment, and shall have put him
off from day to day with promises, then if the creditor can once meet the
debtor and succeed in drawing a circle round him, the latter must not pass
out of this circle until he shall have satisfied the claim, or given
security for its discharge. If he in any other case presume to pass the
circle he is punished with death as a transgressor against right and
justice. And the said Messer Marco, when in this kingdom on his return
home, did himself witness a case of this. It was the King, who owed a
foreign merchant a certain sum of money, and though the claim had often
been presented, he always put it off with promises. Now, one day when the
King was riding through the city, the merchant found his opportunity, and
drew a circle round both King and horse. The King, on seeing this, halted,
and would ride no further; nor did he stir from the spot until the