arkness of night failed to arrest it, and it was resumed the
next day more furiously than ever. Nor did it finally cease because
the thirst for vengeance was slaked, but because victims were wanting
to appease it. Two thousand French perished in this first outbreak.
Even Christian burial was denied them, but pits were afterward dug to
receive their despised remains, and tradition still points out a
column surmounted by an iron cross, raised by compassionate piety on
one of these spots, probably long after the perpetration of the deed
of vengeance.

Tradition, moreover, relates that the sound of a word, like the
_Shibboleth_ of the Hebrews, was the cruel test by which the French
were distinguished in the massacre; and that, if there were found a
suspicious or unknown person, he was compelled, with a sword to his
throat, to pronounce the word _ciciri_, and the slightest foreign
accent was the signal for his death. Forgetful of their own character,
and as if stricken by fate, the gallant warriors of France neither
fled nor united nor defended themselves. They unsheathed their swords
and presented them to their assailants, imploring, as if in emulation
of each other, to be the first to die. Of one common soldier it is
recorded that, having concealed himself behind a wainscot, and being
dislodged at the sword's point, he resolved not to die unavenged, and,
springing forth with a wild cry upon the ranks of his enemies, slew
three of them before he himself perished. The insurgents broke into
the convents of the Minorites and Preaching Friars, and slaughtered
all the monks whom they recognized as French. Even the altars afforded
no protection; tears and prayers were alike unheeded; neither old men,
women, nor infants were spared. The ruthless avengers of the ruthless
massacre of Agosta swore to root out the seed of the French oppressors
throughout the whole of Sicily; and this vow they cruelly fulfilled,
slaughtering infants at their mothers' breasts and after them the
mothers themselves, not sparing even pregnant women, but, with a
horrible refinement of cruelty, ripping up the bodies of Sicilian
women who were with child by French husbands, and dashing against the
stones the fruit of the mingled blood of the oppressors and the
oppressed. This general massacre of all who spoke the same language,
and these heinous acts of cruelty, have caused the Sicilian Vespers to
be classed among the most infamous of national crimes.

The