er days." In conformity with this sentence,
the culprit having been conducted with much pomp to the cell which had
been prepared for her, the door was locked by means of two keys, one of
which remained in the hands of the churchwarden (_marguillier_) of the
Church of the Innocents, and the other was deposited at the office of the
Parliament. The prisoner received her food from public charity, and it is
said that she became an object of veneration and respect by the whole
town.

[Illustration: Fig. 356.--Cat-o'-nine-tails.--Fac-simile of a Woodcut in
the "Cosmographie Universelle" of Munster.]

Jews.

Dispersion of the Jews.--Jewish Quarters in the Mediaeval Towns.--The
_Ghetto_ of Rome.--Ancient Prague.--The _Giudecca_ of Venice.--Condition
of the Jews.--Animosity of the People against them--Severity and
vexatious Treatment of the Sovereigns.--The Jews of Lincoln.--The Jews
of Blois.--Mission of the _Pastoureaux_.--Extermination of the
Jews.--The Price at which the Jews purchased Indulgences.--Marks set
upon them.--Wealth, Knowledge, Industry, and Financial Aptitude of the
Jews.--Regulations respecting Usury as practised by the
Jews.--Attachment of the Jews to their Religion.

A painful and gloomy history commences for the Jewish race from the day
when the Romans seized upon Jerusalem and expelled its unfortunate
inhabitants, a race so essentially homogeneous, strong, patient, and
religious, and dating its origin from the remotest period of the
patriarchal ages. The Jews, proud of the title of "the People of God,"
were scattered, proscribed, and received universal reprobation (Fig. 357),
notwithstanding that their annals, collected under divine inspiration by
Moses and the sacred writers, had furnished a glorious prologue to the
annals of all modern nations, and had given to the world the holy and
divine history of Christ, who, by establishing the Gospel, was to become
the regenerator of the whole human family.

Their Temple is destroyed, and the crowd which had once pressed beneath
its portico as the flock of the living God has become a miserable tribe,
restless and unquiet in the present, but full of hope as regards the
future. The Jewish _nation_ exists nowhere, nevertheless, the Jewish
_people_ are to be found everywhere. They are wanderers upon the face of
the earth, continually pursued, threatened, and persecuted. It would seem
as if the existence of the offspring of Israel is pe