the river may be, provided your horse have easy going in, and that you
see on the other side easy landing according to the stream. The other,
--[Balthazar Gerard.]--when they pronounced his dreadful sentence,
"I was prepared for this," said he, "beforehand, and I will make you
wonder at my patience."

The Assassins, a nation bordering upon Phoenicia,

[Or in Egypt, Syria, and Persia. Derivation of 'assassin' is from
Hassan-ben-Saba, one of their early leaders, and they had an
existence for some centuries. They are classed among the secret
societies of the Middle Ages. D.W.]

are reputed amongst the Mohammedans a people of very great devotion and
purity of manners. They hold that the nearest way to gain Paradise is to
kill some one of a contrary religion; which is the reason they have often
been seen, being but one or two, and without armour, to attempt against
powerful enemies, at the price of a certain death and without any
consideration of their own danger. So was our Raymond, Count of Tripoli,
assassinated (which word is derived from their name) in the heart of his
city,--[in 1151]--during our enterprises of the Holy War: and likewise
Conrad, Marquis of Monteferrat, the murderers at their execution bearing
themselves with great pride and glory that they had performed so brave an
exploit.

CHAPTER XXX.

OF A MONSTROUS CHILD

This story shall go by itself; for I will leave it to physicians to
discourse of. Two days ago I saw a child that two men and a nurse, who
said they were the father, the uncle, and the aunt of it, carried about
to get money by showing it, by reason it was so strange a creature. It
was, as to all the rest, of a common form, and could stand upon its feet;
could go and gabble much like other children of the same age; it had
never as yet taken any other nourishment but from the nurse's breasts,
and what, in my presence, they tried to put into the mouth of it, it only
chewed a little and spat it out again without swallowing; the cry of it
seemed indeed a little odd and particular, and it was just fourteen
months old. Under the breast it was joined to another child, but without
a head, and which had the spine of the back without motion, the rest
entire; for though it had one arm shorter than the other, it had been
broken by accident at their birth; they were joined breast to breast, and
as if a lesser child sought to throw its arms about the neck of one
somethi