the less true it sounds."

"But could anyone possibly eat sixty monks?" objected the scoffing
listeners.

"It is quite clear that he did not eat them all at once, but in a
space of fifteen or twenty years: from that point of view the thing is
comprehensible and natural..."

"Natural?"

"And natural," repeated Lebedeff with pedantic obstinacy. "Besides, a
Catholic monk is by nature excessively curious; it would be quite easy
therefore to entice him into a wood, or some secret place, on false
pretences, and there to deal with him as said. But I do not dispute in
the least that the number of persons consumed appears to denote a spice
of greediness."

"It is perhaps true, gentlemen," said the prince, quietly. He had
been listening in silence up to that moment without taking part in the
conversation, but laughing heartily with the others from time to time.
Evidently he was delighted to see that everybody was amused, that
everybody was talking at once, and even that everybody was drinking.
It seemed as if he were not intending to speak at all, when suddenly
he intervened in such a serious voice that everyone looked at him with
interest.

"It is true that there were frequent famines at that time, gentlemen.
I have often heard of them, though I do not know much history. But it
seems to me that it must have been so. When I was in Switzerland I used
to look with astonishment at the many ruins of feudal castles perched
on the top of steep and rocky heights, half a mile at least above
sea-level, so that to reach them one had to climb many miles of stony
tracks. A castle, as you know, is, a kind of mountain of stones--a
dreadful, almost an impossible, labour! Doubtless the builders were
all poor men, vassals, and had to pay heavy taxes, and to keep up the
priesthood. How, then, could they provide for themselves, and when
had they time to plough and sow their fields? The greater number must,
literally, have died of starvation. I have sometimes asked myself how
it was that these communities were not utterly swept off the face of the
earth, and how they could possibly survive. Lebedeff is not mistaken,
in my opinion, when he says that there were cannibals in those days,
perhaps in considerable numbers; but I do not understand why he should
have dragged in the monks, nor what he means by that."

"It is undoubtedly because, in the twelfth century, monks were the only
people one could eat; they were the fat, among many lean," sa