But the ring of the horses' hoofs roused the stupid population, and they all came trooping out--old men and old women, boys and girls, the blind, the crazy, and the crippled, all in ragged, soiled and scanty raiment, and all abject beggars by nature, instinct and education.

How the vermin-tortured vagabonds did swarm! How they showed their scars and sores, and piteously pointed to their maimed and crooked limbs, and begged with their pleading eyes for charity! We had invoked a spirit we could not lay.

They hung to the horses's tails, clung to their manes and the stirrups, closed in on every aide in scorn of dangerous hoofs--and out of their infidel throats, with one accord, burst an agonizing and most infernal chorus: "Howajji, bucksheesh! howajji, bucksheesh! howajji, bucksheesh! bucksheesh! bucksheesh!" I never was in a storm like that before.
As we paid the bucksheesh out to sore-eyed children and brown, buxom girls with repulsively tattooed lips and chins, we filed through the town and by many an exquisite fresco, till we came to a bramble-infested inclosure and a Roman-looking ruin which had been the veritable dwelling of St.Mary Magdalene, the friend and follower of Jesus.

The guide believed it, and so did I.

I could not well do otherwise, with the house right there before my eyes as plain as day.