their mouths issued long, thin tongues, forked like those of serpents, or they appeared as a crowd of witches flying at night on broomsticks. Every two weeks five or six such cartoons hovered above the greedy eyes of the town. And the texts! . . .
The passion of fighting took possession of the whole town like a contagious disease. Suddenly the Guelphs and Ghibellines were revived in the once simple-minded people. The courts had much to do: to return to some their lost honor, and to punish the slanderers; but after the summons the witnesses fell to again in the ballowed corridors of the court-house, whence arose new trials, new punishments, and higher and higher appeals. The Hussite blood was throbbing in the veins of the good citizens; in the evenings the children of God’s fighters proved their opinions in the inns with their fists and glasses. Sons parted from fathers in anger, brothers from brothers,—old men sternly shook their grey heads and wrung their hands.
