A troop of harlots, snatching waxen tapers from the altars, stood around the destroyers and lighted them at their work.

Nothing escaped their omnivorous rage.

They desecrated seventy chapels, forced open all the chests of treasure, covered their own squalid attire with the gorgeous robes of the ecclesiastics, broke the sacred bread, poured out the sacramental wine into golden chalices, quaffing huge draughts to the beggars' health; burned all the splendid missals and manuscripts, and smeared their shoes with the sacred oil, with which kings and prelates had been anointed.

It seemed that each of these malicious creatures must have been endowed with the strength of a hundred giants.

How else, in the few brief hours of a midsummer night, could such a monstrous desecration have been accomplished by a troop which, according to all accounts, was not more than one hundred in number.