down to form crowns for the queen and himself; and lastly a golden globe pierced by two swords and surmounted by a cross with the words, ‘A King of Righteousness o’er all’ is borne before him.  The attendants of the Chancellor Knipperdollinch are dressed in red with the crest, a hand raising aloft the sword of justice.  Nay, even the queen and the fourteen queenlets must have a separate court and brilliant uniforms.

“Thrice a week the king goes in glorious array to the market-place accompanied by his body-guards and officers of state, while behind ride the fifteen queens.  On the market-place stands a magnificent throne with silken cushions and canopy, whereon the tailor-monarch takes his seat, and alongside him sits his chief queen.  Knipperdollinch sits at his feet.  A page on his left bears the book of the law, the Old Testament; another on his right an unsheathed sword.  The book denotes that he sits on the throne of David; the sword that he is the king of the just, who is appointed to exterminate all unrighteousness.  Bannock-Bernt is court-chaplain, and preaches in the market-place before the king.  The sermon over, justice is administered, often of the most terrible kind; and then in like state the king and his court return home.  On the streets he is greeted with cries of:  ‘Hail in the name of the Lord.  God be praised!’”

Meanwhile underneath all this riot of splendour and power and sensuality, the pangs of starvation were beginning to be felt.  For the army of the bishop of Muenster was outside the city and the siege was very studiously maintained.  The privations became more and more terrible, and more and more terrible the means of allaying them.  The bodies of citizens that had died were eaten; and then men and women and children were killed in order that they might be eaten too.  Under such conditions, is it any wonder that Muenster became a city of the mad, mad beyond the sane man’s wildest dreams of excess?

A few of the least demented of Jan’s followers at length determined that the tragedy must cease, and the city was delivered into the bishop’s hands.  “What judgment,” writes Professor Pearson, “his grace the bishop thinks fit to pass on the leaders of Sion at least deserves record.  Rottmann has fallen by St. Martin’s Church, fighting sword in hand, but Jan of Leyden and Knipperdollinch are brought prisoners before this shepherd of the folk.  Scoffingly he asks Jan:  ‘Art thou a king?’ Simple, yet endlessly deep the reply:  ‘Art thou a bishop?’ Both alike false to their callings—­as father of men and shepherd of souls.  Yet the one cold, self-seeking sceptic, the other ignorant, passionate, fanatic idealist.  ’Why hast thou destroyed the town and my folk?’ ’Priest, I have not destroyed one little maid of thine.  Thou hast again thy town, and I can repay thee a hundredfold.’  The bishop demands with much curiosity how this miserable captive can possibly repay him.  ’I know we must die, and die terribly, yet before we die,