These were the questions which the authorities had already put at least ten times to the shrieking multitude from the balcony of the town hall, and each time the crowd had yelled in reply:  “Yes—­yes.  You must!—­it is your duty; you take the taxes, and you are put there to take care of us!”

Even yesterday the distracted creatures had been wholly unmanageable and had thrown stones at the building:  to-day, after the fearful conflagration and the death of their bishop, they had assembled in vast numbers, more furious and more desperate than ever.  The senators sat trembling on their antique seats of gilt ivory, the relics of departed splendor imitated from those of the Roman senators, looking at each other and shrugging their shoulders while they listened to a letter which had just reached them from the hadi.  This document required them, in conformity with Obada’s determination, to make known to the populace, by public proclamation and declaration, that any citizen whose house had been destroyed by the fire of the past night would be granted ground and building materials without payment, at Fostat across the Nile, where he might found a new home provided he would settle there and embrace Islam.

This degrading offer must be announced:  no discussion or recalcitrancy could help that.

And what could they, for their part, do for the complaining crowd?

The plague was snatching them away; the vegetables, which constituted half their food at this season, were dried up; the river, their palatable and refreshing drink, was poisoned; the dates, their chief luxury, ripened only to be rejected with loathing.  Then there was the comet in the sky, no hope of a harvest—­even of a single ear, for months to come.  The bishop dead, all confidence lost in the intercessions of the Church, God’s mercy extinct as it would seem, withdrawn from the land under infidel rule!

And they on whose help the populace counted,—­poor, weak men, councillors of no counsel, liable from hour to hour to be called to follow those who had succumbed to the plague, and who had but just quitted their vacant seats in obedience to the fateful word.

Yesterday each one had felt convinced that their necessity and misery had reached its height, and yet in the course of the night it had redoubled for many.  Their self-dependence was exhausted; but there still was one sage in the city who might perhaps find some new way, suggest some new means of saving the people from despair.

Stones were again flying down through the open roof, and the members of the council started up from their ivory seats and sought shelter behind the marble piers and columns.  A wild turmoil came up from the market-place to the terror-stricken Fathers of the city, and the mob was hammering with fists and clubs on the heavy doors of the Curia.  Happily they were plated with bronze and fastened with strong iron bolts, but they might fly open at any moment and then the furious mob would storm into the hall.