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 THE DEFENDEES' PEEPAEATIONS 327 order that they might be fresh for the attack on the follow- ing morning, for, says Critobulus, the Eomans were surprised at the quietness in the camp. Various conclusions were drawn from the silence. Some thought that the enemy was getting ready to go away ; others that preparations were being completed which were less noisy than usual. 1 The reader of the original narratives gets weary of the constant lament of their authors over the sins of the people, the principal one, if the writer is a Catholic, being the refusal to be sincerely reconciled with Eome ; if Orthodox, it is the neglect to give due honour to the saints. The depreca- tion of * the just anger ' of God was on every one's lips, and priests of both Churches speak confidently as to the cause of this anger. But assuredly, if the invocation of the celestial hierarchy were ever desirable, it was so on this last evening of the existence of the city as the Christian capital of the East. A special solemn procession took place in the afternoon Last through the streets of the city. Orthodox and Catholics, procession bishops and priests, ordinary laymen, monks, women, chil- m Clty ' dren, and indeed every person whose presence was not required at the walls, took part in it, joined in every Eyrie Eleeson, and responded with the sincerity of despair to prayers imploring God not to allow them to fall into the hands of the enemy. The sacred eikons and relics were brought from the churches, were taken to the neighbourhoods where the walls were most injured, and paraded with the procession in the hope — to people of Northern climes and the present century inexplicable and almost unthinkable — that their display would avert the threatening danger. It would be a mistake, however, to think that, because these processions and the veneration of the sacred relics are alien to modern modes of thought, they were not marked with true religious sentiment, or even that they were useless. They encouraged the fighters to go more bravely forth to battle against tremendous odds, and they comforted both them and non-combatants with the assurance that God was 1 Crit. liv.