Page:Ossendowski - The Shadow of the Gloomy East.djvu/137

Rh he kept thrusting into his long, dishevelled hair and beard.

Crowds of boys and girls would chase him, pulling his beard or shirt, throwing stones and sneering at him. Then Pieta would run away, making his pursuers laugh by his strange leaps, exciting them to new, often malicious, and cruel jokes.

During one of these retreats he led his youthful tormentors out of the town, and, hidden in a big haystack, he began to bark like a dog. The children, unable to get him to come out, crawled one after the other into the passage which Pieta had made in the haystack. The madman had only waited for this, for then in a moment the stack blazed forth in a huge flame, in which the children perished together with Pieta.

The Government, instead of taking care of such dangerous lunatics, allowed them to go about free. They were considered to be "God's people," respected by the pious peasants and townsmen, jeered at and persecuted by the young.

People suffering from epilepsy and hysteria are also greatly respected amongst the half-educated classes. Hysterical woman, or the so-called "klikushas," are regarded as particularly godly beings. During their attacks, when the unfortunate women were raving in convulsions, shouting, laughing, cursing, and weeping alternatively, the "initiated" were making auguries and forebodings on the incoherent words uttered by the irresponsible wretches. The "klikushas" sometimes