" If thou hadst taken me prisoner what wouldst thou have done with me ?9 9 demands the latter. " I would have killed thee," is the scornful reply. It is needless to relate what happened. There is a fascination, even though it may be often of horror, in the strong contrasts between scenes of ideal chivalry and those of sardonic savagery in the panorama of the times. One gentle knight blinds his prisoners, cuts off their noses, hands and feet, and sends them back to their fellows as a warning of what they may look for. Another cuts off their heads, and has these roasted, spreading a report among their relations that they will grace the feast at his table. It may well be that this is the source from which a poet of somewhat later times drew his inspiration for the description of an even more diabolical banquet at which Richard the Lion-Hearted was the host. Men, women and children lie in heaps upon the streets of devastated cities, their bodies a source of pestilence. Prisoners are marched to the shambles and cut down by the thousands in cold blood. Another Malek Shah, ruler of Irak in the middle of the Twelfth Century, is clapped into prison by his vizier, Khass-Bec Ibn-Bulenker, and the latter, confident that ambition will prove mightier than the tie of blood, invites the brother of the deposed ruler to mount the throne. The latter accepted the invitation promptly cut off the vizier's head and threw it bes^re his partisans. The body went to the dogs. u Ibn Atar, proud ruler of Bagdad, has the body of a