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In that huckstering age, when the loftiest and most valiant nobles of Europe were the most shameless sellers of themselves, the most cynical mendicants for alms and the most infinite absorbers of bribes in exchange for their temporary fealty; when Mayenne, Mercoeur, Guise, Pillars, Egmont, and innumerable other possessors of ancient and illustrious names alternately and even simultaneously drew pensions from both sides in the great European conflict, it was not wonderful that Philip should think that the boisterous Hohenlo might be bought as well as another.
Some live like mendicants always begging; some like thieves always snatching out of the hands of others.
The three mendicants bowed gratefully to me and left the room. The Marquis Triulzi who sat near Canano, said, "The beggar in the straw-coloured dress is certainly Casanova." "I recognized him directly," replied the banker, "but who are the others?" "We shall find out in due time." "A dearer costume could not be imagined; all the dresses are quite new."
One thing is certain, and that is that in town or country a man or a woman must be in the lowest depths of poverty and distress to refuse to throw a few reis into the bags of the licensed mendicants who, bareheaded, and clad in scarlet or white gowns, go round soliciting alms for the support of the churches on whose behalf they are sent out.
We see the general impression of their worldliness in Chaucer's pictures of the hunting monk and the courtly prioress with her love-motto on her brooch. The older religious orders in fact had sunk into mere landowners, while the enthusiasm of the friars had in great part died away and left a crowd of impudent mendicants behind it.
The ruthless Ghazi was now almost at the end of his resources. He therefore resolved to play his last card, and either win all by the terror of his monstrous crime, or lose all, and retire from the game. The harmless Emperor, amongst his numerous foibles, cherished the pardonable weakness of a respect for the religious mendicants, who form one of the chronic plagues of Asiatic society.
The census of 1901 returned 2,728,812 priests, which is an average of one for every seventy-two members of the Hindu faith, and it is believed that, altogether, there are more than 9,000,000 persons including monks, nuns, ascetics, fakirs, sorcerers, chelas, and mendicants or various kinds and attendants employed about the temples who are dependent upon the public for support.
Several agree that a closer watch should be kept on "religious mendicants" who go about in the guise of Sadhus preaching sedition, and that a more intimate exchange of secret intelligence should take place with regard to the seditious propaganda between the different States and the Government of India.
"Yudhishthira then said, 'Let those mendicants and Brahmanas and Yogis that are incapable of bearing hunger and thirst, the fatigues of travel and toil, and the severity of winter, desist. Let those Brahmanas also desist that live on sweetmeats, and they also that desire cooked viands and food that is sucked or drunk as well as meat. And let those also remain behind that are dependent on cooks.
If to this list are added the Jews, who acted as servants, their robes confined with a cord, and wearing on their heads instead of the turban, which is forbidden them, little caps of dark cloth; if with these groups are mingled some hundreds of "kalenders," a sort of religious mendicants, clothed in rags, covered by a leopard skin, some idea may be formed of the enormous agglomerations of different tribes included under the general denomination of the Tartar army.
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