Both led to the towns where dwelt Those Others who had
yearned to march over the crossways, who had made the main-roads
straight as rules. And to the towns the elemental Rising of the
Crossways brought death.
There, lamenting the past, in terror before the people's Rising, all
were employed in offices filling up papers. All for safety held
official positions, all to a man busying themselves over papers,
documents, cards, placards, and speeches until they were lost in a
whirlwind of words.
The food of the towns was exhausted; the lights had gone out; there
was neither fuel nor water. Dogs, cats, mice, all had disappeared--
even the nettles on the outskirts had been plucked by famished
urchins as vegetable for soup. Into the cookhouses, whence cutlery
had vanished, crowded old men in bowlers and bonneted old women,
whose bony fingers clutched convulsively at plates of leavings.
Everywhere there were groups of miscreants selling mouldy bread at
exorbitant prices. The dead in their thousands, over whom there was
no time to carry out funeral rites, were borne away to the churches.
Famine, disease, and death swept the towns. The inhabitants grew
savage in their craving for bread. They starved. They sat without
light. They froze. They pulled down the hedges and wooden buildings
to warm their dying hearths and their offices.
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