and famine, aroused in him an unexpected human sympathy. He blessed
the children, forbade them to go farther, and when rested sent them
back to their German homes.

57. The winter had passed and the spring had come again before the few
survivors reached their beloved fatherland. Day by day there came
straggling into the German cities groups of these victims, their heads
drooping for shame, their eyes red with tears, their clothing in rags.
Many died upon realizing the last hope which had sustained them so
long. Sad-eyed mothers looked in vain among the thin ranks for their
beloved ones, and time only soothed the untold misery of this wild
enterprise.

58. Soon after the departure of the German children on their crusade
under Nicholas, another of about equal numbers set out from Cologne by
a different route. They crossed the Alps by the pass of St. Gothard,
and descended into Eastern Italy. Keeping along the coast of the
Adriatic, they at last came to the southern front of the peninsula,
and could go no farther. They met with a fate similar to that of the
first band, with the additional horror that many of them were seized
by Turkish pirates and carried away into life-long slavery. The few
who survived to reach Southern Italy embarked on a vessel, and never
were heard of more. No messenger even returned to the vine-clad hills
of the Rhine to report the fate of the little ones, and they all
disappeared from the aching gaze of anxious mothers as though the
earth had swallowed them up.

59. The third children's crusade set out from France under the
leadership of a bare-footed friar named Stephen. They numbered thirty
thousand, and their first destination was Marseilles, whence they were