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giving information that four Frenchmen, suspected of spreading

poisons and pestilential substances, had escaped from Madrid, and

ordering that watch should be kept to ascertain if by chance they

had arrived at Milan.

The governor communicated the despatch to the senate, and the

Tribunal of Health. It then excited no attention; but when the

plague broke out, and was acknowledged by all, this intelligence

was remembered, and it served to confirm the vague suspicion of

criminal agency: two incidents converted this vague suspicion

into conviction of a positive and real conspiracy. Some persons

who imagined they saw, on the evening of the 17th of May,

individuals rubbing a partition of the cathedral, carried the

partition out of the church in the night, together with a great

quantity of benches. The president of the senate, with four

persons of his tribunal, visited the partition, the benches, and

the basins of holy water, and found nothing which confirmed the

ridiculous suspicion of poison. However, to satisfy the disturbed

imaginations of the populace, it was decided that the partition

should be washed and purified.