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The small number of those who had been cured of the plague formed

a privileged class amidst the rest of the population; those who

had not been attacked by the disease lived in perpetual

apprehension of it; they walked about with precaution, with an

unquiet air, with a hurried and hesitating step; the former, on

the contrary, nearly certain of security (for to have the plague

twice was rather a prodigy than a rarity), advanced into the very

midst of the pestilence with boldness and unconcern. With such

security, tempered, however, by his own peculiar anxieties, and

by the spectacle of the misery of a whole people, Renzo travelled

towards his village, under a fine sky, and through a beautiful

country; meeting on the way, after long intervals of dismal

solitude, men more like shadows and wandering phantoms than

living beings; or dead bodies about to be consigned to the trench

without funeral rites.