Pagina 1007 di 1118

Every door was closed from distrust and terror, except such as

had been left open by the flight of the inhabitants, or by the

monatti; some were nailed on the outside, because there were

within people dead, or dying of the pestilence; others were

marked with a cross, for the purpose of informing the monatti

that their services were required, and much of this was done more

by chance than otherwise; as a commissary of health happened to

be in one spot rather than in another, and chose to enforce the

regulations. On every side were seen infected rags and bandages,

clothes and sheets, which had been thrown from the windows; dead

bodies which had been left in the streets until a car should pass

to take them up, or which had fallen from the cars themselves, or

been thrown from the houses; so much had the long duration and

the violence of the pest brutalised men's minds, and subdued

every spark of human feeling or sympathy.