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At the hour in which the concourse was most numerous, the dead

bodies of this family were, by order of the Tribunal of Health,

drawn naked on a carriage towards this same burying ground; so

that the crowd might behold for themselves the manifest traces,

the hideous impress of the disease. A cry of alarm and horror

arose wherever the car passed; their incredulity was at least

shaken, but it is probable that the great concourse tended to

spread the infection.

Still it was not absolutely the plague; the use of the word was

prohibited, it was a pestilential fever, the adjective was

preferred to the substantive,-then, not the true plague,-that is

to say, the plague, but only in a certain sense,-and further,

combined with poison and witchcraft. Such is the absurd trifling

with which men seek to blind themselves, wilfully abstaining from

a sound exercise of judgment to arrive at the truth.