Tales from Blackwood Volume Viii Part 7

The panic which spread through the city upon this admission became, as might have been expected, an evil scarcely second to the original calamity. Almost all parties had been vehement in desiring to have the declaration. It could do nothing but mischief to any. When it came, by a strange seeming anomaly in the ordering of men's minds, numbers began directly to question or discredit it. While among the lower cla.s.ses (who had been the most anxious to get it), doubt or belief made little difference, for few had any power to act upon it at all.

Day and night, as soon as the proclamation came out, the streets and squares of Florence were filled--the gates of all the palaces surrounded--with carriages and waggons, loading up household furniture, pictures, and treasure, and carrying them away into the country. Long trains of mules and horses, and companies even of persons on foot, were seen moving, first at night, to avoid too open publicity, but very soon in broad day, and without disguise, out at all the gates of the city. But still these fugitives were chiefly from among the landed proprietors, and the small capitalists who had ready money at command; and the bulk of the population yet had ties, which, in spite of danger, confined them to the place. For the merchant was bankrupt if he gave up his trade. And the farmer paused where he had to leave ungathered crops behind him. The physician staid, for he hoped in some antidote; and if he could live, the sickness was his harvest. The monks staid; most because their convent was their only home; some because they hoped its privacy would shut out danger. Public officers staid, to save the posts they had; or in the hope that their resolution would be the means of promoting them to better. The vast tribe that lived only by their daily labour had no choice but to stay; for to want the day's meal was to starve, and they had no way to gain it but by staying where they were, and going on to exercise their calling. So that, upon the whole, as soon as it became lawful to declare the extent of the mischief, vast hordes became very unwilling to confess it; and it was the progress of death itself, in the end, rather than the desertions, numerous as they were, occasioned by the fear of it, which brought the great crowd of the city of Florence, first to little, and then to nothing.

For the evil in the future is no evil, and this it is that laughs theorists and legislators to scorn! the reckoning which shall come hereafter ever is forgotten, against but a little measure of advantage offered in the present. The vengeance of Heaven, is it sure? we trust that it is far off. The axe, and the gibbet? "Chance" may save us from them; and though that deliverance hangs on the one ace cast with two dies, every sinner believes that it will be his own! The thief plans a robbery--executes it--escapes with the booty--and the "chance" that has saved him brings a hundred to the gallows! The projector trades against probability--wins in the teeth of principle--His very blindness--which could not see the risk--pa.s.ses for sagacity, and crowds are beggared who follow his example! This "chance" it is--this "hope"--which makes fools--and fools are villains--of us all! Its seeds are rooted in the strongest minds; and in the weak they flourish even to insanity. The liar elects to speak on "hope." The gamester arranges to live (in a castle) upon it. But woman's brain--there is its chosen seat of quicksand empire!--where to desire an impossibility, and to account upon it, are but as one. Hope it is that makes her frail. Hope makes her false. Hope makes her the dupe of those who care not for her, and the curse of those who do. She fires a palace, and "hopes" that it will not burn. Casts herself into the sea, and "hopes" that the waters will quit their bed to leave her upon land. Her confidence--and this perhaps is the case with all of us--becomes invariably more unbounded in proportion with the real desperateness of her condition. And the worst of all is--that, as human nature is const.i.tuted, for nothing of all this is there any remedy!

And "Hope" worked strange wonders in the earlier stages of the plague; especially among those who had all to gain and little to lose; a sort of persons, whose fearlessness, and spirit of reliance, since the world began, has always been proverbial. There is a point to which you civilise mankind; but beyond which education cannot go. You seem to tame the wolf, while he sees you hold the whip over him: but--blood will have its way--he flies at your throat at last, if you give him opportunity.

Man's instinct makes him war on man! 'Tis trash! my strength _must_ be my neighbour's weakness. The miller, when his granaries are full, laughs loud, and well he laughs--he buys a lordship--out of the ruined harvest. What is that flood that wastes my neighbour's fields but blessing, so it doubles, in the common market, the produce of my own? Go to! they who gain by the dead, when did they love the living? When agues thrive, do not the s.e.xtons delve merrily? Does not the surgeon fatten on the miseries, the headsman on the vices of mankind? In no general blessing yet did all men ever find contentment; in no common infliction have there not always been some who saw a good. Battles and blood make soldiers generals. Revolts and revolutions peasants princes. Out of broken windows, as the adage tells us, do there not arise rich glaziers?

And he who _wants_ a fortune may find one even in the PLAGUE.

And, accordingly, among the most curious results of the visitation, when it first began to show its strength in Florence, was the extra quant.i.ty of actual rejoicing, as well as of mourning; the great increase of hilarity in the midst of tears; and the decided, immediate gain to individuals, which arose out of the thinning in the numbers of the community. Husbands, many, wept for the death of their wives; wives, often, for the death of their husbands; both, constantly, for the deaths of their children; for these were, generally, losses, at least in some sort, of present sources of happiness; disturbances of long habit and existing arrangements; and no benefit (to balance) accruing to the survivor. But sons did not always mourn for their fathers--nephews for their uncles--younger brothers, destined to exertion and poverty, for their elders, who had shut them from t.i.tle and estate: those who were the best disposed to do all this, often could not do it; their wants, in spite of themselves, were relieved, and their desires of pleasure administered to--they thought that they grieved for the fate of the dead--perhaps they did grieve; but before the bell had ceased tolling, they would not have had him live again. For even the comparatively poor who died, had _something_ to leave behind them, which was an object to those as poor, or poorer, than themselves. Very soon the constant occurrence of such falls of fortune began to make men expect and look for them. They could not help recollecting the fact, that there was _one_ particular life stood between them and happiness. The possibility of a change would just present itself--the wish, perhaps not yet. And among the labouring cla.s.ses, too, the diminished number of hands at work in every calling soon gave the remainder high rates of wages, which they spent in idleness and excess. The mere pa.s.sage of wealth into fresh hands, always unthrifty, created an immense demand out of the very general mourning and distress for articles of cost and luxury. All who had been rich, had not drank choice wines, or maintained brilliant equipages. All who rose from poverty did so--often to the most prodigal dissipation of their means--on the instant. Until even the very same calamity which in a few months made the city absolutely a desert, in its outset actually gave a new and increased impulse to its pleasurable and commercial movements!

In the mean time, however, the shroud-maker plied his needle almost as rapidly as the maker of new robes; and, as the fury of the pestilence increased, all this jollity, which at first had some show of the mirth of madness about it, ran on till, like the merriment produced by wine in company, by degrees, it broke into bloodshed and misrule. In the beginning of the scourge, the succession to an estate or a t.i.tle had not carried with it--as of course--a notice that the inheritor was only tenant for an hour. But when the deaths had risen to more than a hundred a-day in the city, and when the man who became heir to an estate in one twenty-four hours left it to somebody else--or perhaps left it without a claimant--in the next, this general state of insecurity, added to the extraordinary description of hands into which property pa.s.sed, seemed first to repeal all sanity and principle; and soon led to the wildest and most unheard-of outrages.

The successor to a splendid mansion--the fifth or sixth remove perhaps within a month--seized possession--it might be, with a t.i.tle--but certainly without waiting for the forms of law to ratify it. Great quant.i.ties of personal property, of houses and movables especially, were sometimes left in a few hours without _any_ certain claimants at all; and ruffians and outcasts--the police of the city being virtually almost extinct--fought and scrambled for the right of rifling such possessions in open day. Antonio Malespini, the servant of a goldsmith who had fled the city and died under the walls of Pisa, produced a will, alleged to have been left by his master, bequeathing to him the whole of his effects. On the very next day, this t.i.tle pa.s.sing undisputed, there were twenty claimants for similar successions! From inheriting after those who had fled and died, it was but one step farther to presume the death, and a man's flight then at once conveyed his effects to those who stayed behind. And within the expiration of eight-and-forty hours farther (no interference by the authorities taking place), both lie and forgery began to be considered unnecessary; and the rights of health and strength became the only rights acknowledged in the new community.

It was then that the general tumult and terror reached its height; and that Florence appeared like a city delivered over to pillage, in which each man made his best of what came next him; or rather like a vast ship tost in a tempest, under which she could not choose but founder, and where each man, according to the usage of desperate mariners, resolved to live, at common cost, the short while longer that existence lasted.

Domestics, left in charge of their masters' houses, burst open the cellars and cabinets, and used the treasure as their own. The richest garments were seen worn by common beggars; the most costly wines intoxicated the lowest of the population. All safe people fled the city at every hazard, or shut themselves up, and refused to communicate even with each other; and a scarcity of food--in the very excess of valuables and money--began to aggravate the general distress. Those physicians who still lived now made off, with one consent, to secure what they had gained. The monks barred the gates of their convents: some would say no ma.s.s; and scarce any would confess the sick any longer. Some men lay dead or dying in their houses, and none would come to aid or bury them.

Others were found with marks of violence on their bodies and their chambers rifled; and none could say, nor did any inquire, who had done it. The hired nurses, it was reported, poisoned their patients; and one beldam confessed afterwards to having caused the death of five women, by administering the _eau forte_ (_aqua fortis_) to them instead of common water. Brute strength, and freedom from the plague, became the only sources of power; and the slave spat in the face of his master. Those few who still dwelt within the city, or near it, watched armed, and shut their doors by day; for murders were done even in the broad light.

The cemeteries now became choked, and there was more room in the streets and market places. Houses got cheap, and graves were hard to come by.

The great _fosse_ which had been hastily opened and consecrated, at the back of the Spedale St Martino, ran over with bodies, from all ranks, ages, and conditions, which night after night were cast promiscuously into it. And, to quote the words used by a writer of the time, in describing the state of Florence at the close of the malady--almost for want of matter to feed upon--"Worth was useless; strength gone; glory sullied; t.i.tle was buried; honours were forgotten; greatness humiliated; dignity scorned;--and of the good and of the evil equally perished the memory!"

It was on one night, however, about this time, in the month of October, when the ravages of the plague were at their height; when no stranger, unless he were insane, or sought his death, could have been expected to enter Florence, nor any inhabitant any longer abided there, but such to whom it would have been ruin as bad as death to leave it;--it was on one night while affairs were in this condition--the night of the vigil of St Luke--that two hors.e.m.e.n, moving on a track once the most frequented of all Italy, but to which the tread of travellers had now become almost a thing forgotten, were seen rapidly stretching towards the city from the eastward, by the road that led from the direction of Arezzo.

The foremost rider was a cavalier scarce twenty years, apparently, of age; clad simply, but elegantly, in the travelling dress of a Tuscan gentleman of that day. His vest, which was of the richest velvet, slashed and embroidered in the fashion of the time, was covered, on back and breast, by the strong "Jazeran," or scaled corslet, which was the armour then generally worn in Italy, and which, while it was less c.u.mbrous than complete steel, was yet fully proof against the thrust either of lance or poniard. A belt of gold, four fingers broad, drawn tightly round the waist, and clasped by a jewel of price in front, marked the division between the bottom of the "Camiciuola," or upper garment, and the long breeches and stockings of woven silk,--the "Calzoni alla pantalona"--which, with yellow Morocco boots and ma.s.sy spurs of gold, terminated the lower portion of the figure. And the broad "mantello" or cloak, of ample extent--on foot or horseback, still the constant equipment of every Italian gentleman--gathered plaidlike round the body, clinging upon the bridle shoulder, and pa.s.sing under the right arm, so as to clothe the bust and loins, yet leave the sword-hand free--swelled with the damp and unwholesome "libeccio" which blew in the rider's face, and seemed to bring a death in every gust, as he lifted his strong horse, all dust and foaming--plunging with short springs, and gathered almost upon its haunches--down the last sharp pitch of hill which marked the boundary of the Apennines, and carried the traveller forward into the fair valley of the Arno.

The hard unbeaten road clattered hollow beneath the footsteps of the steeds, as both the strangers plied onwards, at a steady yet rapid pace, in the direction of Florence. Did they know the peril to which they went? It seemed they did, or should do so: for the long arm of the calamity reaching to the distance, spoke already too plainly to be mistaken. The whole route along which they were pa.s.sing had but a short time back been lined with populous and flourishing villages: the houses yet remained, but every door and window now was barred and bolted; and the hare and the rabbit gazed on the pa.s.senger through the broken hedges in every garden. Three months since, and, if the moon shone bright, looking down from that raised road into the vale beneath, a hundred palaces were seen rearing their marble fronts amid the delicious woods and waters of the Val d'Arno! Three months since, and, if the night was dark, the very tapers that glistened in those mansions, from their bowers and lattices, showed in the deep vale like a world of stars below the gazer's path, in mimic rivalry of those that reigned above! Now, all was solitude on the near approach, and gloom and darkness in the distance. The marble mansions, black and silent, stood like the sepulchres of former greatness, for the spirits that gave life to them had departed. No song, sung by Italy's voices, rose from the cot of the peasant; there was no music of dancing feet; no tinkling of the guitar or the theorba. There stood the village church! but its doors hung open, swinging on their hinges with every blast. The village inn remained: but no smoke poured now from its chimney; and the branch that should have invited the traveller was dead and leafless. Here and there a few stray dogs, lean and masterless, who seemed to have grown wild as the hares and foxes had grown tame, barked and sneaked off as the strangers approached. The frogs croaked hoa.r.s.ely in the marsh land; and the lizard rustled through the long rank gra.s.s that grew upon the tops of the cabins or loose stone wall. But other tokens of inhabitancy--or even of existence--in their path, the travellers found none.

In the realms of death, we look for solitude and silence; on the battle-field, when the fight is done, and in the lone churchyard; but not within the beat and haunts of men. The foremost horseman halted his speed one moment as he advanced deeper into the cheerless scene. With every point in that prospect his eye had been familiar! it could not be all death--all darkness--all ruin--in a few short weeks? Here and afar--at hand and in the distance--it could not be that all were gone!

There was surprise and impatience in the stranger's look, rather than sadness:--alarm and incredulity, rather than woe or grief.

"Jacopo!" he exclaimed, turning hastily to his attendant--and speaking rather as a man who makes a comment than asks a question--"I see no light in the palace or gardens of the Orsini?"

The individual to whom this question was addressed followed his master's eye slowly, as he raised himself from the pommel of his saddle.

"Nevertheless, my lord," he said, "they should be here, for they have not fled, although they retired beyond the walls of the city."

"But the Vitrani too--their villa is all gloom?"

The reply was given in a more subdued tone. "It is too true, my lord!

The Marchioness and both her daughters were among the first victims of the disease."

"But it cannot surely be with all thus?" pursued Di Vasari, with increasing agitation. "This house--Cinthio da Pontelli's?"

"There are weeds, my lord, in its garden; and the pedestals of its statues are grown green with moss."

"But the Counts Di Bruno--Lord Vincent, and his brothers?" continued the alarmed inquirer.

"May be here, my lord; or may have fled; or may have perished," returned the party questioned, "the last of them. They were living and safe two days since, when I set out for Arezzo; but half that time has made strange havoc in many a n.o.ble house, since your lordship quitted Florence."

The stranger started as the last words fell upon his ear, from his own inward thought, as though an asp had stung him! Striking his strong horse on both sides with the spur, as one who had already paused too long, and suddenly recollected himself, involuntarily at the same instant he curbed the fierce animal with the rein, until it stood erect--striking at the air, and reared almost beyond the perpendicular.

Then stooping low, with slackened bit, and signing to his companion to follow, the rider once more plied both scourge and steel, with the strong impulse of a man who strives by mere motion to escape from his own sensations. With hoof of speed, he scattered into foam the shallow brawling stream of the Mugnone: dashed onwards, and looked neither to the right nor left, through the picturesque villages of La Loggia and Benevento. At the convent of St Giovanni, the evening prayer was saying; but he bent on his steed's neck as he pa.s.sed; crossed himself; and again rode forward. The nuns of Spirito Santo sang a requiem for a departed sister: but though the lights beamed on his path through the stained windows of their chapel, he still kept on his way. By the shrine of Our Lady of Florence he pressed; and he saw it not, for he uttered no vow.

He crossed the "Giustiziere," or area of public execution; but had no time even to breathe an _Ave_ for the souls of the thousands who had suffered upon it. Nor checked he in his long gallop, until entering the "Via di Querci"--the wide, fair avenue of trees, by which Florence is approached on the road which leads from Arezzo. This point at length being won, he held in his well-breathed horse, who still obeyed the rein with difficulty; and soothed the gallant brute with voice and hand, as they turned more slowly towards the _Porta alla Croce_, or eastern gate of the city.

The narrow, ill-paved road, now known as the Via dei Mal-contenti, by which Florence is entered in the Quartiere alla Croce, was, in the 13th century, a mere straggling suburb, inhabited by the meanest artisans of the city. At the particular time, however, to which our tale refers, it was altogether without occupants of any description; not so much because those who originally dwelt in it had been all cut off by the plague, as that better lodgings were to be had in the upper parts of the town, for taking, and therefore no one thought fit to remain in it. From this long street, or lane, which was in entire unbroken darkness, some more reputable avenues branched on the right hand--the Via Ghibellina, the Via Jesu Cristo, and the Via di Mecca; and, looking up these, here and there, a dull light might be seen glimmering through the lattices of an upper window; and, in such situations, low moanings, and sometimes shrieks of grief, were to be heard, as of some who lamented for the dead, or were themselves perhaps shortly to be so. But, for the greater part, the houses in all the streets within the city, like those in the villages eastward of the walls, bore the aspect of abandonment and desertion. Doors closely barred, and battened with spars on the outside; unless where they had been burst open, on suspicion of containing dead, or else in search of plunder. Cas.e.m.e.nts open in abundance; flapping and swinging to and fro in the wind; but all wreck and disorder, or total emptiness, within, and, in some places, wide gaps, with heaps of half-burnt ruins, obstructed the way--the remnants of fallen houses, with others falling, half destroyed, and blackened by smoke and fire; for, among the minor scourges which, during the time of the plague, had visited the city, conflagrations, wilful or accidental, had been frequent and extensive.

Familiar as both travellers were with this _locale_, they had yet difficulty in getting their horses forward, so completely dark were the narrow streets, and enc.u.mbered with rubbish of every description. They had looked for a light by the shrine of "Our Lady of Grace;" but even the hopes of the pious were fled; not a shrine in all Florence had a taper now burning before it. The splendid and extensive Palazzo di Borgo, the mansion of the family of Antilla, lay in their way; but its lords had left all for life, and fled to Lucca; and the huge building, towering above all but ruin--frowned in dark and sullen silence. They pa.s.sed, still amid the signs of emptiness and dilapidation, over the Piazza Santa Croce--the great area for gymnastic exercises of the city; crossed the narrow bridge, with the rivulet and sewer, which ran under the walls of the Church of St Jacops tra i Fossi; but so fearfully was the population diminished, and so deep the dread which (except a few desperate wretches) the survivors had of each other, that the busiest streets of the city, and the most gorgeous squares and terraces, were all alike wrapped in gloom and desertion. Nor was it until turning northwards, and winding for some time in the direction of the river, they reached the Piazza Santa Maria--the square in which stood the "Spedale," or great hospital of Florence--that any decided signs of life and activity, or, indeed, of human existence, presented themselves.

At this point, however, there was light and activity enough--and both riders instinctively tightened their reins, as a sharp turning at right angles threw them in front of the "Spedale;" for so sudden a change, from the thickest darkness to a glare of illumination--as of a thousand lamps alight at once--might have startled many steeds, worse tutored, or less true.

The building itself was a bold and striking object; lofty and well-proportioned, though heavy in its style of architecture; and so extensive as to form, with its tributary offices, one entire side of the quadrangle, or "Piazza," in which it stood. Under ordinary circ.u.mstances, the traffic and bustle of such an establishment, which was of capacity to furnish accommodation for all the charitable purposes of the city, must have been considerable and imposing; but, at this period, the immense accession of duty, and consequently of activity, which the calamity of the time had thrust upon it, rendered some of its features extraordinary and interesting in the highest possible degree.

The overwhelming excess of patients poured into the house (vast numbers being still every day compelled to be rejected) had called every lobby--every crevice and corner--in addition to the ordinary apartments allotted to the sick, into requisition; and the building being profusely furnished, up to the very fourth story, with windows and lattices of ventilation--from the immense additional array of lamps and candles in every quarter, which its increase of business and multiplication of inhabitants presented--the whole front of the edifice blazed like the face of an immense lantern; and, in spite of the damp breath of the sufferers within, which condensed in streams upon the gla.s.s window-panes, and dimmed their transparency, poured out a volume of light, not merely across the whole area of the Piazza, but into the very recesses of the houses on the farther side of it.

In the mean time, the hoa.r.s.e roar, less of suffering or grief, than of hurry and trade, that went on within the edifice, rose at intervals so high as to be dumbly and indistinctly heard on the outside. Shadows upon the white-clouded window-panes were seen rapidly pa.s.sing and repa.s.sing.

And the s.p.a.ce in the immediate vicinity of the Spedale, especially the ground and dwellings of the square of Santa Maria, which had long been deserted--for, at the very commencement of the infection, every hospital, as might well be expected, soon cleared a neighbourhood round it--presented a curious spectacle to the attention, even under the general appalling circ.u.mstances of the time. The Piazza, or square itself, which was unpaved, stood fetlock-deep in mire and filth; for the gravedigger had more than work enough to do; and the duty of the scavenger was little heeded. In the earlier stages of the pestilence, clothes and bedding, the property of those who died, had been used to be burnt in the front of the hospital; that custom was now laid aside, either because there was no authority to enforce it, or because it had been found unavailing; but the original pile of half-consumed rags and ashes still remained, grown cold and mouldy, for man and horse to flounder through. All the houses in those three sides of the square which consisted of dwellings--the Spedale forming the fourth--without an exception stood open; they had been broken into and rifled by the hospital servants (who ransacked all before them in their nightly rounds) for what they contained; and the wood-work of the doors and staircases had gone to make fires to burn the bedding with. The area of the Piazza was strewed all over with matters of domestic litter: pots, pans, broken furniture, worn-out kitchen utensils, and remnants of apparel, cast forth from the hospital. In the centre of the square there was a marble fountain playing; but to little purpose, for another rose within the walls of the Spedale; and no creature out of the building, though perishing of thirst, would have ventured to taste such water.

Some evil jester, desirous, perhaps, to spend the last hour of his life in mischief, had thrown an old saddle into the reservoir into which the stream discharged itself; and broken away all the teeth of the couchant lion, from whose mouth the chief _jet_ issued.

"And this immense house is full, then!" said the Chevalier Di Vasari, as he paused for a moment in front of the hospital. The speaker had interests enough of his own, and vital ones, to contend with; but--it was not in man--the very criminal who went to the scaffold, could not have beheld such a scene without wonder and curiosity.

"Put on, my lord, if you love your life, put on," exclaimed Jacopo.

"Full! Ay, it has been filled, and emptied again, into the great fosse behind it,--Your lordship shudders? Spirits of the blest! if you could but have seen that fosse when it was dug!--twenty times over in the course of the last month. Hark again, Signor!--for Mercy's sake put on!--to the roar of voices inside the building!--and those black shadows, how they flit to and fro again upon the windows, though the steam on the gla.s.s hinders our seeing what goes on within! Full? my lord, it is full now!--and the Hospital of St Roque is full!--and so is the Lazaretto--that was the gaol--Sancta Maria!--and the Church of the Padri Reformati is turned, besides, into an hospital!--and the Prigione delle Stinche is open for the sick; and----"

Farther yet would the enumeration have gone, but that a noise, as if of loosening bolts and bars in the hospital, interrupted it. In the next moment, one of the ma.s.sy folding-doors at the great entrance was flung open; and, right hand and left, from its farthest extremity, as far as the eye could see, down to that very door, the common corridor of the house appeared on each side closely set with pallets. Every bed was occupied doubly, and even trebly; or rather the whole range of beds--for each touched the other--was formed into one great litter; crowded with sufferers, in all moods and in all stages of disease. Some--they might be living, or they might be dead--all that could be seen was a strange shapeless lump, rolled in the wretched bed-clothes! Others, covered up in hoods and caps, incapable of speech, stared from the pillows with their gla.s.sy eyes and ghastly faces--that the viewer shrank to look on them! Some, furious and strong in agony, sat in their beds bolt upright,--raving, tossing their arms, and muttering horrible imprecations--hideous objects of misery. The most fearful of all were the most healthy,--those whom they called the "Convalescents;" and who glided about in their long, white, shroud-like hospital-gowns and dresses; looking and moving like creatures emerged from the grave--even more appalling to Nature than those who were ready to descend into it.

"This is too hideous!" exclaimed Di Vasari, turning his horse away.

Pages are insufficient sometimes to convey that impression which the eye takes in in a moment. But a cry now arose of "Room, room!" and between the double row of beds, jolting carelessly along the corridor, two hospital servants appeared, bearing a long tray--that looked ike a shutter with handles to it--covered with a sheet. Out they came, swinging through the hall-door, and descended the steps in front of the building.

"Santa Madonna! it is one of the dead,--a corpse fresh of the plague,--and we stand here!" cried Jacopo.

"Twenty-five this makes!" said the hindmost bearer, stopping, as he came down the stairs, to trim the load in its descent.

"Twenty-seven it makes, if I can count," returned the other; "and by this time last night, we had thirty-one."

As he spoke, they reached the bottom of the staircase. In turning the corner, one of the carved ornaments of the bal.u.s.trade caught the cloth that covered the shutter; and, at the next step--the corpse lay naked!

It was the body of a man--and of a fine one. The plague had evidently made brief work with him. Still robust--almost florid--full of flesh and muscle--no victim of decay--no sign of age or of consumption. The tree had been struck in its full strength! The limbs and the trunk were those of a living man still. But the face was distorted and discoloured; and there was one broad dark badge upon the breast, that showed what it was had done the business.

The bearers never stopped to recover their wretched pall, but shouldered onwards to a small, low, grated door. Jacopo's eye followed--he knew the place well--it was the door of the dead-house.

The key turned, and the door opened; there was no light within. The two men entered. There was a sound as of some heavy ma.s.s falling upon soft ground. It was the fall of a body of flesh and blood, which no other object in the creation falls like; and they returned, in a moment, freed from their burthen. And then a cry arose, to "make haste, and close the hospital gates again;" for the sick were gathering round them, and trying to escape--tumultuous--like lost spirits on the bank of the infernal river!

The crash as the heavy gates were slammed together roused the Chevalier from the stupor in which the scene had plunged him. Slowly pressing his horse with the spur, and followed by his attendant, he again rode forward. They left the ground upon the right hand, which now forms the Piazza di Granduca, pa.s.sed the high towers of the Duomo, or chief Cathedral; and entered the great thoroughfares of the Porta via de Repoli, and the Via della Scala, intending to cross the river at the Pont St Trinita. But the pa.s.sage along the south or farther bank of the Arno (as the travellers stood) was now wholly impracticable. This portion of the town had comprehended what was called the Jews' Quarter; and, on the expulsion of that wretched race, the whole neighbourhood in which they dwelt had been given up to destruction. Their houses had been torn down, and fire laid to their synagogue; and one of the last acts of authority on the part of the government, had been the barricading, as far as possible, and publicly forbidding all pa.s.sage through, or entrance into, their demesne.

"Does your lordship wish to cross here?" asked Jacopo. "The north bank would be the best."

"I know not that," replied Di Vasari. "Our arrangement above may have failed; and this, if we can accomplish it--that is, the pa.s.sage here--is certain."