twenty of the
inhabitants were left alive, and the capital felt the fury of the plague,
alike in the palace and the cot.

Two queens, one bishop, and great numbers of other distinguished persons,
fell a sacrifice to it, and more than 500 a day died in the Hotel Dieu,
under the faithful care of the sisters of charity, whose disinterested
courage, in this age of horror, displayed the most beautiful traits of
human virtue. For although they lost their lives, evidently from
contagion, and their numbers were several times renewed, there was still
no want of fresh candidates, who, strangers to the unchristian fear of
death, piously devoted themselves to their holy calling.

The churchyards were soon unable to contain the dead, and many houses,
left without inhabitants, fell to ruins.

In Avignon, the Pope found it necessary to consecrate the Rhone, that
bodies might be thrown into the river without delay, as the churchyards
would no longer hold them; so likewise, in all populous cities,
extraordinary measures were adopted, in order speedily to dispose of the
dead. In Vienna, where for some time 1,200 inhabitants died daily, the
interment of corpses in the churchyards and within the churches was
forthwith prohibited; and the dead were then arranged in layers, by
thousands, in six large pits outside the city, as had already been done
in Cairo and Paris. Yet, still many were secretly buried; for at all
times the people are attached to the consecrated cemeteries of their
dead, and will not renounce the customary mode of interment.

In many places it was rumoured that plague patients were buried alive, as
may sometimes happen through senseless alarm and indecent haste; and thus
the horror of the distressed people was everywhere increased. In Erfurt,
after the churchyards were filled, 12,000 corpses were thrown into eleven
great pits; and the like might, more or less exactly, be stated with
respect to all the larger cities. Funeral ceremonies, the last
consolation of the survivors, were everywhere impracticable.

In all Germany, according to a probable calculation, there seem to have
died only 1,244,434 inhabitants; this country, however, was more spared
than others: Italy, on the contrary, was most severely visited. It is
said to have lost half its inhabitants; and this account is rendered
credible from the immense losses of individual cities and provinces: for
in Sardinia and Corsica, according to the account of the di