d in the doing of these services many of them
perished with their gain.

Of this abandonment of the sick by neighbours, kinsfolk and friends
and of the scarcity of servants arose an usage before well nigh
unheard, to wit, that no woman, how fair or lovesome or well-born
soever she might be, once fallen sick, recked aught of having a man to
tend her, whatever he might be, or young or old, and without any shame
discovered to him every part of her body, no otherwise than she would
have done to a woman, so but the necessity of her sickness required
it; the which belike, in those who recovered, was the occasion of
lesser modesty in time to come. Moreover, there ensued of this
abandonment the death of many who peradventure, had they been
succoured, would have escaped alive; wherefore, as well for the lack
of the opportune services which the sick availed not to have as for
the virulence of the plague, such was the multitude of those who died
in the city by day and by night that it was an astonishment to hear
tell thereof, much more to see it; and thence, as it were of
necessity, there sprang up among those who abode alive things contrary
to the pristine manners of the townsfolk.

It was then (even as we yet see it used) a custom that the kinswomen
and she-neighbours of the dead should assemble in his house and there
condole with those who more nearly pertained unto him, whilst his
neighbours and many other citizens foregathered with his next of kin
before his house, whither, according to the dead man's quality, came
the clergy, and he with funeral pomp of chants and candles was borne
on the shoulders of his peers to the church chosen by himself before
his death; which usages, after the virulence of the plague began to
increase, were either altogether or for the most part laid aside, and
other and strange customs sprang up in their stead. For that, not only
did folk die without having a multitude of women about them, but many
there were who departed this life without witness and few indeed were
they to whom the pious plaints and bitter tears of their kinsfolk were
vouchsafed; nay, in lieu of these things there obtained, for the most
part, laughter and jests and gibes and feasting and merrymaking in
company; which usance women, laying aside womanly pitifulness, had
right well learned for their own safety.

Few, again, were they whose bodies were accompanied to the church by
more than half a score or a dozen of their neighbour