no steps to provide
ourselves against that which each of us justly feareth. We abide here,
to my seeming, no otherwise than as if we would or should be witness
of how many dead bodies are brought hither for burial or to hearken if
the friars of the place, whose number is come well nigh to nought,
chant their offices at the due hours or by our apparel to show forth
unto whosoever appeareth here the nature and extent of our distresses.
If we depart hence, we either see dead bodies or sick persons carried
about or those, whom for their misdeeds the authority of the public
laws whilere condemned to exile, overrun the whole place with unseemly
excesses, as if scoffing at the laws, for that they know the executors
thereof to be either dead or sick; whilst the dregs of our city,
fattened with our blood, style themselves _pickmen_ and ruffle it
everywhere in mockery of us, riding and running all about and flouting
us with our distresses in ribald songs. We hear nothing here but 'Such
an one is dead' or 'Such an one is at the point of death'; and were
there any to make them, we should hear dolorous lamentations on all
sides. And if we return to our houses, I know not if it is with you as
with me, but, for my part, when I find none left therein of a great
household, save my serving-maid, I wax fearful and feel every hair of
my body stand on end; and wherever I go or abide about the house,
meseemeth I see the shades of those who are departed and who wear not
those countenances that I was used to see, but terrify me with a
horrid aspect, I know not whence newly come to them.

By reason of these things I feel myself alike ill at ease here and
abroad and at home, more by token that meseemeth none, who hath, as we
have, the power and whither to go, is left here, other than ourselves;
or if any such there be, I have many a time both heard and perceived
that, without making any distinction between things lawful and
unlawful, so but appetite move them, whether alone or in company, both
day and night, they do that which affordeth them most delight. Nor is
it the laity alone who do thus; nay, even those who are shut in the
monasteries, persuading themselves that what befitteth and is lawful
to others alike sortable and unforbidden unto them,[17] have broken
the laws of obedience and giving themselves to carnal delights,
thinking thus to escape, are grown lewd and dissolute. If thus, then,
it be, as is manifestly to be seen, what do we here