unmannerly on the one hand, and profane and impenetrable on the other.
One time before the plague was begun, otherwise than as I have said in
St. Giles's (I think it was in March), seeing a crowd of people in the
street, I joined with them to satisfy my curiosity, and found them all
staring up into the air to see what a woman told them appeared plain to
her, which was an angel clothed in white, with a fiery sword in his
hand, waving it or brandishing it over his head. She described every
part of the figure to the life, showed them the motion and the form, and
the poor people came into it so eagerly and with so much readiness.
"Yes, I see it all plainly," says one: "there's the sword as plain as
can be." Another saw the angel; one saw his very face, and cried out
what a glorious creature he was. One saw one thing, and one another. I
looked as earnestly as the rest, but perhaps not with so much
willingness to be imposed upon; and I said, indeed, that I could see
nothing but a white cloud, bright on one side, by the shining of the sun
upon the other part. The woman endeavored to show it me, but could not
make me confess that I saw it; which, indeed, if I had, I must have
lied. But the woman, turning to me, looked me in the face, and fancied I
laughed, in which her imagination deceived her too, for I really did not
laugh, but was seriously reflecting how the poor people were terrified
by the force of their own imagination. However, she turned to me, called
me profane fellow and a scoffer, told me that it was a time of God's
anger, and dreadful judgments were approaching, and that despisers such
as I should wander and perish.

The people about her seemed disgusted as well as she, and I found there
was no persuading them that I did not laugh at them, and that I should
be rather mobbed by them than be able to undeceive them. So I left them,
and this appearance passed for as real as the blazing star itself.