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