enforced them, most of whom, like the rest of the citizens, were either dead
or sick, or so hard bested for servants that they were unable to execute any
office; whereby every man was free to do what was right in his own eyes.

Not a few there were who belonged to neither of the two said parties, but
kept a middle course between them, neither laying the same restraint upon
their diet as the former, nor allowing themselves the same license in
drinking and other dissipations as the latter, but living with a degree of
freedom sufficient to satisfy their appetites, and not as recluses. They
therefore walked abroad, carrying in their hands flowers or fragrant herbs
or divers sorts of spices, which they frequently raised to their noses,
deeming it an excellent thing thus to comfort the brain with such perfumes,
because the air seemed to be everywhere laden and reeking with the stench
emitted by the dead and the dying and the odours of drugs.

Some again, the most sound, perhaps, in judgment, as they we also the most
harsh in temper, of all, affirmed that there was no medicine for the disease
superior or equal in efficacy to flight; following which prescription a
multitude of men and women, negligent of all but themselves, deserted their
city, their houses, their estate, their kinsfolk, their goods, and went into
voluntary exile, or migrated to the country parts, as if God in visiting men
with this pestilence in requital of their iniquities would not pursue them
with His wrath, wherever they might be, but intended the destruction of such
alone as remained within the circuit of the walls of the city; or deeming,
perchance, that it was now time for all to flee from it, and that its last
hour was come.

Of the adherents of these divers opinions not all died, neither did all
escape; but rather there were, of each sort and in every place, many that
sickened, and by those who retained their health were treated after the