as we see that the trivial round of daily tasks is necessarily fulfilled,
even when the hand of Fate lies heaviest on a household, and that
children cannot forego their play even when their father is stretched on
his death-bed, so the minor interests of individual lives pursued their
course, even in the midst of the general agitation and peril.

The current of trade and of public business was, of course, checked at
many points, but they never came to a stand-still. The physician visited
the sick, the convalescent made his first attempt, leaning on a friendly
arm, to walk from his bedroom to the "viridarium," and alms were given
and received. Hatred was abroad and rampant, but love held its own,
strengthening old ties and forming new ones. Terror and grief weighed
on thousands of hearts, while some tried to make a profit out of the
prevailing anxiety, and others--many others--went forth, as light-hearted
as ever, in pursuit of pleasure and amusement.

Horses were ridden and driven in the Hippodrome, and feasts were held in
the pleasure-houses of Canopus, with music and noisy mirth; in the public
gardens round the Paneum cock-fighting and quail-fighting were as popular
as ever, and eager was the betting in new gold or humble copper. Thus
may we see a child, safe on the roof of its father's house, floating its
toy boat on the flood that has drowned them all out; thus might a boy fly
his gaudy kite in the face of a gathering storm; thus does the miser, on
whom death has already laid its bony hand, count his hoarded coin; thus
thoughtless youth dances over the heaving soil at the very foot of
a volcano. What do these care for the common weal? Each has his
separate life and personal interests. What he himself needs or desires
--the greatest or the least--is to him more important and more absorbing
than the requirements of the vast organism in which he is no more than a
drop of blood or the hair of an eyelash.