THE PLAGUE OF MARSEILLES. (Lémontey's History of the Regency.) A.D. 1720. * THE plague which desolated Marseilles, and afterwards spread its ravages beyond the Rhone, recalls in many of its features the pestilence described by Thucydides. * * * At Marseilles the contagion seized in preference upon women, children, and indigent people. Its violence in strong constitutions was terrible; but it despised the decrepit old folk, the lunatics in the asylums, the poor creatures who were afflicted by deformities, ulcers, and cutaneous affections. To have got over a first attack was no surety against a second or a third. If this pest was a poison, it was one which escaped sight, study, and analysis, and did not, like other poisons, act with uniform effect. No symptom marked it but such as are common to the two fevers vulgarly called putrid and malignant. It appeared to be a combination of their bad qualities in the highest degree of virulence. The writers who have tried to describe this Proteus have deceived us, so changeable and opposite were its forms. | The duration of its attacks was not regular, and it struck down its victims sometimes by sudden seizure, and sometimes after an illness lasting till the seventh day. The symptoms were alike neither in two patients; nor often in the same case for two hours together. The face of some was livid, of others highly inflamed; in one case a gloomy silence, in another a frightful loquacity; these perished painlessly in an invincible apathy, a dreadful frenzy killed those without convulsions; occasionally the sufferers wore a dull and helpless expression, but. the eyes of the greatest number were full of fury and terror as in hydrophobia. Against this indefinable foe art fought in vain with remedies of every kind. The most simple were only the least deadly. The lively imagination of the inhabitants of southern France makes rare among them that cool and firm courage which lessens the danger by estimating it. The professional men who might have settled people's minds, acted badly, if we lost money by a sham company the week before, restrained him from this act of folly. It proved to be just as well; for next day the office was shut, and the clever thief was away with some thousand pounds of deposit money. as deposit on the shares; and the | counsel of his companion, who had transaction was complete. With an ease that seemed to the simple squire akin to magic, he found himself the possessor of certain documents, which he believed to be the foundation of a colossal for- | tune; and he chuckled to himself over the pluck and promptitude Squire Hazelrig, armed with which had brought him in person his scrip, walked gaily out among to London. By way of varying the crowd-a millionaire in fancy; the pleasures of investment, he for he saw no end to the golden bought for sixty guineas a little harvest a cautious man might reap square, cut from a playing-card, by watching the market, and sellwith the diamonds still upon it ing at a judicious moment; and as peeping from below the waxen the merchant with whom he seal of the Globe Tavern. It was walked, pointed out at the door of one of the Sailcloth Permits, which Garraway's, talking busily, two entitled the holder to acquire noted men, who were large holders shares in a Sailcloth Factory, of S. S. Stock - Mr. Aislabie, existing only in the imagination Chanceller of the Exchequer, and of some inventive swindler. As Secretary Craggs he scarcely the squire and his draper-friend deigned to look at the distinguishcame out again upon the crowded ed pair. He did condescend both pavement of the alley, the eye of to make room for, and remove his the latter was caught by a new hat in honour of, Prince George, office, opened only that day; and who was bustling up the alleyupon advancing they found it to round and rosy-to confer with be filled with men struggling to some directors of a copper combuy shares in a company, the pany, over which he presided as object of which, veiled in present governor; and he beamed gracimystery, was to be unfolded in ously upon Sir John Blunt, chairthe afternoon. Sorely was the man of the South Sea Board, in squire, already bitten with the recognition of the fact that he gambling mania, tempted to in- held in his pocket some of the vest some of his loose guineas in talismans invented by that great this mystery; but the sagacious | financial magician. THE PLAGUE OF MARSEILLES. (Lémontey's History of the Regency.) A.D. 1720. THE plague which desolated Marseilles, and afterwards spread its ravages beyond the Rhone, recalls in many of its features the pestilence described by Thucydides. * * * * At Marseilles the contagion seized in preference upon women, children, and indigent people. Its violence in strong constitutions was terrible; but it despised the decrepit old folk, the lunatics in the asylums, the poor creatures who were afflicted by deformities, ulcers, and cutaneous affections. To have got over a first attack was no surety against a second or a third. If this pest was a poison, it was one which escaped sight, study, and analysis, and did not, like other poisons, act with uniform effect. No symptom marked it but such as are common to the two fevers vulgarly called putrid and malignant. It appeared to be a combination of their bad qualities in the highest degree of virulence. The writers who have tried to describe this Proteus have deceived us, so changeable and opposite were its forms. The duration of its attacks was not regular, and it struck down its victims sometimes by sudden seizure, and sometimes after an illness lasting till the seventh day. The symptoms were alike neither in two patients; nor often in the same case for two hours together. The face of some was livid, of others highly inflamed; in one case a gloomy silence, in another a frightful loquacity; these perished painlessly in an invincible apathy, a dreadful frenzy killed those without convulsions; occasionally the sufferers wore a dull and helpless expression, but the eyes of the greatest number were full of fury and terror as in hydrophobia. Against this indefinable foe art fought in vain with remedies of every kind. The most simple were only the least deadly. The lively imagination of the inhabitants of southern France makes rare among them that cool and firm courage which lessens the danger by estimating it. The professional men who might have settled people's minds, acted badly, if we may judge by this letter from the Archbishop of Aix to the Abbé Dubois. "In the morning we have the plague here, and in the evening we are well. The doctors ought to be abolished, or prescribed to be more skilful and less cowardly. Fear has taken such a hold of them, that they imagine | everything to be the plague, and it is a great misery." Faithful, indeed, to the traditions of the lazaretto, the doctors of the country used to visit the sick, wrapped in frocks of waxed linen, their feet raised from the ground on wooden pattens, their mouths and nostrils covered, speaking in a loud unnatural voice at some distance from the patient, and, in fact, less like a helpful and consoling visitor than a spectre of death summoning the dying to follow him. One of them fancied he had read that Hippocrates had fires lit during the plague of Athens; immediately the signal was given for innumerable bonfires to be kindled throughout Marseilles, on all the open places, in front of each house, and even in the courtyard of several. This enormous conflagration in such warm weather redoubled the rage of the malady; the doctor Sicard, the originator of this plan, took flight with his son. Such an example was thrown away upon Toulon, which, some time afterwards, made the same experiment with the same bad results. On the ashes of this burning arrived the doctors of Montpellier, sent by the court. Either from policy, or from conviction, they surprised people by a hitherto unknown boldness. "What madness distracts you?" they said to the crowd which pressed round them. "The evil which assails you has not come from Syria between the planks of a vessel; it is produced among yourselves by natural causes, just as it has been seen a hundred times in countries unknown to the Levant trade, and as it has recently attacked several cities of France, after the winter of 1709. It will soon die out, if the terror and the famine, which are your doing, do not lend it an unnatural strength. It is not the hand of God which strikes your sick, but it is your own cruel selfishness that kills them. We are seeking for the contagion of the plague; we find none but the contagion of fear. Cease to be alarmed about yourselves; return to the bedsides of your relations and friends; and if you doubt our words, see our actions." And, in fact, without fear, without precaution, they approach the sick with a smile on their lips, they sit down on their beds, talk with them, and calmly touch their bodies, their clothes, their sores. This example had excellent effects; the physicians and surgeons who hastened from different parts of France imitated their intrepid conduct. A young sailor of Toulon, who had seen them operate, set up as a surgeon, and obtained the success which his cour age deserved. A woman, her name and nationality unknown, who was the companion of a Ger man quack, showed her medical | the dregs of the people, enlisted by skill in the hospitals and the most force under the name of corbeaux. It infected places. Her slender form, was soon necessary to supply the deher exceeding beauty, her freshness, sertion of these by galley-slaves. The so remarkable among the dying, commanders of the galleys would made her look like an unknown scarcely lend them, and then only being of more than mortal race. on the singular condition that the Imagination, credulous in great magistracy should be held bound scenes of terror, indulged a thou- to fill up the place of any who sand fancies about this mysterious might die in this service. They woman whose amazing audacity were a frightful band, these corwas respected by the disease. The beaux and convicts; the city counlocal doctors also shook off their cillors directed them, sword in cowardly reserve, and became more hand. When these wretches enworthy of praise in proportion as tered the houses, they demanded they were less apprehensive of gold before agreeing to carry away danger. One of them named Adon, the corpses, that is to drag them who had used the head of his cane along with iron hooks, and if they to assure himself of the health of a fell in with any sick persons abanyoung girl, was given over to piti-doned by their friends, they did less mockery, a kind of peculiarly not fail to kill them, that they French justice which has never might plunder the bodies at their been suspended even amid the most frightful disasters. This poor man, in despair, sought and at last met the death so easy to find; but it was a fact which may be gladly remembered, that of all these daring strangers, there would not have died a single one, if it had not been that at Aix, out of extravagant bravado, the youngest of them must needs sleep in the bed of a plague-stricken woman who had just expired. ease. The number of the dead, increasing day by day, soon required tumbrils to be used for taking them away; but in such times of terror, the most simple business cannot be transacted without inconceivable difficulty; it was necessary to seize by force in the country the horses and vehicles required. The galley-slaves purposely broke the harness, and the frightened workmen refused to The mistaken opinion that the mend them. In fact, all the corpses were contagious made their authority of the magistrates could burial one of the most terrible never set agoing more than twenty, duties of the magistrates. At the a number so insufficient that the beginning of the epidemic, they city, filled with a thousand corpses went themselves by night to have every day, thought itself near its the bodies taken away by the ser- end. Tradition has handed down vants of the lazaretto; they were a trait of conduct highly honourthen obliged to employ men from able to the memory of M. de |