198 HISTORICAL TALES,

death. Those who waited on the sick were them-
selves stricken down, and so great grew the terror
that the patients were deserted and left to die alone.
Fortunately the disease rarely attacked any one
twice, and those who had been sick and recovered
became the only nurses of the new victims of the
disease.

So dread became the pestilence that the dead and
the dying lay everywhere, in houses and streets, and
even in the temples; halfdead sufferers gathered
around the springs, tortured by violent thirst; the
very dogs that meddled with the corpses died of the
disease ; vultures and other carrion birds avoided the
city as if by instinct. Many bodies were burnt or
buried with unseemly haste, many doubtless left to
fester where they lay. Misery, terror, despair, over-
whelmed all within the walls, while the foe without
drew back in equal terror, lest the pestilence should
leap the walls and assail them in their camps.

Nor have we yet told all. Other evils followed
that of the plague. Law was forgotten, morality
ignored. Men hesitated not at crime or the indul-
gence of evil passions, having no fear of punishment.
Many gave themselves up to riot and luxurious
living, with the hope of snatching an interval of en-
joyment before yielding to death. The story we
here tell is no new one. It has been realized again
and again in the flight of the centuries, when pes-
tilence has made its home in some crowded city.
Human nature is everywhere the same, and the
bonds of law and morality are loosened when death

stalks abroad.