s, and of these no
worshipful and illustrious citizens, but a sort of blood-suckers,
sprung from the dregs of the people, who styled themselves
_pickmen_[8] and did such offices for hire, shouldered the bier and
bore it with hurried steps, not to that church which the dead man had
chosen before his death, but most times to the nearest, behind five or
six[9] priests, with little light[10] and whiles none at all, which
latter, with the aid of the said pickmen, thrust him into what grave
soever they first found unoccupied, without troubling themselves with
too long or too formal a service.

[Footnote 8: _i.e._ gravediggers (_becchini_).]

[Footnote 9: Lit. _four_ or six. This is the equivalent Italian
idiom.]

[Footnote 10: _i.e._ but few tapers.]

The condition of the common people (and belike, in great part, of the
middle class also) was yet more pitiable to behold, for that these,
for the most part retained by hope[11] or poverty in their houses and
abiding in their own quarters, sickened by the thousand daily and
being altogether untended and unsuccoured, died well nigh all without
recourse. Many breathed their last in the open street, whilst other
many, for all they died in their houses, made it known to the
neighbours that they were dead rather by the stench of their rotting
bodies than otherwise; and of these and others who died all about the
whole city was full. For the most part one same usance was observed by
the neighbours, moved more by fear lest the corruption of the dead
bodies should imperil themselves than by any charity they had for the
departed; to wit, that either with their own hands or with the aid of
certain bearers, whenas they might have any, they brought the bodies
of those who had died forth of their houses and laid them before their
doors, where, especially in the morning, those who went about might
see corpses without number; then they fetched biers and some, in
default thereof, they laid upon some board or other. Nor was it only
one bier that carried two or three corpses, nor did this happen but
once; nay, many might have been counted which contained husband and
wife, two or three brothers, father and son or the like. And an
infinite number of times it befell that, two priests going with one
cross for some one, three or four biers, borne by bearers, ranged
themselves behind the latter,[12] and whereas the priests thought to
have but one dead man to bury, they had six or eight, and whiles m