prowess, the ruined crops and the
dishonoured vineyards. A poisonous element, issuing from their remains,
mingled with the atmosphere, and corrupted it. The dismayed peasant found
that a pestilence had begun; a new visitation, not confined to the
territory which the enemy had made its own, but extending far and wide, as
the atmosphere extends, in all directions. Their daily toil, no longer
claimed by the produce of the earth, which has ceased to exist, is now
devoted to the object of ridding themselves of the deadly legacy which
they have received in its stead. In vain; it is their last toil; they are
digging pits, they are raising piles, for their own corpses, as well as
for the bodies of their enemies. Invader and victim lie in the same grave,
burn in the same heap; they sicken while they work, and the pestilence
spreads. A new invasion is menacing Sicca, in the shape of companies of
peasants and slaves, (the panic having broken the bonds of discipline,)
with their employers and overseers, nay the farmers themselves and
proprietors, rushing thither from famine and infection as to a place of
safety. The inhabitants of the city are as frightened as they, and more
energetic. They determine to keep them at a distance; the gates are
closed; a strict _cordon_ is drawn; however, by the continued pressure,
numbers contrive to make an entrance, as water into a vessel, or light
through the closed shutters, and anyhow the air cannot be put into
quarantine; so the pestilence has the better of it, and at last appears in
the alleys, and in the cellars of Sicca.

CHAPTER XVI.

WORSE AND WORSE.

"O wretched minds of men! O blind hearts!" truly cries out a great heathen
poet, but on grounds far other than the true ones. The true ground of such
a lamentation is, that men do not interpret the signs of the times and of
the world as He intends who has placed these signs in the heavens; that
when Mane, Thecel, Phares, is written upon the ethereal wall, they have no
inward faculty to read them withal; and that when they go elsewhere for
one learned in tongues, instead of taking Daniel, who is used to converse
with Angels, they rely on Magi or Chaldeans, who know only the languages
of earth. So it was with the miserable population of Sicca now; half
famished, seized with a pestilence which was sure to rage before it
assuaged, perplexed and oppressed by the recoil upon