erms of an agreement into which I
had lately entered, from the family and service of my friend and
benefactor Hadwin?

My thoughts were called away from pursuing these inquiries by a rumour,
which had gradually swelled to formidable dimensions; and which, at
length, reached us in our quiet retreats. The city, we were told, was
involved in confusion and panic, for a pestilential disease had begun
its destructive progress. Magistrates and citizens were flying to the
country. The numbers of the sick multiplied beyond all example; even in
the pest-affected cities of the Levant. The malady was malignant and
unsparing.

The usual occupations and amusements of life were at an end. Terror had
exterminated all the sentiments of nature. Wives were deserted by
husbands, and children by parents. Some had shut themselves in their
houses, and debarred themselves from all communication with the rest of
mankind. The consternation of others had destroyed their understanding,
and their misguided steps hurried them into the midst of the danger
which they had previously laboured to shun. Men were seized by this
disease in the streets; passengers fled from them; entrance into their
own dwellings was denied to them; they perished in the public ways.

The chambers of disease were deserted, and the sick left to die of
negligence. None could be found to remove the lifeless bodies. Their
remains, suffered to decay by piecemeal, filled the air with deadly
exhalations, and added tenfold to the devastation.

Such was the tale, distorted and diversified a thousand ways by the
credulity and exaggeration of the tellers. At first I listened to the
story with indifference or mirth. Methought it was confuted by its own
extravagance. The enormity and variety of such an evil made it unworthy
to be believed. I expected that every new day would detect the absurdity
and fallacy of such representations. Every new day, however, added to
the number of witnesses and the consistency of the tale, till, at
length, it was not possible to withhold my faith.

CHAPTER XIV.

This rumour was of a nature to absorb and suspend the whole soul. A
certain sublimity is connected with enormous dangers that imparts to our
consternation or our pity a tincture of the pleasing. This, at least,
may be experienced by those who are beyond the verge of peril. My own
person was exposed to no hazard. I had leisure to conjure up terrific
images, and to personate the witnesse