[Footnote 237: Mutinelli, _op. cit._ vol. ii. pp. 287-307.]

To the miseries of pestilence and its attendant famine were added
lawlessness and license, raging fires, and what was worst of all, the
dark suspicion that the sickness had been introduced by malefactors.
This belief appears to have taken hold upon the popular mind during the
plague of 1598 in Savoy and in Milan.[238] Simeone Contarini reports
that two men from Geneva confessed to having come with the express
purpose of disseminating infection. He also gives curious particulars of
two who were burned, and four who were quartered at Turin in 1600 for
this offense.[239] 'These spirits of hell,' as he calls them, indicated
a wood in which they declared that they had buried a pestilential liquid
intended to be used for smearing houses. The wood was searched, and some
jars were discovered. A surgeon at the same epoch confessed to having
meant to spread the plague at Mondovi. Other persons, declaring
themselves guilty of a similar intention, described a horn filled with
poisonous stuff collected from the sores of plague-stricken corpses,
which they had concealed outside the walls of Turin. This too was
discovered; and these apparent proofs of guilt so infuriated the people
that every day some criminals were sacrificed to judicial vengeance.

[Footnote 238: See Mutinelli, _op. cit._ p. 241 and p. 289. We hear of
the same belief at Milan in 1576, _op. cit._ vol. i. pp. 311-315.]

[Footnote 239: _Ibid._ p. 309. See also vol. iii. p. 254 for a similar
narration.]

The name given to the unfortunate creatures accused of this diabolical
conspiracy was _Untori_ or the Smearers. The plague of Milan in 1629-30
obtained the name of 'La Peste degli Untori' (as that of 1576 had been
called 'La Peste di S. Carlo'), because of the prominent part played in
it by the smearers.[240] They were popularly supposed to go about the
city daubing walls, doors, furniture, choir-stalls, flowers, and
articles of food with plague stuff. They scattered powders in the air,
or spread them in circles on the pavement. To set a foot upon one of
these circles involved certain destruction. Hundreds of such _untori_
were condemned to the most cruel deaths by justice firmly persuaded of
their criminality. Exposed to prolonged tortures, the majority confessed
palpable absurdities. One woman at Milan said she had killed four
thousand people. But, says Pier Antonio Marioni, the Venetian envoy,
althou