The Town has now an Aspect that moves Compassion; an Air of Desolation appears throughout; all the Shops are every where shut up; the greatest Part of the Houses, Churches and Convents, all the publick Markets and Places of Resort are deserted; and no Person is to be found in the Streets, but poor groaning Wretches; the Port is empty, the Gallies have withdrawn from the Keys, and are enclosed within a Stockade on the Side of the Arsenal, where the Bridges are drawn up, and high Barriers erected, and all the Merchant-Ships and Vessels have left the Wharfs, and gone out to Anchor at a Distance. This proud _Marseilles_, but a few Days before so flourishing; this Source of Plenty, and (if I may use the Expression) of Felicity; is become the true Image of _Jerusalem_ in its Desolation: Happy still if it could stop here; and if the Hand which has begun to chastise her, did not within less than Two Weeks, render her the most dreadful Scene of human Misery, that ever Destruction formed in any City of the World. The 18th, a Crowd of People from the Quarter of St. _John_ come before the Gates of the Town-House, crying out that they will have Wine; and that there is no body left in the Town who will sell any. The Guards make ready to drive them away, M. _Estelle_ repairs thither, and soon after M. _Moustier_; they pacify them, promise to let them have what they desire; and accordingly an Ordinance is immediately published, commanding all those who have Wine by them, to expose it to Sale all that Day, otherwise their Cellars to be broke open, and the Wine sold by the Guards, who shall go the Rounds through all the Quarters. At this Time the Contagion has spread into all Parts of the Town, notwithstanding all the Care and Pains taken to hinder Communication, and begins to make a general Ravage: It is necessary for carrying off the Dead, to employ in the Streets a greater Number of Carts, and especially to increase the Number of Buriers of the Dead. But this is utterly impossible, almost all of that Sort of People of the Town that could be sacrificed in so dangerous a Work are consumed; they do not live in it above Two Days; they catch the Plague the first Corpse they touch, whatever Precaution is used; they are furnished with Hooks fastened to the End of long Staves; but the coming any thing near the Bodies infects them: They are paid no less than Fifteen Livres a Day; but as alluring a Bait as that is to beggarly Wretches, they will not touch it, in the Sight of certain and inevitable Death; they must be hunted for, and dragged to the Work by downright Force: Now whether they are able to keep themselves hid, or whether they are all dead, there are no longer any to be found; in the mean while, the dead Bodies remain in the Houses, and at the Gates of the Hospitals, cast in Heaps one upon another, there being no Means to remove them and bury them in the Pits.