alive, and almost all of them tended towards one very cruel conclusion, to avoid and fly from the sick, and everything belonging to them, for every one believed that by so doing he would secure himself. Some were of opinion that moderate living, and avoiding all excess, had much effect towards resisting this calamity: and these made their parties, and lived away from all others, and collecting together and shutting themselves up in houses where there were no sick, and for their better living using the most delicate food and the best wines with the utmost temperance, and avoiding all luxury, there they tarried, without allowing themselves to speak to any one, or to hear any news from abroad of the dead or the ill, passing their time in music and such pleasures as they could obtain. Others held a contrary opinion, and asserted that the surest remedy for the disease was to drink freely, and to enjoy themselves, and to go about singing and amusing themselves, and to indulge their appetites in every way they could, and to laugh, and make sport of everything that occurred. And just as they said they acted, as far as they could; going night and day now to one tavern and now to another, drinking without stint or measure, and doing this for the most part in other men’s houses, provided only that they found anything there that was to their taste or fancy. And this they could easily do, because every one, as if he had no longer to live, had, as it were, abandoned his property, so that most houses had become common; and a stranger used them, if he happened to come to them, just as their own masters would have done. With all this brutal conduct, they always avoided the sick as much as they could. And in this affliction and wretchedness of the city, the respected authority of laws, both divine and human, was almost entirely fallen to decay and dissolved, from the condition of their ministers and officers; for these, like other men, were all dead or sick, or else left so destitute of assistants that they could perform no duty: so that every one might do whatever pleased him best.