passing so cruelly in it, the surrounding country was not in any wise spared. For there, not to speak of the castles, which in proportion to their size were like the city, in the scattered villages and in the fields the poor and wretched labourers and their families, without any care of physician or aid of servant, by the way side, on the land they tilled, and in their houses, died alike by day and night, not like men, but almost like beasts. So they became wanton in their habits, just like the townspeople, and paid no attention to their affairs or business; but all, as if they expected to die on the day which they found they had reached, would do nothing to secure the future produce of their cattle, and of the land, and of their own past labours, but exerted themselves as much as possible to consume those which they found at hand. Thus it happened that the kine, the asses, the sheep, the pigs, the goats, the poultry, and even the dogs, creatures most attached to mankind, driven out of their own houses, went about as it pleased them over the fields, where the corn was left, not merely unharvested, but uncut. And many of them, almost like reasoning beings, after they had fed well in the day, at night returned home without any guidance of their shepherd. What more can be said, leaving the country and returning to the city, but that such and so great was the cruelty of heaven, and perhaps in some degree that of men, that between March and the following July, between the virulence of the pestilential disease, and the bad attendance on the sick, or their abandonment in their need on account of the fear entertained by the sound, more than a hundred thousand human beings are confidently believed to have died within the walls of the city of Florence; though before this deadly occurrence, perhaps the whole number would not have been estimated so high. Oh, how many great palaces, how many fair houses, how many noble mansions, formerly fully inhabited, now remained empty, from their lords and mistresses to the lowest menial! Oh, how many memorable races, how many vast inheritances, how many splendid fortunes found themselves left without any right successor! How many gallant men, how many fair women, how many comely youths, whom not only any common observer, but Galen, Hippocrates, or Æsculapius would have judged in the soundest health, breakfasted in the morning with their relations, companions and friends, and then, the evening after, supped in the other world with their ancestors.” The relaxation of morals consequent upon this pestilence is more fully described by Villani.