In spite of the gaiety of the court of King Edward a cloud hung over the kingdom; for it was threatened by a danger far more terrible than any combination of foes--a danger which no gallantry upon the part of her king or warriors availed anything. With a slow and terrible march the enemy was advancing from the East, where countless hosts had been slain. India, Arabia, Syria, and Armenia had been well-nigh depopulated. In no country which the dread foe had invaded had less than two-thirds of the population been slain; in some nine-tenths had perished. All sorts of portents were reported to have accompanied its appearance in the East; where it was said showers of serpents had fallen, strange and unknown insects had appeared in the atmosphere, and clouds of sulphurous vapour had issued from the earth and enveloped whole provinces and countries. For two or three years the appearance of this scourge had been heralded by strange atmospheric disturbances; heavy rains and unusual floods, storms of thunder and lightning of unheard-of violence, hail-showers of unparalleled duration and severity, had everywhere been experienced, while in Italy and Germany violent earthquake shocks had been felt, and that at places where no tradition existed of previous occurrences of the same kind. From Asia it had spread to Africa and to Europe, affecting first the sea-shores and creeping inland by the course of the rivers. Greece first felt its ravages, and Italy was not long in experiencing them. In Venice more than 100,000 persons perished in a few months, and thence spreading over the whole peninsula, not a town escaped the visitation. At Florence 60,000 people were carried off, and at Lucca and Genoa, in Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica it raged with equal violence. France was assailed by way of Provence, and Avignon suffered especially. Of the English college at that place not an individual was left, and 120 persons died in a single day in that small city. Paris lost upwards of 50,000 of its inhabitants, while 90,000 were swept away in Lubeck, and 1,200,000 died within a year of its first appearance in Germany.