In the mean time, the hoarse roar, less of suffering or grief, than of hurry and trade, that went on within the edifice, rose at intervals so high as to be dumbly and indistinctly heard on the outside. Shadows upon the white-clouded window-panes were seen rapidly passing and repassing. And the space in the immediate vicinity of the Spedale, especially the ground and dwellings of the square of Santa Maria, which had long been deserted--for, at the very commencement of the infection, every hospital, as might well be expected, soon cleared a neighbourhood round it--presented a curious spectacle to the attention, even under the general appalling circumstances of the time. The Piazza, or square itself, which was unpaved, stood fetlock-deep in mire and filth; for the gravedigger had more than work enough to do; and the duty of the scavenger was little heeded. In the earlier stages of the pestilence, clothes and bedding, the property of those who died, had been used to be burnt in the front of the hospital; that custom was now laid aside, either because there was no authority to enforce it, or because it had been found unavailing; but the original pile of half-consumed rags and ashes still remained, grown cold and mouldy, for man and horse to flounder through. All the houses in those three sides of the square which consisted of dwellings--the Spedale forming the fourth--without an exception stood open; they had been broken into and rifled by the hospital servants (who ransacked all before them in their nightly rounds) for what they contained; and the wood-work of the doors and staircases had gone to make fires to burn the bedding with. The area of the Piazza was strewed all over with matters of domestic litter: pots, pans, broken furniture, worn-out kitchen utensils, and remnants of apparel, cast forth from the hospital. In the centre of the square there was a marble fountain playing; but to little purpose, for another rose within the walls of the Spedale; and no creature out of the building, though perishing of thirst, would have ventured to taste such water. Some evil jester, desirous, perhaps, to spend the last hour of his life in mischief, had thrown an old saddle into the reservoir into which the stream discharged itself; and broken away all the teeth of the couchant lion, from whose mouth the chief _jet_ issued. "And this immense house is full, then!" said the Chevalier Di Vasari, as he paused for a moment in front of the hospital. The speaker had interests enough of his own, and vital ones, to contend with; but--it was not in man--the very criminal who went to the scaffold, could not have beheld such a scene without wonder and curiosity.