"Put on, my lord, if you love your life, put on," exclaimed Jacopo. "Full! Ay, it has been filled, and emptied again, into the great fosse behind it,--Your lordship shudders? Spirits of the blest! if you could but have seen that fosse when it was dug!--twenty times over in the course of the last month. Hark again, Signor!--for Mercy's sake put on!--to the roar of voices inside the building!--and those black shadows, how they flit to and fro again upon the windows, though the steam on the glass hinders our seeing what goes on within! Full? my lord, it is full now!--and the Hospital of St Roque is full!--and so is the Lazaretto--that was the gaol--Sancta Maria!--and the Church of the Padri Reformati is turned, besides, into an hospital!--and the Prigione delle Stinche is open for the sick; and----" Farther yet would the enumeration have gone, but that a noise, as if of loosening bolts and bars in the hospital, interrupted it. In the next moment, one of the massy folding-doors at the great entrance was flung open; and, right hand and left, from its farthest extremity, as far as the eye could see, down to that very door, the common corridor of the house appeared on each side closely set with pallets. Every bed was occupied doubly, and even trebly; or rather the whole range of beds--for each touched the other--was formed into one great litter; crowded with sufferers, in all moods and in all stages of disease. Some--they might be living, or they might be dead--all that could be seen was a strange shapeless lump, rolled in the wretched bed-clothes! Others, covered up in hoods and caps, incapable of speech, stared from the pillows with their glassy eyes and ghastly faces--that the viewer shrank to look on them! Some, furious and strong in agony, sat in their beds bolt upright,--raving, tossing their arms, and muttering horrible imprecations--hideous objects of misery. The most fearful of all were the most healthy,--those whom they called the "Convalescents;" and who glided about in their long, white, shroud-like hospital-gowns and dresses; looking and moving like creatures emerged from the grave--even more appalling to Nature than those who were ready to descend into it. "This is too hideous!" exclaimed Di Vasari, turning his horse away. Pages are insufficient sometimes to convey that impression which the eye takes in in a moment. But a cry now arose of "Room, room!" and between the double row of beds, jolting carelessly along the corridor, two hospital servants appeared, bearing a long tray--that looked ike a shutter with handles to it--covered with a sheet. Out they came, swinging through the hall-door, and descended the steps in front of the building. "Santa Madonna! it is one of the dead,--a corpse fresh of the plague,--and we stand here!" cried Jacopo. "Twenty-five this makes!" said the hindmost bearer, stopping, as he came down the stairs, to trim the load in its descent.