It is interesting to observe the efforts made by local authorities to prevent the spread of the disease and the relief measures that were taken. As soon as the plague was discovered, the town authorities usually set guards to watch the houses of those stricken and appointed barbers and gravediggers to treat ill and to inter the dead. These attendants were supported and paid by a tax laid upon the town. Those who were ill were sent to a house of isolation appointed to be a hospital, which was often upon the walls of the town, remote from the people. In Provins the church and cemetery were immediately adjacent to the hospital! The mortality was great. In Provins in 1562 there were eighty persons stricken, of whom sixty died, among them four of the attendants. Two of the barber-surgeons refused to serve and were proceeded against by the town bailiff and were hanged in effigy because the principals in the case had made their escape. Diseased houses were sprinkled with perfumes and aromatic herbs were burned in them in order to purify them.[841] As always, the dislocation of society and the depravation of morals worked havoc in the community. Crimes of violence were common.[842] Little by little, however, this picture of misery faded into the background of the queen’s mind and the question of political expediency, which was always the lodestar of her policy, became her primary consideration.[843] The Catholics plucked up courage as the court progressed[844] and Huguenot suspicion of the queen’s course was early aroused. Shortly after the tour of the provinces had begun, and while the court was still at Troyes pending the signature of the treaty of peace, there was a jar between D’Andelot and the queen mother, who would not permit him to choose his own captains and other officers as was customarily permitted to colonels. Partially in consequence of this affront, and partially to avoid being compromised more with Queen Elizabeth, D’Andelot, the prince of Condé, and the cardinal Châtillon all remained away from the sessions of the council while the terms of peace were under consideration, and when the court resumed its migration, no one of these attended it.[845] Indeed, after the court left Châlons-sur-Marne, so wide was the breach between the prince of Condé, the admiral and all of that faction, and the court, that the chancellor L’Hôpital was the only official who continued to treat them with deference.[846] The consideration shown Jeanne d’Albret only partially relieved the suspicions of the Protestants.[847]