Generally they were the objects of pity, but also of abhorrence and dread. The reader will hardly believe that in France, in the year 1341, the lepers were actually burnt alive throughout the land, in the false plea that they poisoned the waters, really in the cruel hope to stamp out the disease.[14]
Outside the walls were all the outhouses, workshops, and detached buildings, also an infirmary for the worst cases; within the enclosure also the last sad home when the fell destroyer had completed his work—the graveyard, God's acre; and in the centre rose a huge plain cross, with the word Pax on the steps.
It was a law of the place that no one who entered on any pretence might leave it again: people did not believe in cures; leprosy was incurable—at least save by a miracle, as when the Saviour trod this weary world.
The Chaplain took the poor boys to his own chamber, a little room above the porch of the chapel, containing a bed, over which hung the crucifix, a chair, a table, and a few MS. books, a gospel, an epistle, a prophetical book, the offices, church services; little more.
He made them sit in the embrasure of the window, he did not let them speak until he had given each a cup of hot wine, they sat sobbing there a long time, he let nature have its way. At length the time came and he spoke.
"Evroult, my dear child, Richard, how could you attempt self-murder? Know you not that your lives are God's, and that you may not lay them down at your own pleasure."
"Oh, father, why did you save us? It would have been all over now."
"And where would you have been?"
The boy shuddered. The teaching about Hell, and the horrors of the state of the wicked dead, was far too literal and even coarsely material, at that time, for any one to escape its influence.