[149] Finch to Coventry, Sept. 9, 1675.
[150] Ibid.
[151] Life of Dudley North, p. 110.
[152] See Rycaut’s Memoirs, p. 318.
[153] Life of Dudley North, p. 111.
[154] Finch to Coventry, Sept. 9, 1675.
CHAPTER XI
FROM PURGATORY TO PERA
The price had been paid. Yet the goods were not forthcoming. The pashas were always about to act, but never acted. And, in the meantime, the Plague grew fiercer and fiercer. There was no escaping the foul visitant: it pursued the fugitives even into their privacy. Count Bocareschi came constantly to dine with the Ambassador, and one day, as he sat next to him at table, Sir John noticed that, contrary to habit, he ate little. After looking at him he remarked that his countenance was changed. The Italian answered that he died daily of fear: he was not yet Moslem enough to despise the Plague, but his wife, a born believer, would not hear of moving: however, whether she would or not, he had made up his mind to move. Alas! it was too late—the noble parasite had eaten his last free meal.[155] All this was very depressing, and it was not all: “The weather was excessive hot, and the air stagnated in a manner, we being placed in a pan or flat: so that it was plague enough merely to stay there.... The terrible heat of the sun reflected from a dry barren sandy soil, and the fulsome foggy aire, broyled us and choked us.”[156] So pass the sultry dog-days in the most purgatorial manner; and the whole month of August. And still nothing accomplished.