But the Pitying Mother had not yet entered within the walls, and the morning arose on unchanged misery and despondency. Pestilence was hovering in the track of famine. Not only the hospitals were full, but the courtyards of private houses had been turned into refuges and infirmaries; and still there was unsheltered want. And early this morning, as usual, members of the various fraternities who made it part of their duty to bury the unfriended dead, were bearing away the corpses that had sunk by the wayside. As usual, sweet womanly forms, with the refined air and carriage of the well-born, but in the plainest garb, were moving about the streets on their daily errands of tending the sick and relieving the hungry.
One of these forms was easily distinguishable as Romola de’ Bardi. Clad in the simplest garment of black serge, with a plain piece of black drapery drawn over her head, so as to hide all her hair, except the bands of gold that rippled apart on her brow, she was advancing from the Ponte Vecchio towards the Por’ Santa Maria—the street in a direct line with the bridge—when she found her way obstructed by the pausing of a bier, which was being carried by members of the company of San Jacopo del Popolo, in search for the unburied dead. The brethren at the head of the bier were stooping to examine something, while a group of idle workmen, with features paled and sharpened by hunger, were clustering around and all talking at once.
“He’s dead, I tell you! Messer Domeneddio has loved him well enough to take him.”
“Ah, and it would be well for us all if we could have our legs stretched out and go with our heads two or three bracci foremost! It’s ill standing upright with hunger to prop you.”
“Well, well, he’s an old fellow. Death has got a poor bargain. Life’s had the best of him.”
“And no Florentine, ten to one! A beggar turned out of Siena. San Giovanni defend us! They’ve no need of soldiers to fight us. They send us an army of starving men.”
“No, no! This man is one of the prisoners turned out of the Stinche. I know by the grey patch where the prison badge was.”
“Keep quiet! Lend a hand! Don’t you see the brethren are going to lift him on the bier?”
“It’s likely he’s alive enough if he could only look it. The soul may be inside him if it had only a drop of vernaccia to warm it.”
“In truth, I think he is not dead,” said one of the brethren, when they had lifted him on the bier. “He has perhaps only sunk down for want of food.”