A roar of laughter provoked by the spectacle he presented drowned his frenzied voice, and a shower of offensive missiles pelted him from every quarter. The last of these was a living cat, which clawed itself against his breast spitting furiously in its terror.
Overwhelmed, the prophet turned, and fled between the pillars into the shelter of Paul’s itself, pursued by laughter and insult. But scarcely had he disappeared than with uncanny suddenness that laughter sank from a roar to a splutter. To this succeeded a moment of deadly silence. Then the crowd broke, and parted, its members departing at speed in every direction with cries in which horror had taken now the place that was so lately held by mirth.
Colonel Holles, finding himself suddenly alone, and as yet very far from understanding what had taken place to scatter those men and women in such panic, advanced a step or two into the suddenly emptied space before the cathedral steps. There on the roughly cobbled ground he beheld a writhing man, a well-made, vigorous fellow in the very prime of life, whose dress was that of a tradesman of some prosperity. His round hat lay beside him where he had fallen, and he rolled his head from side to side spasmodically, moaning faintly the while. Of his eyes nothing was visible but the whites, showing under the line of his half-closed lids.
As Holles, perceiving here no more than a sick man, continued his advance, a voice from the retreating crowd shouted a warning to him.
“Have a care, sir! Have a care! He may be stricken with the plague.”
The Colonel checked, involuntarily arrested by the horror that the very word inspired. And then he beheld a stoutish, elderly man in a heavy wig, plainly but scrupulously dressed in black, whose round countenance gathered a singularly owlish expression from a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles, walk calmly forward to the stricken citizen. A moment he stood beside him looking down; then he turned to beckon a couple of burly fellows who had the appearance and carried the staves of billmen. From his pocket the sturdy gentleman in black produced a kerchief upon which he sprinkled something from a phial. Holding the former to his nostrils with his left hand, he knelt down beside the sufferer, and quietly set himself to unfasten the man’s doublet.
Observing him, the Colonel admired his quiet courage, and thence took shame at his own fear for his utterly worthless life. Resolutely putting it from him, he went forward to join that little group.
The doctor looked round and up at his approach. But Holles had no eyes at the moment for any but the patient, whose breast the physician had laid bare. One of the billmen was pointing out to the other a purplish tumid patch at the base of the sufferer’s throat. His eyes were round, his face grave, and his voice came hushed and startled.
“See! The tokens!” he said to his companion.