Page:Adventures of Baron Wenceslas Wratislaw of Mitrowitz (1862).djvu/157

 given to the janissary not to allow the clerk to speak with any other Christians, or deliver them letters. Thus we remained shut up in the house, as in a prison, and no one could go out any whither.

At that time there was so great a pestilence in Constantinople that, as the Turks told us, 80,000 people died of the plague; and, in fact, as we ourselves saw from our house, people were carried in large numbers, all day long, to the grave, and even in some houses we saw two, three, or four corpses at a time being washed, fomented, and purified with warm water. It is certain that it was very grievous to us when we could see nothing else but a multitude of dead bodies. Out of our own house there died about six persons of the infection of the plague, although we used all kinds of medicines daily. We had the bodies buried in the city of Galata, according to the permission granted us. The corpses were only attended by three or four persons, and the Franciscan monks, who have six convents there, performed the funeral ceremonies. At this time more than half of us fell sick with the stench and with fright. I, too, had first an ague, and then a diarrhea, and was so seriously ill for many weeks that the physicians despaired of my recovery, and said it was impossible for me to get well any more.

During the time of this plague, for about four or five months, nothing was said about the war; but, as soon as it passed over, proclamation was publicly made in the streets to prepare for war against the giaours and the Viennese king, and that considerable booty would be obtained. After no long time a number of soldiers marched into the city from all parts, walked and rode