Page:Manzoni - The Betrothed, 1834.djvu/394

 operators, who at this time conspired to spread the plague, by the aid of venomous poisons and witchcraft. Similar things had been affirmed and believed in other epidemics; particularly at Milan, in that of the preceding century. Moreover, towards the end of the preceding year, a despatch had arrived from King Philip IV. giving information that four Frenchmen, suspected of spreading poisons and pestilential substances, had escaped from Madrid, and ordering that watch should be kept to ascertain if by chance they had arrived at Milan.

The governor communicated the despatch to the senate, and the Tribunal of Health. It then excited no attention; but when the plague broke out, and was acknowledged by all, this intelligence was remembered, and it served to confirm the vague suspicion of criminal agency; two incidents converted this vague suspicion into conviction of a positive and real conspiracy. Some persons who imagined they saw, on the evening of the 17th of May, individuals rubbing a partition of the cathedral, carried the partition out of the church in the night, together with a great quantity of benches. The president of the senate, with four persons of his tribunal, visited the partition, the benches, and the basins of holy water, and found nothing which confirmed the ridiculous suspicion of poison. However, to satisfy the disturbed imaginations of the populace, it was decided that the partition should be washed and purified. But the incident became a text for conjecture to the people; it was affirmed, that the poisoners had rubbed all the benches and walls of the cathedral, and even the bell-ropes.

The next morning a new and more strange and significant spectacle struck the wondering eyes of the citizens. In all parts of the city the doors of the houses and the walls were plastered with long streaks of whitish yellow dirt, which appeared to have been rubbed on with a sponge. Whether it was a wicked pleasantry to excite more general and thrilling alarm, or that it had been done from the guilty design of increasing the public disorder; whatever was the motive, the fact is so well attested, that it cannot be attributed to imagination. The city, already alarmed,