Page:Manzoni - The Betrothed, 1834.djvu/401

 ; and it was also necessary to find and prepare new habitations for new cases. Cabins of wood and straw were hastily constructed in the interior enclosure of the lazaretto; then a second lazaretto, a little beyond, was erected, capable of containing 4000 persons. Two others were ordered, but means, men, and courage failed, and they were never completed: despair and weakness had attained such a point, that the most urgent and painful wants were unprovided for; each day, for example, children, whose mothers had perished of the plague, died from neglect. The Tribunal of Health proposed to found an hospital for these innocent creatures, but could obtain no assistance for the purpose; all supplies were for the army, "because," said the governor, "it is a time of war, and we must treat the soldiers well."

Meanwhile the immense ditch which had been dug near the lazaretto was filled with dead bodies; a number still remained without sepulture, as hands were wanting for the work. Without extraordinary aid this calamity must have remained unremedied. The president of the senate addressed himself in tears to the two intrepid friars who governed the lazaretto, and the Father Michele pledged himself to relieve in four days the city of the unburied dead, and to dig, in the course of a week, another ditch sufficient not only for present wants, but even for those which might be anticipated in future. Followed by another friar, and public officers chosen by the president, he went into the country to procure peasants, and partly by the authority of the tribunal, partly by that of his habit, he gathered 200, whom he employed to dig the earth. He then despatched monatti from the lazaretto to collect the dead. At the appointed time his promise was fulfilled.

At one time the lazaretto was left without physicians, and it was only after much trouble and time, and great offers of money and honours, that others could be prevailed on to supply their place. Provisions were often so scarce, as to create apprehensions of starvation, but more than once these necessities were unexpectedly supplied by the charity of individuals. In the midst of the general stupor, or the indifference to the miseries of others, occasioned by