In the midst of death men--yes, and women--who perhaps had deserted their wives, their husbands or their children, fearing to take the evil from them, made the nights horrible by their drunken blasphemies and revellings, as sailors sometimes do upon a sinking ship.

Knowing that they must die, they wished to die merry.
Sir Geoffrey Carleon lived a long while after the death of his wife.
When he passed away at last, ten days or so later, it was painlessly of the mortification of his broken limb, not of the pest, which went by him as though it knew that he was already doomed.
All this time Hugh, Grey Dick, and David Day nursed him without ceasing.
Indeed with the exception of a woman so ancient and shrivelled that nothing seemed able to harm her any more, no one else was left in the great _palazzo_, for all the rest of the household had perished or fled away.

This woman, who was the grandmother of one of the servants, now dead of the plague, cooked their food.

Of such provision fortunately there was much laid up in the storerooms for use in the winter, since Lady Carleon had been a good and provident housewife.
So those three did not starve, although Sir Geoffrey would touch little of the salted stuff.

He existed on a few fruits when they could get them, and after these were gone, on wine mingled with water.
At length came the end.