When some few among the populace, in the first days of the pestilence, united in the vain attempt to cast over the lofty walls the corpses that strewed the street, he mingled with them to look on the rigid faces of the dead.

In solitary places, where the parent, not yet lost to affection, strove to carry his dying child from the desert roadway to the shelter of a roof; where the wife, still faithful to her duties, received her husband's last breath in silent despair--he was seen gliding by their sides, and for one brief instant looking on them with attentive and mournful eyes.

Wherever he went, whatever he beheld, he asked no sympathy and sought no aid.

He went his way, a pilgrim on a solitary path, an unregarded expectant for a boon that no others would care to partake.
When the famine first began to be felt in the city, he seemed unconscious of its approach--he made no effort to procure beforehand the provision of a few days' sustenance; if he attended the first public distributions of food, it was only to prosecute his search for his child amid the throng around him.

He must have perished with the first feeble victims of starvation, had he not been met, during his solitary wanderings, by some of the members of the congregation whom his piety and eloquence had collected in former days.
By these persons, who entreaties that he would suspend his hopeless search he always answered with the same firm and patient denial, his course was carefully watched and his wants anxiously provided for.