"Good--good! Here is one like myself--not afraid--not afraid! We are not cowards.

We do not find fault with the blessed saints--they send the plague.

The beautiful plague!--I love it! I buy all the clothes I can get that are taken from the corpses--they are nearly always excellent clothes.

I never clean them--I sell them again at once--yes--yes! Why not?
The people must die--the sooner the better! I help the good God as much as I can." And the old blasphemer crossed himself devoutly.
I looked down upon him from where I stood drawn up to my full height, with a glance of disgust.

He filled me with something of the same repulsion I had felt when I touched the unnameable Thing that fastened on my neck while I slept in the vault.
"Come!" I said, somewhat roughly, "will you sell me a suit or no ?" "Yes, yes!" and he rose stiffly from his seat; he was very short of stature, and so bent with age and infirmity that he looked more like the crooked bough of a tree than a man, as he hobbled before me into his dark shop.