67.
In France we see, during generation after generation, a similar history evolved; pestilence after pestilence came, and was met by various fetiches.

Noteworthy is the plague at Marseilles near the beginning of the last century.

The chronicles of its sway are ghastly.

They speak of great heaps of the unburied dead in the public places, "forming pestilential volcanoes"; of plague-stricken men and women in delirium wandering naked through the streets; of churches and shrines thronged with great crowds shrieking for mercy; of other crowds flinging themselves into the wildest debauchery; of robber bands assassinating the dying and plundering the dead; of three thousand neglected children collected in one hospital and then left to die; and of the death-roll numbering at last fifty thousand out of a population of less than ninety thousand.
In the midst of these fearful scenes stood a body of men and women worthy to be held in eternal honour--the physicians from Paris and Montpellier; the mayor of the city, and one or two of his associates; but, above all, the Chevalier Roze and Bishop Belzunce.

The history of these men may well make us glory in human nature; but in all this noble group the figure of Belzunce is the most striking.