Pious men saw in this stroke, so sudden and so terrible, the plain signs of the divine displeasure.

God had a controversy with the nations.

Nine years of fire, of slaughter and of famine had not been sufficient to reclaim a guilty world; and a second and more severe chastisement was at hand.

Others muttered that the event which all good men lamented was to be ascribed to unprincipled ambition.

It would indeed have been strange if, in that age, so important a death, happening at so critical a moment, had not been imputed to poison.