[Footnote: Muratori, "Rerum Italicarum Scriptores," vol. xiii. pp, 1-
771.] Some few, again, have a faint recollection of that Emperor of
the West, John Cantacuzene, who ruled at Constantinople when the
plague was, and who wrote about it. [Footnote: His four books of
Histories are to be found in the "Corpus Scriptorum Historiae
Byzantinae."] Didn't he? Nay! Hadn't he a son, Andronicus, who died
of it? How did it come to pass that Gibbon did not so much as allude
to it? Some, peradventure, think of Rome and of Rienzi, and how it
was about that time that he was potent, or was he in hiding there
among the Fraticelli? And isn't there something too about the plague
visiting Greenland, and putting back the clock that was moving on
steadily, but which suddenly stopped? How vague we are!
* * * * * * *
What was this plague? How did it strike men down?
"It showed itself," says Boccaccio, "in a sad and wonderful manner;
and _different from what it had been in the East_, where
bleeding from the nose is the fatal prognostic, here [at Florence]
there appeared certain tumours in the groin or under the armpits,
some as big as an apple, others as big as an egg; and afterwards
purple spots in most parts of the body: in some cases large and but
few in number, in others less and more numerous, both kinds the usual
messengers of death.
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