Yet I would that I might have been laid at last in
the kind earth of Sussex where for generations my forbears have been
borne to rest," and suddenly she began to weep.
"What ails you, lady? You are not well?"
"Oh, I know not. I think it is the heat or some presage of woe to come,
not to me only, but to all men. Look, nature herself is sick," and she
led him to the broad balcony of the chamber and pointed to long lines
of curious mist which in the bright moonlight they could see creeping
toward Venice from the ocean, although what wind there was appeared to
be off land.
"Those fogs are unnatural," she went on. "At this season of the year
there should be none, and these come, not from the lagoons, but up from
the sea where no such vapours were ever known to rise. The physicians
say that they foretell sickness, whereof terrible rumours have for some
time past reached us from the East, though none know whether these be
true or false."
"The East is a large place, where there is always sickness, lady, or so
I have heard."
"Ay, ay, it is the home of Death, and I think that he travels to us
thence. And not only I, not only I; half the folk in Venice think the
same, though why, they cannot tell. Listen."
As she spoke, the sound of solemn chanting broke upon Hugh's ear. Nearer
it grew, and nearer, till presently there emerged from a side street a
procession of black monks who bore in front of them a crucifix of white
ivory.
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