The same Day an Arrêt is issued by the Chamber of Vacations, injoyning all the Rectors of the _Hôtel Dieu_, _de la Charité_, of Foundlings, of the Houses of the Penitent, and of Refuge, the Captains of the City, the Physicians appointed for the Hospitals, and all Sorts of Intendants and municipal Officers, to return to their Duty at _Marseilles_; otherwise declaring them incapable of Publick Offices, and fining them 1000 Livres.
The 3d, the Sheriffs repair to the Town-House almost by themselves, with M. _Capus_, Keeper of the Records, his eldest Son, so distinguish'd by his Merit and his Virtues, who, from the Beginning of the Contagion, has assisted him to go through the Multiplicity of Business in his Offices; M. _Bouis_, Cashier; and my self; having no longer any Guards, Domestick Servants, or other Person under Command. The Ravages the Plague has already made in this great City, may be judged by the Number belonging to the Town-House only, that have been carried off, which, is above 500 Persons, _viz._ 30 Guards wearing the Shoulder-Belt, all the Guards _de la Police_, all the Captains of the City one excepted, all the Lieutenants except two, almost all the Captains Lieutenants, and Guards of the Five Brigades _du Privilege du Vin_, all the Sergeants of the Nightly Watch or Patroll, 350 Men of the Companies of the Guard, and all the City-Yeomen appointed to attend the Magistrates, who are now become destitute of all Servants.
Men are become only Shadows; those who are seen well one Day, are in the Carts the next; and, what is unaccountable, those who have shut themselves up most securely in their own Houses, and are the most careful to take in nothing without the most exact Precautions, are attacked there by the Plague, which creeps in no Body knows how.
The 4th, nothing is more deplorable, than to see the vast Number of Sick and Dying which are spread over the whole City, deprived of all spiritual as well as temporal Comforts, and reduced to the lamentable Condition of dying almost all of them without Confession.
There wanted not, indeed, Servants of the Lord, as well of the Secular as Regular Clergy, who devoted their Lives to the saving of Souls, and assisting and confessing the infected; there wanted not even holy Heroes, (for by that Name we ought to call all the Capuchins and Jesuits of the Two Houses of St. _Jeaume_; and of the holy Cross, and likewise all the Observantins, and the Recollets, and some others) who, with more than heroick Courage, and indefatigable Charity and Zeal, ran about every where, and rushed precipitately into the most deserted and most infected Houses, into the Streets and Places that were thickest strow'd with putrify'd Bodies, and into the Hospitals that reeked most with the Contagion, to confess the infected, assist them in the Article of Death, and receive their last contagious and envenom'd Breath, as if it were but Dew.