Amidst so much defiance of decency and public morality, in the presence of such profound abuse of sacred things, God did not, nevertheless, remain without testimony, and his omnipotent justice had spoken.  On the 21st of July, 1719, the Duchess of Berry, eldest daughter of the Regent, had died at the Palais-Royal, at barely twenty-four years of age; her health, her beauty, and her wit were not proof against the irregular life she had led.  Ere long a more terrible cry arose from one of the chief cities of the kingdom.  “The plague,” they said, “is at Marseilles, brought, none knows how, on board a ship from the East.”  The terrible malady had by this time been brooding for a month in the most populous quarters without anybody’s daring to give it its real name.  “The public welfare demands,” said Chancellor d’Aguesseau, “that the people should be persuaded that the plague is not contagious, and that the ministry should behave as if it were persuaded of the contrary.”  Meanwhile emigration was commencing at Marseilles; the rich folks had all taken flight; the majority of the public functionaries, unfaithful to their duty, had imitated them, when, on the 31st of July, 1720, the Parliament of Aix, scared at the contagion, drew round Marseilles a sanitary line, proclaiming the penalty of death against all who should dare to pass it; the mayor (viguier) and the four sheriffs were left alone, and without resources to confront a populace bewildered by fear, suffering, and, ere long, famine.  Then shone forth that grandeur of the human soul, which displays itself in the hour of terror, as if to testify of the divine image still existing amidst the wreck of us.  Whilst the Parliament was flying from threatened Aix, and hurrying affrighted from town to town, accompanied or pursued in its route by the commandant of the province, all that while the Bishop of Marseilles, Monseigneur de Belzunce, the sheriffs Estelle and Moustier, and a simple officer of health, Chevalier Roze, sufficed in the depopulated town for all duties and all acts of devotion.

The plague showed a preference for attacking robust men, young people, and women in the flower of their age; it disdained the old and the sick; there was none to care for the dying, none to bury the dead.  The doctors of Marseilles had fled, or dared not approach the dying without precautions, which redoubled the terror.  “The doctors ought to be abolished,” wrote Dubois to the Archbishop of Aix, “or ordered to show more ability and less cowardice, for it is a great calamity.”

Some young doctors, arriving from Montpellier, raised the courage of their desponding brethren, and the sick no longer perished without help.  Rallying round the bishop, the priests, assisted by the members of all the religious orders, flew from bedside to bedside, and from grave to grave, without being able to suffice for the duties of their ministry.  “Look at Belzunce,” writes M. Lemontey; “all he possessed, he has given; all who served