The Master Builder gave vent to a sound almost like a groan.

“You are right, Harmer, you are right.  I have not done well in this thing.  My son is no better than an idle profligate.  I say it to my shame, but so it is.  Nothing that I say will keep him from his riotous comrades and licentious ways.  I have spoken till I am weary of speaking, and all is in vain.  And now that this terrible scourge of God has fallen upon the city, instead of turning from their evil courses with fear and loathing, he and such as he are but the more reckless and impious, and turn into a jest even this fearful visitation.  They scour the streets as before, and drink themselves drunk night by night.  Ah, should the pestilence reach some amongst them, what would be their terrible doom!  I cannot bear even to think of it!  Yet that is too like to be the end of my wretched boy, my poor, unhappy Frederick!”

CHAPTER V. THE PLOT AND ITS PUNISHMENT.

Strange as it may appear, the awful nature of the calamity which had overtaken the great city had by no means the subduing influence upon the spirits of the lawless young roisterers of the streets that might well have been expected.  No doubt there were some amongst these who were sobered by the misfortunes of their fellows, and by the danger in which every person in the town now stood; but it seemed as if the very imminence of the peril and the fearful spread of the contagion exercised upon others a hardening influence, and they became even more lawless and dissolute than before.  “Let us eat and drink; for tomorrow we die,” appeared to be their motto, and they lived up to it only too well.

So whilst the churches were thronged with multitudes of pious or terrified persons, assembled to pray to God for mercy, and to listen to words of godly counsel or admonition; whilst the city authorities were doing everything in their power to check the course of the frightful contagion, and send needful relief to the sufferers, and many devoted men and women were adventuring their lives daily for the sake of others, the taverns were still filled day by day and night by night with idle and dissolute young men, tainted with all the vices of a vicious Court and an unbelieving age—­drinking, and making hideous mockery of the woes of their townsmen, careless even when the gaps amid their own ranks showed that the fell disease was busy amongst all classes and ranks.  Indeed, it was no unheard of thing for a man to fall stricken to the ground in the midst of one of these revels; and although the master of the house would hastily throw him out of the door as if he had staggered forth drunk, yet it would ofttimes be the distemper which had him in its fatal clutches, and the dead cart would remove him upon its next gloomy round.