structed between 1837 an d 1848, extends a length of ninety-five miles, and is carried through tunnels and over aqueducts. The body of water thus conducted to Marseilles not only supplies the precious liquid for drinking and bathing, but also sends rills to water the gardens which would otherwise be barren. How necessary this great work was may be judged from the number of deaths at Marseilles at the outbreak of the plague in 1720, when from 40,000 to 50,000 persons succumbed.
Amidst the general despair, selfishness, and depravity that then manifested itself, the Bishop Belzunce, some of his clergy, and the governor of the town, showed noble self-possession and devotion.
"The physicians sent to Marseilles by the Government," says Méry, "on arriving found in the place over 20,000 dead and nine to ten thousand sick or dying. The frightful spectacle so affected them that they could hardly eat. In traversing the town, in places they could hardly step without
encountering heaps of corpses. The plague-stricken felt a flicker of hope on seeing doctors approach, but this soon died out. Fathers and mothers dragged their children into the streets, and abandoned them after placing a jug of water at their side. Children exhibited a revolting lack of feeling.
All generous sentiments had been paralysed by the hand of death. The mortality was so great and rapid in its march that the corpses piled up before the houses, and in the church porches, indeed everywhere, empested the air. In the heat, the bodies rapidly putrified and dissolved, falling apart in strips. All were naked; the sick were covered by a few rags.
Women half-clothed appealed for a drop of water, pointing to the fetid rill that trickled down the gutter; and as no one attended to them, they used their failing powers to crawl to it, often with their babes at their breasts, to dip their lips in the
