Q. How many people died? I have not been able to ascertain a figure for the total mortality, as the Death did not strike equally everywhere. Reports from the time lead me to conclude that Paris lost half its citizens; Venice, two-thirds. Of England, the monk Thomas of Walsingham wrote, "In some religious houses, scarce 2 of 20 monks survived. And it was estimated that scarcely a tenth part of the people had been left alive." I was particularly moved by the words of the poet Petrarch: "Well nigh the whole globe has been left without inhabitants -- houses left vacant, cities deserted, fields too small for the dead, and a fearful and universal solitude over the whole earth." Yet I myself know of towns in which only a scant few succumbed. And travelers have told me of a few regions that remained completely untouched, for reasons known only to God.