with one hand to grim Death, armed with his scythe, amid a cloud of loathsome winged things flitting around him, with the other that same person warns a harpy that her sister harpy Avarice will soon be overtaken; and just as the heathen Januslike figure close by—emblem of the past, and of a certain future—he also tells her of that just retribution which, by the hands of Death and in another world, will be dealt out to herself and all this miscreant company.
It would seem that this piece was wrought to stigmatize the memory of some of those many wanton acts of spoliation perpetrated in France and Belgium during the latter years of the 16th and the beginning of the 17th centuries. Perhaps the clue to the history and import of this fine specimen of the Flemish loom may be found all about the person of that old man, who carries in one hand a reliquary so conspicuously painted red, and in the other two parchment scrolls, upon one of which we find a sort of sketch of some particular spot, with an important edifice on it. By its size and look it seems to be some great hospital, and from the presence there of a man having above his head the letter tau or T and a bell hanging to it, we are given to understand that this building belonged to some brotherhood of St. Anthony, in the service of the sick; and that its suffering inmates were principally those afflicted with erysipelas, a disease then, and even yet, called abroad St. Anthony's fire, once so pestilential that it often swept away thousands everywhere. Near Vienne, in the South of France, stood a richly-endowed hospital, founded A.D. 1095, chiefly for those suffering under this direful malady. This house belonged to and was administered by Canons Regular of St. Anthony. The town where it stood was Didier-la-Mothe, better known as Bourg S. Antoine. During the troubled times in France this great wealthy hospital, here fitly represented like a town of itself, by those lofty walls and that tall wide gateway, had been plundered: hence, one of its brothers is shown upbraiding Avarice for her evil doings, of which those sad tokens of moneyless purses, well-searched rent-books, and ransacked title-deeds are still dangling on her car. If not all, most, at least, of the persons here figured are meant, as is probable, to be characterized as the likenesses of the very individual victims and the victimizers portrayed upon this tapestry.
