mesmus goes on to say that the appearance of figures wearing the nose continues-sometimes there are two figures mentioned , sometimes three : a man , woman and small child ; the text is partly destroyed and confusing-throughout the reign of the plague , abruptly terminating with the last case of the disease , although there is one cloudy passage toward the end of the treatise ( which , as a sidelight , deals mainly with weather ) mentioning that a `` nosed person '' was spotted in the church bell tower intermittently for some time afterward .