ould pick up the beautiful golden melons before our eyes and eat them
with the best appetite in the world, and he took no harm from them, for
he feared no danger. You had only to live regularly and trust in God, he
used to say. He would laugh when we asked him: "Is it true that the air
is full of tiny scarce visible insects, the inhaling of which brings
about the disease?" "If you believe in these insects you had better keep
your mouths shut lest they fly into them while you are talking," he
would say. And subsequently when we heard the drowsy monotonous tolling
of the bells and the funeral dirges sung day after day, morning and
evening, beneath our windows, and saw orphans following in the track of
the lumbering corpse-carts; when they told us that everyone in the
neighbouring houses had died off in two days, and we saw all the windows
of the house opposite fast-closed, and not a soul looking through them;
at such a time it was good to fold one's hands in prayer and reflect
that we were still all together, and that not one of us had been taken
away, but God had preserved us from all calamity. Our hope was weak, for
there was no foundation for it to build upon, but our faith was strong
and all-sufficing.

Such is the sole impression I have retained of that memorable year.

Ah! elsewhere that same year was not content with embroidering its
mourning robe with mere tears, it used blood also, and taught the land a
twofold lesson at a heavy cost.

* * * * *

The circular letters issued by the county authorities flew from village
to village, informing the local sages of the approaching peril of which
even the well-formed knew no more than they had known ten years before,
no more than they actually know now.

The local sages, that is to say the justices and the schoolmasters, were
directed to explain to the ignorant people the contents of these
circular letters.

Explain indeed! Men whose own knowledge was of the most elementary
description, men who looked for supernatural causes in the most natural
phenomena, were to explain what was still a profound mystery to the
collective wisdom of the world!

Mr. Korde, whom we remember as one of the two schoolmasters of Hetfalu,
accordingly, by dint of bellowing, gathered all his subjects around him.
It was the day before breaking up for the holidays, and drawing from his
pocket the folded and corded vellum document, he gave them to understand
that