e in haste to return to
their homes, for often they left life, health, happiness, and, two hours
later, they found agony, death, and despair.

At every moment, new dismal objects met the view. Sometimes carts passed
along, filled with coffins, symmetrically piled; they stopped before
every house. Men in black and gray garments were in waiting before the
door; they held out their hands, and to some, one coffin was thrown, to
some two, frequently three or four, from the same house. It sometimes
happened that the store was quickly exhausted, and the cart, which had
arrived full, went away empty, whilst many of the dead in the street were
still unserved. In nearly every dwelling, upstairs and down, from the
roof to the cellar, there was a stunning tapping of hammers: coffins were
being nailed down, and so many, so very many were nailed, that sometimes
those who worked stopped from sheer fatigue. Then broke forth laments,
heart-rending moans, despairing imprecations. They were uttered by those
from whom the men in black and gray had taken some one to fill the
coffins.

Unceasingly were the coffins filled, and day and night did those men
work, but by day more than by night, for, as soon as it was dusk, came a
gloomy file of vehicles of all kinds--the usual hearses were not
sufficient; but cars, carts, drays, hackney-coaches, and such like,
swelled the funeral procession; different to the other conveyances, which
entered the streets full and went away empty--these came empty but soon
returned full. During that period, the windows of many houses were
illuminated, and often the lights remained burning till the morning. It
was "the season." These illuminations resembled the gleaming rays which
shine in the gay haunts of pleasure; but there were tapers instead of wax
candles, and the chanting of prayers for the dead replaced the murmur of
the ball-room. In the streets, instead of the facetious transparencies
which indicate the costumers, there swung at intervals huge lanterns of a
blood-red color, with these words in black letters: "Assistance for those
attacked with the cholera." The true places for revelry, during the
night, were the churchyards; they ran riot--they, usually so desolate and
silent, during the dark, quiet hours, when the cypress trees rustle in
the breeze, so lonely, that no human step dared to disturb the solemn
silence which reigned there at night, became on a sudden, animated,
noisy, riotous, and resplendent