onvent,
of soup to these poor wretches, and gives a terrible
description of the famine-stricken group. "All these
creatures," he continues, "had eaten nothing since yesterday
evening. They had come there to receive their porringer of
soup, as they had come to-day, as they would come to-morrow.
This was all their nourishment for twenty-four hours, unless
some of them might obtain a few _grani_ from their
fellow-citizens, or the compassion of strangers; but this is
very rare, as the Syracusans are familiarized with the
spectacle, and few strangers visit Syracuse. When the
distributor of this blessed soup appeared, there were
unheard-of cries, and each one rushed forward with his wooden
bowl in his hand. Only there were some too feeble to exclaim,
or to run, and who dragged themselves forward, groaning, upon
their hands and knees. There was in the midst of all, a child
clothed, not in anything that could be called a shirt, but a
kind of spider's web, with a thousand holes, who had no wooden
bowl, and who wept with hunger. It stretched out its poor
little meagre hands, and joined them together, to supply as
well as it could, by this natural receptacle, the absent bowl.
The cook poured in a spoonful of the soup. The soup was
boiling, and burned the child's hand. It uttered a cry of pain,
and was compelled to open its fingers, and the soup fell upon
the pavement. The child threw itself on all fours, and began to
eat in the manner of a dog."--Vol. iii. p. 58.

And in another place he says, "Alas, this cry of hunger! it is
the eternal cry of Sicily; I have heard nothing else for three
months. There are miserable wretches, whose hunger has never
been appeased, from the day when, lying in their cradle, they
began to draw the milk from their exhausted mothers, to the
last hour when, stretched on their bed of death, they have
expired endeavouring to swallow the sacred host which the
priest had laid upon their lips. Horrible to think of! there
are human beings to whom, to have eaten once sufficiently,
would be a remembrance for all their lives to come."--Vol. iv.
p. 108.

Seeing there was no chance of bringing the doctor to the hotel, unless
he carried him there by main force, Mr Dumas contented himself with
relating the symptoms of his friend. To drink lemonade--much
lemonade--all the