caping the quarantine, I had thought little of this scourge, until the
subject was introduced at my own table by a medical man who was among
the guests. He cautiously informed us that there were unpleasant
conjectures among the faculty on the subject, and that he was fearful
Paris was not to go unscathed. When apart, he privately added, that he
had actually seen a case, which he could impute to no other disease but
that of Asiatic cholera.

The next day a few dark hints were given in the journals, and, with
frightful rapidity, reports followed that raised the daily deaths to
near a thousand. The change in the appearance of the town was magical,
for the strangers generally fled, while most of the _habitues_ of the
streets in our immediate vicinity were soon numbered with the dead.
There was a succession of apple-women seated at the corners, between the
Rue St. Dominique and the Pont Royal, with whose faces I had become
intimate in the course of P----'s traffic, as we passed to and fro,
between the hotel and the Tuileries. Every one of these disappeared; the
last, I was told, dropping from her chair, and dying before those who
came to her aid had reached the nearest hospital.

One case, among multitudes, will serve to give you a faint idea of the
situation of Paris, at this moment of severe affliction. Returning from
a walk through the deserted streets one morning, I saw a small
collection of people around the _porte-cochere_ of our hotel. A
matchseller had been seized with the disease, at the gate, and was then
sustained on one of the stone seats, which are commonly used by the
servants. I had her carried info the court, and made such applications
as had been recommended by the faculty. The patient was a robust woman
of middle age, accompanied by her mother, both having come in from a
distant village, to raise a few sous by selling matches. In making the
applications, I had occasion to observe the means by which these poor
people sustain life. Their food consisted of fragments of hard dried
bread, that had been begged, or bought, in the course of their progress.

While two or three of us were busied about the daughter, the mother
knelt on the pavement, and, with streaming eyes, prayed for her child,
for us, and for herself. There was something indescribably touching in
this display of strong natural ties, between those who were plunged so
deep in misery. A piece of five francs was put into the hands of the old
woman, b