fterwards it replenished
his purse in a time of need.

Their peaceful life in the chalet was now broken by a new and most
unexpected interruption. Mrs. Stevenson writes in her preface to _The
Dynamiter_:

"So quiet and secluded was our life here that we heard almost nothing
of the outside world except through an occasional English
correspondent. I remember before we knew that cholera was raging in
Toulon, only some three miles away, how we watched a cloud gathering
over the town, where it hung heavy and lowering, day after day. We
felt that it was somehow ominous, and were vaguely depressed. We were
told afterwards that at that very time great fires were burning in the
streets of Toulon by order of the mayor, and that the people gathered
at night around these fires capering fantastically in a pagan dance,
resurrected from the dark ages no one knew by whom or how."

To add to the alarm caused by the outbreak of the cholera, in the
first week in May Mr. Stevenson had a violent hemorrhage. "It occurred
late at night, but in a moment his wife was at his side. Being choked
by the flow of blood and unable to speak, he made signs to her for a
paper and pencil, and wrote in a firm neat hand, 'Don't be frightened.
If this is death it is an easy one.' Mrs. Stevenson had always a small
bottle of ergotin and a minim glass in readiness; these she brought
in order to administer the prescribed quantity. Seeing her alarm he
took bottle and glass away from her, measured the dose correctly with
a perfectly steady hand, and gave the things back to her with a
reassuring smile."[24] It was said that if his wife had not had
everything ready and known exactly what to do he could not have lived.
The clergyman came to pray with the supposed dying man, but, having
been warned against the least excitement, she refused him admittance.
In defense of her action she says: "I know Louis, and I know that he
tries always to so live that he may be ready to die." When Mr.
Stevenson heard that a clergyman had come to pray for him as a man in
danger of dying, he said: "Tell him to come and see me when I am
better and I will offer up a prayer for a clergyman in danger of
living." In a few days he rallied once more, but it was now realized
that chronic invalidism was to be his portion for the rest of his
days, and his wife wrote to her mother-in-law:

"The doctor says 'keep him alive until he is forty, and then, though a
winged bird, he may live to ninet