“Netty is lying down in her room. She is—she has—she is——”
“Well, can’t you speak?” thundered my father. “What is the matter with her?”
“She is already—quite black.”
A cry burst out of all our mouths. So the horrible spectre was already present in our own very house.
Now, what should we do? Could one leave the poor girl to die unaided? But whoever went near her brought death on himself almost certainly, and not only on himself, he spread it again more widely among the rest. Ah! a house like that, into which the pest has penetrated, is like one encircled by robbers, or as if it were in flames; everywhere and in every corner and place, at every step and move, Death is grinning at you.
“Fetch the doctor immediately,” was my father’s order. “And you, children, hurry your departure.”
“The doctor went back to town an hour ago,” was the servant’s reply to my father’s direction.
“Oh, dear! I feel so ill,” now cried Lilly, and she turned pale to her very lips, and clutched at the arm of her chair.
We ran to her: “What is the matter with you?”—“Don’t be foolish”—“It is only fear”.
But it was not fear, there was no doubt what it was. We had to carry the poor thing to her room, where she was seized at once with violent vomiting and the other symptoms. This was the second case of cholera in the château in this same day.