It was horrible to see my poor sister’s sufferings. And no doctor at hand! Frederick was the only one who could perform the duty of one, as well as he might. He ordered what was wanted—warm fomentations, mustard poultices to the stomach and the legs, ice in fragments, champagne. Nothing did any good. These means, which are sufficient for slight attacks of cholera, could not save in this case. But at least they gave the patient and the bystanders the comfort of knowing that something was being done. When the attacks had subsided, the cramps followed, quiverings and tearings of the whole frame till the very bones cracked. The poor thing tried to lament, but could not, for her voice failed, the skin turned blue and cold, the breath stopped.
My father was running up and down, wringing his hands. Once I put myself in his way.
“This is war, father,” I said. “Will not you curse it?”
He shook me off and gave no reply.
In ten hours Lilly was dead. Netty, my poor lady’s maid had died before—alone, in her room. We were all of us busy about Lilly, and of the servants, none had ventured to go near one who had “already turned quite black”.
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Meanwhile Dr. Bresser had arrived. He himself brought the medicines which we had telegraphed for. I could have kissed his hands as he walked into the midst of us to devote his self-sacrificing services to his old friends. He at once took on himself the command of the establishment. He had the two corpses carried into a remote chamber, barred up the rooms in which the poor things had died, and made us all submit to a powerful disinfecting process. An intense carbolic odour now penetrated all the rooms, and to this day, whenever this smell meets me, those dreadful days of cholera rise before my imagination.
The intended flight had to be postponed a second time. On the very day of Lilly’s death, the carriage was standing ready which was to convey away Aunt Mary, Rosa, Otto, and my little boy, when the coachman, seized by the invisible destroyer, was forced to get off the coach-box again.
“Then I will drive you,” said my father, when the news was brought to him. “Quick, is everything ready?”
Rosa came out. “Drive on,” she said, “but I must stop behind. I am going Lilly’s way.”