A footman came into the room.
“Your excellency, the carpenter will not carry the coffin into the chamber where the countesses are lying, and no one will venture into it.”
“Not you, either, coward?”
“I could not alone.”
“Then I will help you. I will myself see to my daughters;” and he strode to the door.
“Back,” he cried to me, as I was following him; “you must not go with me. You must not die as well as me—think of your child.”
What could I do? I hesitated. That is the most torturing thing in such circumstances—not to know at all where one’s duty lies. If one pays to the sick and the dead the loving service which one’s heart yearns to do, then one spreads the germs of the evil wider again, and brings danger on the others who have as yet been spared. One would be willing to sacrifice oneself; but one knows that in risking this one risks sacrificing others also.
In such a dilemma there is only one helpful way—to give up life, not one’s own merely, but also that of all one’s dear ones—to assume that all is done with, and for each one to stand by the other in his hours of suffering, as long as they last. Looking backward, looking forward—all that must cease. Together! On the deck of a sinking ship, no means of escape—“let us hold each other in our arms—close, close as possible, to the last moment; and adieu, fair world.”
This resignation had come over us all. The plan of flight had been given up; every one went to the bed of every patient, and of every one who had died. Even Bresser no longer tried to keep us from this, the only humane way of acting. His neighbourhood, his energetic, unresting rule gave us a certain feeling of security. Our sinking ship was at least not without a captain.
Oh that cholera week in Grumitz! Over twenty years have passed since then, but I still feel a shudder through my bones and marrow when I think of it. Tears, wailing, heart-rending death-scenes, the smell of carbolic acid, the cracking of the bones of those seized with cramp, the disgusting symptoms, the incessant tolling of the death-bell, the interment—no, the huddling away—of the dead, for in such cases there is no funeral pomp. All the order of life given up; no meal times—the cook was dead. No going to sleep at nights. Here and there a morsel snatched standing, and a doze as one sat in one’s chair in the morning hours. Outside, as though from the irony of indifferent Nature, the most splendid summer weather; the joyous song of the blackbird, the luxuriant colours of the flower-beds. In the village, death without cessation. All the Prussians who were left behind were dead.