It was a terrible time, with many occasions of suspense more harrowing than that. Our other children were getting on, yet still needed vigilant care; the Baron was to be let out of his room in a day or two, but my fat neighbor had come down with the disease, while his wife still lay between life and death—how they finally got well, I have never quite made out, they were so badly nursed—and all about us were new cases, and cases beyond hope, and retarded recoveries, and relapses, and funerals, and nurses too few, and ice scarce, and everybody worn out with watching— physicians compelled to limit themselves to just so many cases at a time, to avoid utterly breaking down.
As I was in my fat neighbor's sick chamber one evening, giving his nurse a respite, word came that Fontenette was at my gate. I went to him with misgivings that only increased as we greeted. He was dejected and agitated. His grasp was damp and cold.
"It cou'n' stay from me always," he said in an anguished voice, and I cried in my soul, "She's told him!"
But she had not. I asked him what his bad news was that had come at last, but his only reply was,
"Can you take him? Can you take him out of my house—to-night—this evening—now?"
"Who, the Baron? Why, certainly, if you desire it?" I responded; wondering if the entomologist, by some slip, had betrayed her. There was an awe in my visitor's eyes that was almost fright.
"Fontenette," I exclaimed, "what have you heard—what have you done?"
"My frien', 'tis not what I 'ave heard, neitheh what I 'ave done; 'tis what I 'ave got."
"Got? Why, you've got nothing, you Creole of the Creoles. Your skin's as cool as mine."
"Feel my pulse," he said. I felt it. It wasn't less than a hundred and fifty.