If death levels all, so, too, had the pest in this desolated city plunged into strange companionship persons who, in other days, would never have been brought together. Hard by this bedizened woman was another, a woman of the people--perhaps a beggar, or a work girl, or a washer-woman at the best--who screamed and wailed over a dead babe lying in her lap. At her side was an old man, well clad and handsomely belaced, who shrieked forth offers of pistoles and louis' to any who would ease him of his pain, and then suddenly paused to call to him a dog hard by, to utter endearing words to it, and to endeavour to persuade it to draw near to him and quit the spot on which it lay writhing. A beggar, too! an awful thing of rags and patches! sat gibbering near them, and held out a can into which a monk passing by poured some soup, as he did into many others--yet, no sooner had the man put the stuff to his mouth than he hurled away the can, shrieking that the broth burned him to the vitals.
"This is the end," muttered Marion to herself, her dark eyes roving over all and seeing all as the women passed along--themselves now hideous in their vinegar-steeped wrappings--"the end of our journey!" Then she glanced down, frightened, at Laure, to see if she had heard her words. And she observed that this woman of gentler nature was walking by her side with her eyes closed, while supported and guided only by her own tender arm. The sight was too awful for Laure to gaze upon.
The alley led into a street called La Rue de la Bourse, a broad and stately one, full of large commodious houses such as the merchants of Marseilles had been accustomed to inhabit for some centuries. Now, it was deserted by all living things, while, at the same time, the dead lay in the streets as thick as autumn leaves. Huddled together they lay; some with their faces horribly distorted, some almost placid as though they had died in their sleep, some with their heads broken in! These were the people who had leapt from their windows in a frenzy of delirium or in an agony of pain; or, being dead, had been flung forth from those windows by the convicts and galley-slaves who had been sent into the houses to free them from the poisonous bodies of those who had expired.
Marion noticed, too, that the still living were driven off the thresholds of some houses to which they clung--one man, who looked like the master of the abode, was pouring cold water from a bucket down the steps, so that none would be likely to lie there. And, next, she heard a piteous dialogue between two others.
"It is my own house--my own house!" a man, writhing in a porch close to where she was, gasped to another who parleyed with him from a door open about half a foot. "Oh, my son! my son! let me die here on my own doorstep, if I may not enter."
Then the son answered, his tones being muffled by the aromatic bandages around his face:
"My father, it cannot be. Not because I am cruel to you, but because I must be kind to others still unstruck. Your wife and mine, also myself and my babes, are still free from the fever. Would you slay all, yet with no avail to yourself? My father, think of us," and he shut the door gently on the man while beseeching him once again to begone and to carry the contagion he bore about him far away from the house which contained all that should be dear to him.
"Brute!" cried Marion, hearing all this. "Brute! Animal!"
Then, because of her warm, impetuous Southern nature, she hurled more than one curse up at the window from which she saw the son's white face looking forth by now.
"Nay, nay," murmured the dying old man, while understanding. "Nay, curse him not, good woman. He speaks well. Why should I poison them? And--I am old, very old. I must have died soon in any hap. It matters not."