Down the Rue de la Bourse, wherein the women of la Châine had passed the latter part of the night, the rays of the sun began to stream horizontally as it rose far away over the Mediterranean and lit up the side of the street in which stood the house where the weary creatures lay.
A month before this period daybreak would have dawned upon a vastly different scene from the one of lifeless desolation to which it now brought light and warmth. The great warehouses at the back of the merchants' residences--in which position most of those buildings in Marseilles were situated--would have already begun to teem with human life; with bands of sailors coming up from the harbour, either bringing, or with the intention of carrying away, bales of goods and merchandise; workmen, mechanics, clerks, and employés of every kind would have been passing up the street to their early work. Now, the Rue de la Bourse, like scores of other streets in the City, was absolutely deserted or only tenanted at various spots by the dead--human and animal!--who lay about where they had fallen--on doorsteps, in porches and stoops, sometimes even in the very middle of the road.
On such a scene as this Marion gazed as she looked forth from the room she and Laure had slept in; her mind full of sorrow and perplexity--not for herself nor on her own account, but on that of the other unhappy one over whom she watched. For herself she cared not--she knew that her past, and the consequences resulting from the actions of that past, had shut the door for ever against any sweetness of existence for her in the future, nor was she much concerned as to whether the pestilence slew her or not. Only--she had sworn to stand by Laure until the end; therefore she knew that now, at this present time and for some weeks or months at least, she must live, she must take care of her own health if she would do what she had vowed to perform. Afterwards, if she should see Laure spared by the hideous scourge which now ravaged the place they had arrived at, spared to be in some manner restored to the husband she had come at last to love--then it mattered little what became of her. But she must live to see that!
Marion went over to the girl now and once more gazed at her, observing that she was sleeping calmly and easily; then she returned to the window and continued her glances up and down the street. She was watching for those who, as the convict had said, would come for them soon after daybreak to lead them away to where their services would be needed as nurses and helpers, and she wished to be on the alert to prevent them from troubling Laure. She meant at once to tell them--her teeming brain never being at a loss for an expedient!--that the girl was ill or, at least, too weak to take any part in the proceedings for which they might all be required on that day, and to beg her off. She determined also that, whether the request was granted cheerfully or not, Laure should rest for the next twenty-four hours. Her confidence in her own powers and strength failed her no more now than they had ever failed her in the most violent crises of her life--she was resolved that what she desired should be accomplished.
Presently she saw them coming--or, rather, saw coming up the street a band of men and women who, she could not doubt, were a party of nurses and "crows," as the males were termed who attended to the work of removing the dead and, if possible, to the disposing of them elsewhere, namely, in the vaults of churches, the hollow walls of the ramparts, and, in some cases, in old boats and decayed vessels which were taken out to sea and there sunk. Whereon she went swiftly down the stairs to the door to meet them.
Among this body of persons which now drew near she saw her acquaintance of last night, the convict, who at once greeted her in his strong Breton accent, he being, as he had told her at their first meeting, a native of that province.
"Bon jour, Madame," he now cried with an attempt at cheerfulness,--poor wretch! he had made some sort of compact with himself that nothing should depress him, nor any horrors by which he was surrounded frighten him, while forcing himself to regard his impending liberty as a certainty which no pestilence must be allowed to deprive him of. "Bon jour, Madame. And how is the young one?"
"She is not well," Marion answered, while glad, in a way, that she so soon had an opportunity given her of declaring that Laure could not go nursing that day; "also, she must rest." Then she regarded the members of the group accompanying the man, while observing who and what they were.
Two were monks; good, holy men, who, working cheerfully under the orders of the bishop (as dozens of their brethren were doing in other parts of Marseilles) were now acting as doctors, since--horrible to relate--there was not one physician or surgeon now left either alive or unstricken. In the beginning of the pestilence, the doctors of Marseilles had scoffed at the disease being the plague; they had called it nothing but a trifling malady, and, unhappily both for them and all in the city, they had suffered for their obstinacy or, rather, incredulity. They had been amongst the very first to break down under the attacks of the loathsome fever which they had refused to recognise. Consequently, the work which they should still have been able to do had to be done by amateurs--such as these monks--or the surgeons of the galleys, or any stranger in the city who understood medicine and its uses, and was willing to risk his life in administering it.
Of the others who formed the group some were "crows," as has been said, while there were five women, three of them being under sentence for life at the travaux forcés, yet now with a fair prospect of freedom before them should they perform faithfully all that was demanded of them at this awful crisis, and--also--preserve their lives! Of the other two, one was an elderly lady whose whole existence had been devoted to good works, she even having voyaged as far as Siam with the missionaries sent out there; the second was a young and beautiful woman of high position among the merchant families of the place, who had broken her father's heart by her loose conduct and was now endeavouring to soothe her own remorse by self-sacrifice.