“What do you mean?”
“Have you not heard about the plague?”
“The plague?”
“The smallpox,” she said intensely. “They say it will be bad in Provence this winter. They wish to keep it from the towns. I was told, at my inn, that they suspected it among the players, and had ordered them away suddenly.”
“Well?” questioned Luc keenly.
Carola pointed her whip towards the corner of the field where the solitary tent stood.
“The crying comes from there,” she said. “They have left somebody behind.”
“Ah!” cried Luc, “some one infected—some one ill!”
“I think so—at least it is possible.”
Luc had heard of such things often enough. The smallpox was the dread and the scourge of the country; his father had earned recognition from the Court by his heroic fight with an epidemic in Aix many years ago. Luc had heard him speak of how the sick and dying had been cast out by their own kin.