But the struggle even of youth and strength against the most baneful of all diseases could not last for ever—The patient expired in the arms of his devoted mistress; and as he breathed his last, bequeathed to her at once his dying smile, and the foul poison which was coursing through his veins. She saw him laid in his narrow grave; and then she turned away with the conviction that she, too, was plague-smitten!
She did not return to her home: but she stood a few paces from one of the companions of her youth, and bade her bear to her aged parents her blessing and her prayers: and this done she fled to the mountains, and sought out a solitary spot wherein to die—None knew how long she lingered, for she was never seen again in life; but her body was found a few days afterwards beneath a ledge of earth, in a doubled-up position, as though the last spasm had been a bitter one.
She who had sacrificed herself to smooth the last hours of him whom she had loved, perished alone, miserably, in the wild solitude of the Asian hills; and her almost Roman virtue has met with no other record than the brief one in which I have here attempted to perpetuate the memory of her devotion and her fate.
It seems as though men apprehended contagion in the very name of the plague, for they have adopted terms that render its repetition needless. Should you inquire for a family which has become compromised, you are told that “they are gone to the mountains,” and you understand at once that they are infected; and when numbers are daily dying about you, in reply to your desire to learn the amount of the evil, you are answered that there are so many, or so many “accidents.”
Every respectable house, and every public establishment, has in its court, or its outer hall, a small wooden erection, precisely like a sentry box raised on rollers, into which you are obliged to enter during a period of plague, before you are admitted into the interior of the building; and where you stand upon a latticed flooring, while aromatic herbs are burnt beneath, whose dense and heavy vapour soon envelops you in a thick smoke, which is said to prevent contagion.
Every competent authority declares the disease to be propagated by contact; and it is singular to see the care with which every individual passing along the public streets avoids all collision with his fellow-passengers. The lower order of Turks are the greatest sufferers from the plague, in consequence of the filthy personal habits of the men employed as street-porters and labourers; their law only requiring them to wash their hands and feet before entering their mosques, or repeating their prayers; while I have good authority for stating that this class of individuals purchase an inner garment of dark and coarse material, which they retain day and night without removing it, until it falls to pieces.
If filth be a plague-conductor, it is not, consequently, surprising, that great numbers of these persons are invariably carried off during the year; and the same cause doubtlessly accounts for the excessive mortality among the Jews; who frequently increase the spread of the evil by possessing themselves of the garments of the plague-victims, which they buy secretly from the relatives; reckless, in the event of a good bargain, of the fatal consequences which may ensue alike to themselves and to others.
This may appear to be an excess of madness almost incredible; but it is, nevertheless, an incontrovertible fact.
I know not whether it be a common occurrence for vultures to haunt the environs of the city during the prevalence of plague, but it is certain that we never saw one until its commencement; and that before we left they were to be met with in numbers, in the very centre of the shipping, preying upon the offal that had been flung into the port, or winging their heavy flight along the mountains, as though scenting their revolting banquet.
There is, to me, something frightful in the terror with which, in a season of virulent pestilence, each individual avoids all human contact, and looks upon his best friends as vehicles of destruction.—In the shrinking of relatives from each other, and the unwonted selfishness of usually free and generous spirits. Nor is the sensation a comfortable one, with which you remember that you are yourself considered as infected, and treated with distrust accordingly; and in moments of depression find yourself speculating in your own mind the probability of the fear being well-grounded. Does your head ache?—It is a symptom of plague—Are you sick and faint from heat?—It is even thus that the pestilence frequently declares itself in the first instance—If you take cold upon the Bosphorus, you have laid the corner-stone of the malady—and over-fatigue may induce the exhaustion which lends strength to the incipient evil. It is impossible to describe the effect of this continual necessity for caution: but even this is trifling beside the constant dread of contact with infection. It is vain to affect a mad courage leading you to set at defiance these accumulated dangers; there are moments when an unconquerable dread will creep over the heart, and sicken the spirit.