The visitation of 1832.
Morbus, out of gratitude, came running up, and they fell dead under the table. The children played at cholera, calling it "Nicholas Morbus" and "Morbus the Rascal." And yet the cholera had its terrible side: the brilliant sunshine, the indifference of the crowd, the ordinary course of life, which was continued everywhere, gave a new character and a different sort of frightfulness to those days of pestilence. You felt uncomfortable in every limb; you were parched by a cold, dry north wind; the atmosphere had a certain metallic flavour which hurt the throat. In the Rue du Cherche-Midi, wagons of the artillery-depot were used to cart away the dead bodies. In the Rue de Sèvres, which was completely devastated, especially on one side, the hearses came and went from door to door; there were not enough of them to satisfy the demand; a voice would shout from the window:
"Here, hearse, this way!"
The driver answered that he was full up and could not attend to everybody. One of my friends, M. Pouqueville, on his way to dine at my house on Easter Sunday, was stopped at the Boulevard du Mont-Parnasse by a succession of biers, nearly all of which were carried by bearers. He saw, in this procession, the coffin of a young girl, on which was laid a wreath of white roses. A smell of chlorine spread a tainted atmosphere in the wake of this floral ambulance.
On the Place de la Bourse, where processions of workmen used to meet, singing the Parisienne, one often saw funerals pass by towards the Montmartre Cemetery as late as eleven o'clock at night, by the light of pitch torches. The Pont-Neuf was blocked with litters laden with patients for the hospitals or dead who had expired on the road. The toll ceased for some days on the Pont des Arts. The booths disappeared and, as the north-east wind was blowing, all the stall-holders and all the shopkeepers on the quays closed their doors. One met tilted conveyances preceded by a "crow," or mute, with a registrar of births, deaths and marriages walking in front, dressed in mourning, and carrying a list in his hand. There was a dearth of these tabellions, or registrars; they had to send for more from Saint-Germain, the Villette, Saint-Cloud. For the rest, the hearses were piled up with five or six coffins, kept in place with ropes. Omnibuses and hackney-coaches were employed for the same purpose: it was not uncommon to see a cab adorned with a dead body stretched across the apron. A few of the dead were laid out in the churches: a priest sprinkled holy water over those collected faithful of Eternity.
In Athens, the people believed that the wells near the Piræus had been poisoned; in Paris, the tradesmen were accused of poisoning their wine, spirits, sugar-plums and provisions. Several individuals had their clothes torn from their backs, were dragged in the gutter, flung into the Seine. The authorities were to blame for these stupid or guilty opinions.
How did the scourge, like an electric spark, pass from London to Paris? It cannot be explained. This fantastic death often fixes on a spot of the ground, on a house, and leaves the neighbourhood of that infested spot untouched; then it retraces its steps and picks up what it has forgotten. One night, I felt myself attacked: I was seized with a shivering, together with cramp in my legs; I did not want to ring, for fear of frightening Madame de Chateaubriand. I got up; I heaped all I could find in my room on the bed, got back under the blankets, and a copious perspiration pulled me through. But I remained shattered, and it was in this condition of discomfort that I was obliged to write my pamphlet on the 12,000 francs of Madame la Duchesse de Berry.
The 12,000 francs of Madame.
I should not have been too sorry to go, carried off under the arm of the eldest son of Vishnu, whose distant glance killed Bonaparte upon his rock at the entrance to the Indian Sea. If all mankind, stricken with this general contagion, came to die, what would happen? Nothing: the world, depopulated, would continue its solitary course, without need of any other astronomer to count its steps than Him who has measured them from all eternity; it would present no change to the eyes of the inhabitants of the other planets; they would see it fulfilling its accustomed functions; upon its surface, our little works, our cities, our monuments would be replaced by forests restored to the sovereignty of the lions; no void would manifest itself in the universe. And nevertheless there would be lacking that human intelligence which knows the stars and rises to a knowledge of their Author. What art thou then, O immensity of the works of God, in which, if the genius of man, which is equal to the whole of nature, came to disappear, it would be no more missed than the smallest atom withdrawn from Creation?
Paris, Rue d'Enfer, May 1832.