La Vérette.
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here.' I said :—' No, no !'—and I said, in order to be able to get away :—' G o up there !—you will see a fine ball : all pasteboard people dancing there, and a pasteboard commandeur commanding t h e m ! ' . . . And then I got so frightened that I awoke." . . . . . . " A n d why were you so afraid of them, M i m i ? " I ask. —"Pace yo té toutt vide endedans !" answers Mimi. (Be-
cause they were all hollow inside /) X
X
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March 19th.
. . . T H E death-rate in St. Pierre is now between three hundred and fifty and four hundred a month. Our street is being depopulated. Every day men come with immense stretchers,—covered with a sort of canvas awning,—to take somebody away to the lazaretto. At brief intervals, also, coffins are carried into houses empty, and carried out again followed by women who cry so loud that their sobbing can be heard a great way off. . . . Before the visitation few quarters were so densely peopled : there were living often in one small house as many as fifty. T h e poorer classes had been accustomed from birth to live as simply as animals,—wearing scarcely any clothing, sleeping on bare floors, exposing themselves to all changes of weather, eating the cheapest and coarsest food. Yet, though living under such adverse conditions, no healthier people could be found, perhaps, in the world,—nor a more cleanly. Every yard having its fountain, almost everybody could bathe daily,— and with hundreds it was the custom to enter the river every morning at daybreak, or to take a swim in the bay (the young women here swim as well as the men). . . . But the pestilence, entering among so dense and unprotected a life, made extraordinarily rapid havoc ; and bodily cleanliness availed little against the contagion. Now all