Klytia Part 15

Erastus and his medical colleagues urged the magistrate to stricter measures. All communication with the infested villages was forbidden, the University and schools were closed. The hospital was set aside especially for plague stricken patients, and everyone infected with this terrible sickness was carried thither. A violent thunderstorm which dispelled the evil vapors, aided by a high tide which cleared out the sewers enabled them to obtain the mastery. The Court returned to the Castle and Heidelberg resumed its usual aspect. But even after the disappearance of the epidemic, a victim died here and there of the disease from which they had imagined themselves now free. The cause lay in the continuation of the plague in the neighbouring villages, which in the anxiety to save the town had been neglected. Heart-rending were the accounts heard, but the exertions of the officials were limited to the provision of food, the strictest quarantine being maintained. He who wished to leave to render a.s.sistance, could only do so by promising not to return. Erastus finally managed to carry an order through, that the Magistrate and certain physicians should visit the various localities, bringing with them especially medicines, clean clothing, and linen. As the Magistrate fell ill on the day appointed Erastus placed himself at the head of the Commission to see what might be done to abate the evil. Ten of the hospital laborers accompanied them with spades and axes in a second cart. A third cart was loaded with wine, food, lime, and other disinfectants. The physicians found the nearest village still as if all were dead. All the roads leading from the mountains were barricaded and the peasantry armed with hallebards and weapons mounted guard to prevent the entry of the inhabitants of the valleys. The Commissioners were only permitted to pa.s.s their carts through with the greatest difficulty, and in spite of the mandate given by the Kurfurst, the peasants declared they would not suffer one of the gentlemen to return that way, as the plague did not seem to trouble itself about princely mandates. They continued on their way through this still valley of death. Here and there a stray beast browsed on the green pastures. The houses of the peasantry above seemed to be abandoned. The Commissioners entered one. A hen seeking for grain in the empty court was the only living being. The doors were broken in, the shutters burst out. Objects which plunderers had not been able to carry off lay scattered on the floor in wild confusion. Further on they found a dead body lying at a little distance from one of the roads to the fields. Where death had overtaken him, there lay the miserable being. The physicians gazed in horror at the wild distorted features of the corpse. "Death caused by the bite of a poisonous viper, or a rabid blood-hound appears in the form of an angel of peace as compared with that effected by the plague," said Erastus. In the next farm they saw a peasant sitting before his door on a bundle of straw. His face was flaming from the inner heat, the eyes gleamed feverishly, he shaded them continually with his hands to avoid the light. "Why do you sit here, instead of being in bed?" asked Erastus.

"I have no one who will bring me water."

"Where are your laborers?"

"Gone."

"Your wife?"

"Dead."

"Have you no one to help you?"

"All are dead."

Erastus fastened the spunge dipped in vinegar once more to his mouth, and entered the dwelling with his colleagues who took the like precautions. The windows were still fastened up, as there was nothing the patient hated so much as light. The commissioners hastily threw them open, so as to dispel by a draught of fresh air the horrible odors. The sunlight disclosed a neatly ordered clean room. The evening meal still stood on the table, a proof, of how quickly the horrible pestilence had seized the various members of the family at the same moment. A child's catechism and slate lay near the window ready for the morning school. A wild confusion was however disclosed in the adjoining rooms. The floors were strewn with rags, bandages, and straw, which proved how terrible the ravages of the plague had been. Two dead children lay in the same bed convulsively grasping each other. On another bed was seen the body of a woman, to which still clung a child, whose waxy little hand hung stiff outside the bed. Erastus himself set to work and with the aid of his a.s.sistants carried the bodies outside.

The neighboring houses presented the same appearance. The more distant farmyards had all been plundered. The healthy occupants had taken to flight, the plague-stricken had gathered together in the villages, where the houses were nearer at hand, and where they might possibly render each other a little help. All round were heard sighs, shouts of delirium, and the death-rattle. Convalescents and those who were not so heavily afflicted by the infection moved about weakly and stupefied with fever rendering only the most necessary a.s.sistance. They brought the bread which had been deposited at a certain place outside the boundary line, into the village, milked the cows, kept up the fires, and buried the dead when capable of doing so.

"Where is the Mayor?" asked Erastus.

"Dead," answered a miserable looking knot of women, around whose necks hung some wretched infants.

"The clergyman?"

"His wife fell ill, he therefore hurried away with his family."

"The schoolmaster?"

"He went off with the clergyman."

"Who looks after you then?"

"No one."

Under these circ.u.mstances it was arranged that the physicians and workmen should remain there for a time, dig a grave for the dead, disinfect the houses, and give out medicines and clothes. Erastus however and others would go on to Schonau to see what might be done there. A solitary path in the woods led over the brow of the hill to the village. The farms lying high above on the slopes of the wood had mostly escaped the infection, they were however strictly barricaded, and the inhabitants repelled with hard words any attempt at approach.

The first houses in the village they came to, were tightly fastened up, though traces of violence were however not to be perceived. Then they entered the little town, which in course of time had been built around the old abbey. Everything was quiet, but a better order seemed to prevail. Windows were open to admit the fresh air, the sick lay in clean beds, and near them stood a pitcher of water. The rooms were tidy. Pale children went to and fro to help the sufferers. Erastus entered one of the houses, to make some inquiries of a woman who seemed to be on the way towards recovery. He praised the means taken and asked if they were satisfied with their physician.

"We have no physician, none will come to us."

"Who taught you then to air the houses, and apply wet cloths to the head?"

"The clergyman from Heidelberg."

"Who is he?"

The woman shrugged her shoulders and turned her face to the wall. He saw that she did not wish to be disturbed. Outside he met some young men filling buckets with water.

"For whom is the water?" asked Erastus.

"For the sick in the Church."

"Have you turned the Church into an hospital?"

"Yes."

"Who ordered it?"

"The Heidelberg clergyman."

"Where is the Mayor?"

"Gone."

"And the parson of Schonau?"

"Dead."

"And the schoolmaster?"

"Gone."

"Who is it then keeps order?"

"The Heidelberg clergyman."

Erastus became interested in finding out the man, who by his own exertions had worked the miracle, of mustering together a strange parish, and so organizing it that nothing was left for his Commission to do. He entered the large roman church, whose wide spanned aisles had been transformed into well aired cool wards. A long row of patients lay near the walls on beds of straw covered with blankets. The hideous disease showed even here its true character; there were faces who bore the stamp of death, and others distorted grimly by their sufferings, delirious patients who raged, laughed insanely and raved, convalescents who lay stretched out weak and helpless on their beds, many of them wis.h.i.+ng that the end of their sufferings might overtake them. But they were all thoroughly cared for, they lay protected from the painful light; in spite of the number of the sufferers the air was pure and continually renewed, without the patients suffering from the draughts.

Women moved quietly and lightly hither and thither and provided for all their necessities. The skilled look of the physician took in with satisfaction the picture thus presented to him. He saw a priest kneeling in a dark corner of the Church near a dying man. He heard prayers spoken in low tones, he saw the Catholic sign of the cross made by the priest over the dying man, and could not help shaking his head.

"Who can that be?" he thought.

The priest rose, a tall thin figure. "Magister Laurenzano!" cried Erastus in his astonishment. Paul had also recognized Erastus. He approached him in a constrained manner. Then he said "Heaven has sent you to us, Sir Counsellor! It was indeed time that the government should remember us. Please to come with me to the Cloister. Twice did I wish to send in letters and messages, for what we needed, but neither letters nor messengers were allowed in through cowardly fear of infection. Come, come, at last help has reached us."

The look of this young man, who, utterly regardless of his own safety, waited on the sick without using any antidotes against infection, so shamed Erastus, that he secretly placed his vinegared spunge in his pocket, and accompanied Laurenzano to the abandoned monastery which had likewise been turned into an hospital. The young Priest set before Erastus in the high vaulted Refectorium a beaker of wine, and pointing to long rows of bottles and gla.s.ses said, "Here are my head-quarters."

Erastus joined to his expression of admiration for Paolo's self-denying energy, a few strong remarks on the baseness of the officials who had run away, on the heartlessness of members of families who had left, and on the sordidness of the population.

"Do not say that, Sir," answered Paul, and a gentle tone of sympathy lay in his fine, deep voice. "I have in these days of struggle learnt, on the contrary, that more love exists among us, than I formerly used to think. I have seen proofs of self-sacrifice, which made my heart melt, not only from the mother to her children, or the daughter to her father. Go over there and see these delicate pale women, still for the most part suffering from the fever, who nevertheless indefatigably listen for every impatient groan uttered by the sick."

Erastus interrupted him with an account of how he had found matters in Petersthal.

"Thus was it here also," replied Paolo, "but who is to blame for this state of things? The Prince's government, no one else. The people only needed guiding. Out of shere despair they raged against one another.

But it was sufficient, in order to restore confidence among them, merely to tell them that they could help each other, and the apparent coa.r.s.eness and selfishness gave way to the uttermost self-sacrifice and generosity. Since everything has been organized, since each one knows that he will be found a fitting position for his energies and that he is necessary and indispensable, the people have developed a conscientiousness and faithfulness, which have quite astonished me. I have learnt to think better of your people, since I have led them against this most terrible enemy, than before, when I only saw occasionally the youth of Schonau lounging on Sundays along the country roads."

"But how did you manage to bring about this miracle?" asked Erastus.

Paul smiled but did not answer this question. "Unfortunately we are in want of many necessaries," said he. "Our vinegar is all consumed, all sweat-exciting herbs have been plucked from the mountains; we want lime to spread over the corpses and render the exhalations innocuous. We have now to make large fires, and these are costly and take up time."

"You can have all these things from me," replied the physician. "Here is a list I have made of all the things which we bring you," and he pulled a paper out of his pocket. Paul cast a look at it, then stared fixedly with a look of sudden horror at the handwriting. "Did you write this yourself?" he asked in a tone, as if life and death were depending on the answer.

"Certainly, why do you ask." The priest's hand trembled. "Is that your handwriting?" repeated Paul looking anxiously towards Erastus. The physician did not understand what the priest meant. Convulsively did the young man compose himself. "I will mark out what we require,"

murmured he absently and left the room in evident confusion. Erastus looked after the strange young man with a shake of the head; he had expected that Paul would have rejoiced at receiving the articles, which he gave gratuitously to the patients.