A Residence in France: With an Excursion Up the Rhine, and a Second Visit to Switzerland — John Shaqi
A Residence in France: With an Excursion Up the Rhine, and a Second Visit to SwitzerlandCooper, James Fenimore
History
A Residence in France: With an Excursion Up the Rhine, and a Second Visit to Switzerland
Cooper, James Fenimore
France -- Description and travel; Germany -- Description and travel; Switzerland -- Description and travel
Notwithstanding the horror of the disease, some of the more prominent
traits of national character have shown themselves lately. Among other
things, the artists have taken to caricaturing the cholera! One gets to
be so hardened by exposure, as to be able to laugh at even these proofs
of moral obtuseness. Odd enough traits of character are developed by
seeing men under such trying circumstances. During one of the worst
periods of the disease, I met a countryman in the street, who, though
otherwise a clever man, has the weakness to think the democracy of
America its greatest blot. I asked him why he remained in Paris, having
no family, nor any sufficient inducement? "Oh," said he, "it is a
disease that only kills the rabble: I feel no concern--do you?" I told
him that, under my peculiar circumstances, I felt a great deal of
uneasiness, though not enough to make an unreflecting flight. A few days
afterwards I missed him, and, on inquiry, learned that he had fled. Some
_nobleman_ had died in our faubourg, when he and one of a fellow
feeling, finding a taint "between the wind and their nobility,"
forthwith beat a retreat!
During the height of the malady, an old English general officer, who had
served in India, and who was now residing near us, sent me an invitation
to dinner. Tired of seeing no one, I went. Here everything was as
tranquil as if we were living in the purest atmosphere in Europe. Sir
----, my host, observed that he had got seasoned in India, and that he
believed _good living_ one of the best preventives against the disease.
The Count de ---- came in just before dinner was announced, and
whispered to me that some twelve or fifteen hundred had been buried the
previous day, although less than a thousand had been reported. This
gentleman told a queer anecdote, which he said came from very
respectable authority, and which he gave as he had heard it. About ten
days before the cholera appeared, a friend of his had accompanied one of
the Polish generals, who are now in Paris, a short distance into the
country to dine. On quitting the house, the Pole stopped to gaze
intently at the horizon. His companion inquired what he saw, when,
pointing to a hazy appearance in the atmosphere, of rather an unusual
kind, the other said, "You will have the cholera here in less than ten
days; such appearances always preceded it in the North." As M. de ----
observed, "I tell it as I heard it."
Sir ---- did me the favour, on that occasion, to introduce me to a mild
gentleman-like old man, who greatly resembled one of the quiet old
school of our own, which is so fast disappearing before the bustling,
fussy, money-getting race of the day. It was Lord Robert Fitzgerald, a
brother of the unfortunate Lord Edward, and the brother of whom he so
pleasantly speaks in his natural and amiable letters, as "Plenipo Bob."
This gentleman is since dead, having, as I hear, fallen a victim to the
cholera.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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