The low black carriage was passing along, covered by its round hood and drawn by a brown horse, like an omen of death wandering through the country on this sinister day. Suddenly, it pulled up, the Doctor's head made its appearance, and he called out: "Here." I went towards him, and he said:-- "Will you help me to nurse a case of diphtheria? I am all alone, and I want someone to hold the woman, while I take out the false membrane from her throat." "I'll come with you," I replied, and I got into his carriage. He told me the following story:-- Diphtheria, terrible diphtheria that suffocates unhappy creatures, had made its appearance at poor Martinet's farm. Both the father and son, had died at the beginning of the week. The mother and daughter, were now in their turn dying. A neighbour who attended to them, feeling suddenly unwell, had taken flight the day before, leaving the door wide open, and abandoning the two sick people on their straw pallets, alone, without anything to drink, choking, suffocating, dying; alone, for the last twenty four-hours! The doctor had cleaned out the mother's throat and made her swallow; but the child, maddened by pain and the anguish of suffocation, had buried and hidden its head in the straw bedding, absolutely refusing to allow itself to be touched. The doctor accustomed to such scenes, repeated in a sad and resigned voice: "I cannot really spend all day with these patients. By Jove, these do give one a heart ache. When you think that they have remained twenty-four hours without drinking. The wind blew the rain in on to their very beds. All the hens had taken shelter in the fire-place." [Illustration 037] We had reached the farm. The doctor fastened his horse, to the bough of an apple-tree before the door, and we went in. A strong smell of sickness and damp, of fever and mouldiness, of hospital and cellar greeted our nostrils as we entered. In this grey and dismal house, fireless and without sign of life, it was bitterly cold; the swampy chill of a marsh. The clock had stopped; the rain fell down into the great fire-place, where the hens had scattered the ashes, and we heard in a dark corner the noise of a pair of bellows, husky and rapid. It was the breathing of the child. The mother, stretched out in a kind of large wooden box, the peasant's bed, and covered with old rags and old clothes, seemed to rest quietly. She slightly turned her head towards us. The doctor inquired: "Have you got a candle?" She answered in a low depressed tone: "In the cupboard." He took the light, and led me to the further end of the room towards the little girl's crib. She lay panting, with emaciated cheeks, glistening eyes, and tangled hair, a pitiable sight. At each breath, deep hollows could be seen in her thin strained neck. Stretched out on her back, she convulsively clutched with both hands the rags that covered her, and directly she caught sight of us, she turned her face away, and hid herself in the straw.