Thereafter La Maternite was the scene of one of those terrible puerperal epidemics which breathe death upon human fecundity, of one of those cases of atmospheric poisoning which empty, in a twinkling and by whole rows, the beds of women lately delivered, and which once caused the closing of La Clinique. They believed that it was a visitation of the plague, a plague that turns the face black in a few hours, carries all before it and snatches up the youngest and the strongest, a plague that issues from the cradle--the Black Plague of mothers! All about Germinie, at all hours, especially at night, women were dying such deaths as the milk-fever causes, deaths that seemed to violate all nature's laws, agonizing deaths, accompanied by wild shrieks and troubled by hallucinations and delirium, death agonies that compelled the application of the strait-waistcoat, death agonies that caused the victims to leap suddenly from their beds, carrying the clothes with them, and causing the whole room to shudder at the thought that they were dead bodies from the amphitheatre! Life departed as if it were torn from the body. The very disease assumed a ghastly shape and monstrous aspect. The bedclothes were lifted in the centre by the swelling caused by peritonitis, producing a vague, horrifying effect in the lamplight. For five days Germinie, lying swathed and bandaged in her bed, closing her eyes and ears as best she could, had the strength to combat all these horrors, and yielded to them only at long intervals. She was determined to live, and she clung to her strength by thinking of her child and of mademoiselle. But, on the sixth day, her energy was exhausted, her courage forsook her. A cold wave flowed into her heart. She said to herself that it was all over. The hand that death lays upon one's shoulder, the presentiment of death, was already touching her. She felt the first breath of the epidemic, the belief that she was its destined victim, and the impression that she was already half-possessed by it. Although unresigned, she succumbed. Her life, vanquished beforehand, hardly made an effort to struggle. At that crisis a head bent over her pillow, like a ray of light. It was the head of the youngest of the pupil-assistants, a fair head, with long golden locks and blue eyes so soft and sweet that the dying saw heaven opening its gates therein. When they saw her, delirious women said: "Look! the Blessed Virgin!" "My child," she said to Germinie, "you must ask for your discharge at once. You must go away from here. You must dress warmly. You must wrap up well. As soon as you're at home and in bed, you must take a hot draught of something or other. You must try to take a sweat. Then, it won't do you any harm. But go away from here. It wouldn't be healthy for you here to-night," she said, glancing around at the beds. "Don't say that I told you to go: you would get me discharged if you should." XXI