Meantime, France had been anxiously following the progress of cholera for some time past. Starting from India, it had taken the route of the great magnetic currents, had crossed Persia, reached St. Petersburg and stopped at London. The Channel alone separated it from us. But what is the distance between Dover and Calais to a giant who has just done three thousand leagues? So it crossed the Channel at a single stride. I remember the day when it struck its first blow: the sky was sapphire blue; the sun very powerful. All nature was being born again, with its beautiful green robe and the colours of youth and of health on its cheeks. The Tuileries was studded with women as a greensward is with flowers; revolutionary risings had died down for some time, leaving society a little peace and permitting spectators to venture out to the theatres. Suddenly, a terrible cry went forth, uttered in a voice like those mentioned in the Bible which thrill through the atmosphere, hurling maledictions on the earth from the skies: "The cholera is in Paris!" They added: "A man has just died in the rue Chauchat; he was literally struck down dead!" It was exactly as though a veil of crape was stretched between the blue sky and the bright sun and Paris. People rushed out into the streets and fled to their homes, shouting: "The cholera! the cholera!" as, seventeen years before, they had shouted: "The Cossacks!" But, no matter how well they closed their doors and windows, the terrible demon of Asia slipped in through the chinks of the shutters and through the keyholes of the doors. Then people attempted to fight it. Science came forward and tried to wrestle with it at close quarters. It touched it with its finger-tips, and science was floored. Science rose stunned but not vanquished; and began to study the disease. Sometimes, people died in three hours' time; at others, in even less time still. The sick man, or, rather, the condemned, suddenly felt a slight shivering: then came the first stage of cold, then cramp, then the terrible and ceaseless dysentery; next the circulation was stopped by the thickening of the blood; the capillaries were altered; the sick man became black and died. But none of these stages was positively fixed; they might follow or precede or intermingle with one another; each separate constitution brought its own variety of the malady. Further, these were but symptoms; people died with symptoms as of some unknown disease. The corpse was visible, but the assassin invisible! It struck and the blow was seen, but it was useless to search for the dagger. People were doctored by guesswork; as a man surprised by a thief in the night strikes out into the gloom by chance, hoping to hit the thief, so science wielded its sword in the darkness. In Russia, they treated cholera with ice. The attacks there presented the symptoms of typhoid. Opinion was divided on this point. Some administered tonics, that is to say, punch, warm wine, Bordeaux and Madeira.