The plague, which the winter had for some months benumbed, resumed with the spring its victorious march. It broke out everywhere with a new violence, at Damascus, at Sidon, at Bairout, at Homs. The doctor hoped that the scourge would spare the little hamlet of Abra, some metres from the monastery where he had his quarters. But the late passion for cleanliness of a peasant named Constantine, who, at the age of sixty years, never having taken warm baths, went to obtain them at Sidon, was the cause of all the evil. He brought back the plague. Then terror seized upon the village. The peasants fled into the mountain with their cattle and their silk-worms; and there was no one to remove the dead bodies, which decomposed where they lay and increased the infection. The doctor, having no longer permission to cross the threshold of the monastery, communicated with Lady Hester through the window, and his servant Giovanni having fallen ill, he was also regarded as suspect and remained abandoned, with the agreeable prospect of doing his own cooking and washing his own dishes. The month of May was by misfortune particularly hot. There were scenes which nothing will ever surpass in horror. A peasant of the name of Shahud lost his only son, whom he adored. He carried him himself to the common grave; but having loosened the stone and perceived the body of that accursed Constantine, he was seized with madness. He threw himself on the corpse to give it as food to the jackals. But death had done its work better; the limb by which he had intended to seize him remained in his hand. What a spectacle! Before the half-open charnel-house, this peasant, with distracted air, brandishing a piece of a corpse, curses and insults it while almost choking! And all around the beautiful and fresh country under the blue sky.... Then life resumes all its rights. The village forgot the death-rattle of the dying and resounded soon with songs and careless laughter. Constantine's eldest son, who had been about to be married, being dead, he was replaced immediately by his young brother. The bridegroom was only thirteen, and cast envious glances in the direction of the companions of his own age, who were dancing merrily, without looking at his wife, who was three years older than himself, it is true.