The excitement increased in the town with the increase in the number of deaths, which, however, were still few. The exact figures which my father gave by no means corresponded with those that were printed in the newspapers, or flew from lip to lip. He had forbidden us to go into the town, grandfather approving: “One never knows how those things get caught--a mere nothing is enough. It’s quite enough to have so many sick persons coming here.” I had found grandfather aging, when I came home. He was nearly eighty, of course, but he had so long kept his air of youth, the alert step due to his long walks, and even his bright eyes, their sarcastic glint only emphasised by the gathering wrinkles. Now he was growing bent, and his gaze seemed dimmed. Still he clung to life, and perhaps all the more as he felt his strength failing. The most absurd and contradictory rumours were flying about everywhere, and political passions had free course. An individual had been caught putting poison into the river;--a priest, said the anti-clericals; a free mason, said the others. A frightful mania of suspicion began to run wild. An unlucky fellow with a pimpled face just missed of being strung up, on the pretext of spreading contagion, and was only saved by my father’s intervention: “Pimples on the face are the only ones that mean nothing!” he had shouted, just in time. He brought home to us all these incidents and rumours, for we went nowhere; he even carefully disinfected himself on returning from his rounds. Next, the villages below the water-works thought the contagion had reached them, and were struck with panic, their inhabitants crowding to the town. We could see them passing with their carts, their cattle, their furniture, like fugitives before the face of war. Brawls arose from attempts to keep them out. Then suddenly the epidemic, which until then had been under control, its ravages greatly exaggerated, took on a disturbing character, whether in consequence of the crowded state of the town and the lack of hygiene, or because the air had really become tainted. The general terror became itself a danger. Pestilence and famine were said to be upon us. Abbé Heurtevant, who, all devotion to the sufferers, yet seemed to breathe in a sort of consolation from the atmosphere of catastrophe, seeing in all this the fulfilment of his prophecies, and who could not but discern signs of divine intervention, was formally accused of sorcery, and was obliged to run to earth in his own room for several days, lest evil should befall him. Mlle Tapinois had given the signal for departure, abandoning her work-rooms, which mother took up without comment. The hotels were emptied, and all the people who could fly from town fled.