notice of Maria, passed from the
room with drooping head. Bontius followed him into his study, laid his
hand on his arm, and said:

"Our little remnant of life is made bitter to us, Peter. Barbara says a
corpse was laid before your door early this morning."

"Yes. When I went out, the livid face offered me a morning greeting.
It was a young person. All whom death mows down, the people lay to my
charge. Wherever one looks--corpses! Whatever one hears--curses! Have I
authority over so many lives? Day and night nothing but sorrow and death
before my eyes;--and yet, yet, yet--oh God! save me from madness!"

Peter clasped both hands over his brow; but Bontius found no word of
comfort, and merely exclaimed: "And I, and I? My wife and child ill with
a fever, day and night on my feet, not to cure, but to see people die.
What has been learned by hard study becomes childish folly in these
days, and yet the poor creatures utter a sigh of hope when I feel their
pulses. But this can't go on, this can't go on. Day before yesterday
seventy, yesterday eighty-six deaths, and among them two of my
colleagues."

"And no prospect of improvement?"

"To-morrow the ninety will become a hundred--the one hundred will become
two, three, four, five, until at last one individual will be left, for
whom there will be no grave-digger."

"The pest-houses are closed, and we still have cattle and horses."

"But the pestilence creeps through the joints, and since the last loaf
of bread and the last malt-cake have been divided, and there is nothing
for the people to eat except meat, meat, and nothing else--one tiny
piece for the whole day--disease is piled on disease in forms utterly
unprecedented, of which no book speaks, for which no remedy has yet been
discovered. This drawing water with a bottomless pitcher is beginning to
be too much for me. My brain is no stronger than yours. Farewell until
to-morrow."

"To-day, to-day! You are coming to the meeting at the town-hall?"

"Certainly not! Do what you can justify; I shall practise my profession,
which now means the same thing as saying: 'I shall continue to close
eyes and hold coroner's inquests.' If things go on so, there will soon
be an end to practice."

"Once for all: if you were in my place, you would treat with Valdez?"

"In your place? I am not you; I am a physician, one who has nothing
to do except to take the field against suffering and death. You, since
Bronkhorst's death, are the