ity is full of the fever."

Such were the Frowenfelds. Out of such a mold and into such a place came
the young Americain, whom even Agricola Fusilier, as we shall see, by
and by thought worthy to be made an exception of, and honored with his
recognition.

The family rented a two-story brick house in the rue Bienville, No. 17,
it seems. The third day after, at daybreak, Joseph called his father to
his bedside to say that he had had a chill, and was suffering such pains
in his head and back that he would like to lie quiet until they passed
off. The gentle father replied that it was undoubtedly best to do so,
and preserved an outward calm. He looked at his son's eyes; their pupils
were contracted to tiny beads. He felt his pulse and his brow; there was
no room for doubt; it was the dreaded scourge--the fever. We say,
sometimes, of hearts that they sink like lead; it does not express
the agony.

On the second day, while the unsated fever was running through every
vein and artery, like soldiery through the streets of a burning city,
and far down in the caverns of the body the poison was ransacking every
palpitating corner, the poor immigrant fell into a moment's sleep. But
what of that? The enemy that moment had mounted to the brain. And then
there happened to Joseph an experience rare to the sufferer by this
disease, but not entirely unknown,--a delirium of mingled pleasures and
distresses. He seemed to awake somewhere between heaven and earth,
reclining in a gorgeous barge, which was draped in curtains of
interwoven silver and silk, cushioned with rich stuffs of every
beautiful dye, and perfumed _ad nauseam_ with orange-leaf tea. The crew
was a single old negress, whose head was wound about with a blue Madras
handkerchief, and who stood at the prow, and by a singular rotary
motion, rowed the barge with a teaspoon. He could not get his head out
of the hot sun; and the barge went continually round and round with a
heavy, throbbing motion, in the regular beat of which certain spirits of
the air--one of whom appeared to be a beautiful girl and another a
small, red-haired man,--confronted each other with the continual call
and response:

"Keep the bedclothes on him and the room shut tight, keep the bedclothes
on him and the room shut tight,"--"An' don' give 'im some watta, an'
don' give 'im some watta."

During what lapse of time--whether moments or days--this lasted, Joseph
could not then know; but at last these things f