is meal less rapidly than his companion, and looked
disapprovingly at the leech, who drank off his wine and water as he
stood, whereas he generally would sit and enjoy it as he talked to the
old man of matters light or grave. To the elder this was always the
pleasantest hour of the day; but now Philippus would hardly allow
himself more than just time enough to eat, even at their principal
evening meal.

Indeed, not he alone, but every physician in the city, had as much as he
could do with the utmost exertion. Nearly three weeks had elapsed
since the attack on the nuns, and the fearful heat had still gone on
in creasing. The river, instead of rising had sunk lower and lower;
the carrier-pigeons from Ethiopia, looked for day by day with growing
anxiety and excitement, brought no news of a rising stream even in the
upper Nile, and the shallow, stagnant and evil-smelling waters by the
banks began to be injurious, nay, fatal, to the health of the whole
population.

Close to the shore, especially, the water had a reddish tinge, and the
usually sweet, pure fluid in the canals was full of strange vegetable
growths and other foreign bodies putrid and undrinkable. The common
people usually shirked the trouble of filtering it, and it was among
them that the greater number died of a mortal and infectious pestilence,
till then unknown. The number of victims swelled daily, and the approach
of the comet kept pace with the growing misery of the town. Every one
connected it with the intense heat of the season, with the delay in the
inundation, and the appearance of the sickness; and the leech and his
friend often argued about these matters, for Philippus would not admit
that the meteor had any influence on human affairs, while Horapollo
believed that it had, and supported his view by a long series of
examples.

His antagonist would not accept them and asked for arguments; at the
same time he, like every one else, felt the influence of a vague dread
of some imminent and terrible disaster hanging over the earth and
humanity at large.

And, just as every heart in Memphis felt oppressed by such forebodings,
and by the weight of a calamity, which indeed no longer threatened them
but had actually come upon them, so the roads, the gardens, the palms
and sycamores by the way-side were covered by thick layers of dingy,
choking dust. The hedges of tamarisk and shrubs looked like decaying
walls of colorless, unburnt mud-bricks; even in the hi