“I was walking at night from Penmarch to Pontl’Abbé. Do you know Penmarch? A flat shore, utterly flat, very low-lying, seeming lower than the sea. Wherever you look you see the grey threatening sea, full of rocks slavered with foam, like raging beasts.
“I had dined in a fisherman’s inn, and I had taken the road to the right, between two moors. It was growing very dark.
“Now and then a Druid stone, standing like a phantom, seemed to look at me as I passed, and a vague fear slowly took hold of me: fear of what? I had not the least idea. It was one of the evenings when the wind of passing spirits blows on your face, and your soul shudders and knows not why, and your heart beats in bewildered terror of some invisible thing, that terror whose passing I regret.
“The road seemed very long to me, interminably long and empty.
“There was no sound but the thunder of the waves down below, at my back; and sometimes the monotonous sinister sound seemed quite close, so close that I imagined the waves were at my heels, racing over the plain, and foaming as they came, and I felt a wild impulse to save myself from them, to run for my life before their onrush.
“The wind, a little wind that blew in gusts, whistled through the gorse all round me. And quickly as I went, my arms and legs were cold with the horrid cold of mortal fear.
“Oh, how I longed to meet someone!
“It was so black that now I could hardly make out the road.
“And suddenly I heard a rolling sound, a long way in front of me. ‘That’s a carriage,’ I thought. Then I heard nothing more.
“A moment later I distinctly heard the same noise again, nearer now.
“I saw no light, however, and I said to myself: ‘They have no lantern. There’s nothing to be surprised at in that, in this wild district.’
“The noise stopped once more, then began again. It was too shrill to be made by a wagon; and besides I did not hear the sound of a horse trotting, which surprised me, for the night was very still.
“ ‘What can it be?’ I wondered.
“It was approaching swiftly, very swiftly! I was sure now that I could hear only one wheel—no clatter of hoofs or feet—nothing. What could it be?
“It was close now, quite close; prompted by a quite instinctive fear, I flung myself down in a ditch and I saw pass right by me a wheelbarrow running all by itself—no one was pushing it—yes, a wheelbarrow—all by itself.
“My heart began such a violent leaping that I lay helpless on the grass, listening to the rolling of the wheel, which drew farther and farther away, going down to the sea. And I dared neither get up nor walk nor stir hand or foot; for if it had come back, if it had followed me, I should have died of terror.
“I was a long time before I recovered myself, a very long time. And I covered the rest of the road in such agony of mind that the least noise stopped the breath in my throat.
“You think it idiotic? But how terrifying! Thinking it over afterwards, I understood what it was; a barefooted child must have been pushing the wheelbarrow, and I had been expecting to see the head of a man of ordinary height.
“You can understand it … fear of some supernatural happening has crept into one’s mind—a wheelbarrow running—all by itself. How terrifying!”
He was silent for a moment, then added:
“Believe me, sir, we are watching a strange and terrible spectacle—this invasion of cholera.
“You can smell the disinfectant poisoning the whole air in these carriages; it means that somewhere it is lurking.
“You should see Toulouse now. Go there, and you can feel that He is there. And it is no mere fear of disease that distracts the townspeople. The cholera is something more than that, it is the Unseen, it is one of the ancient plagues, a sort of malevolent spirit that has come back to the world, and astounds us as much as it terrifies us because it seems to belong to a lost age.
“The doctors make me laugh with their microbe. It is no insect that drives men to such a pitch of terror that they will jump out of the windows; it is cholera, the inexplicable and terrible being come from the recesses of the East.
“Walk through Toulouse and see them dancing in the streets.
“Why do men dance in days when death is abroad? They let off fireworks in the fields round the town; they light bonfires, orchestras play gay music on all the public promenades.
“Why this madness?
“It is because He is present: they are defying now, not the Microbe, but Cholera; they want to swagger past Him, as they might swagger past an ambushed enemy spy. It is for Him that they dance, and laugh and shout and light fires and play waltzes, for Him, the Angel of Destruction, lurking in every place, unseen, threatening, like one of those old evil jinns conjured up by barbaric priests. …”
The sea is fretting the shore with small recurring waves. Small white clouds pass rapidly across the wide blue sky, swept along like birds by the swift wind; and the village, in a fold of a valley which descends to the sea, lies drowsing in the sun. By the side of the road, at the very entrance to the village, stands the lonely dwelling of the Martin-Lévesques. It is a small fisherman’s cottage with clay walls and
