Cursing their cowardice, I hurried on in search of a physician, and found one at last, a sallow Frenchman, who listened with obvious reluctance to my account of the condition in which I had left the little fruit-seller, and at the end shook his head decisively, and refused to move.
"He is as good as dead," he observed, with cold brevity.

"Better call at the house of the Miserecordia; the brethren will fetch his body." "What!" I cried; "you will nor try if you can save him ?" The Frenchman bowed with satirical suavity.
"Monsieur must pardon me! My own health would be seriously endangered by touching a cholera corpse.

Allow me to wish monsieur the good-day!" And he disappeared, shutting his door in my face.

I was thoroughly exasperated, and though the heat and the fetid odor of the sun-baked streets made me feel faint and sick, I forgot all danger for myself as I stood in the plague-stricken city, wondering what I should do next to obtain succor.

A grave, kind voice saluted my ear.
"You seek aid, my son ?" I looked up.