That day seemed very long to me I wandered aimlessly about the city, seeing few faces that I knew, for the wealthier inhabitants, afraid of the cholera, had either left the place together or remained closely shut within their own houses.

Everywhere I went something bore witness to the terrible ravages of the plague.

At almost every corner I met a funeral procession.

Once I came upon a group of men who were standing in an open door way packing a dead body into a coffin too small for it.
There was something truly revolting in the way they doubled up the arms and legs and squeezed in the shoulders of the deceased man--one could hear the bones crack.

I watched the brutal proceedings for a minute or so, and then I said aloud: "You had better make sure he is quite dead," The beccamorti looked at me in surprise; one laughed grimly and swore.
"By the body of God, if I thought he were not I would twist his accursed neck for him! But the cholera never fails, he is dead for certain--see!" And he knocked the head of the corpse to and fro against the sides of the coffin with no more compunction than if it had been a block of wood.