One case, among multitudes, will serve to give you a faint idea of the situation of Paris, at this moment of severe affliction.  Returning from a walk through the deserted streets one morning, I saw a small collection of people around the porte-cochere of our hotel.  A matchseller had been seized with the disease, at the gate, and was then sustained on one of the stone seats, which are commonly used by the servants.  I had her carried info the court, and made such applications as had been recommended by the faculty.  The patient was a robust woman of middle age, accompanied by her mother, both having come in from a distant village, to raise a few sous by selling matches.  In making the applications, I had occasion to observe the means by which these poor people sustain life.  Their food consisted of fragments of hard dried bread, that had been begged, or bought, in the course of their progress.

While two or three of us were busied about the daughter, the mother knelt on the pavement, and, with streaming eyes, prayed for her child, for us, and for herself.  There was something indescribably touching in this display of strong natural ties, between those who were plunged so deep in misery.  A piece of five francs was put into the hands of the old woman, but, though she blessed the donor, her look was not averted an instant from the agony depicted in her daughter’s face, nor did she appear conscious of what she possessed, a moment after.  The carriers from the hospital bore the sick woman away, and the mother promised to return, in a day or two, to let me know the result.  Not appearing, an inquiry was made at the hospital, and the answer was, that they were both dead!

In this manner some ten or fifteen thousand were swept away in a few weeks.  Not only hotels, but, in some instances, nearly whole streets were depopulated.  As every one fled, who could with convenience or propriety quit the town, you may feel surprised that we chose to remain.  When the deaths increased to eight or nine hundred a day, and our own quarter began to be visited, I felt it to be a duty to those under my charge, to retire to some of the places without the limits of the disease.  The trunks were packed, the carriage was in the court, and my passports were signed, when A——­ was suddenly taken ill.  Although the disease was not the cholera, I began to calculate the chances of any one of us being seized, myself for instance, in one of the villages of the environs, and the helpless condition of a family of females in a foreign country, under such circumstances.  The result was a determination to remain, and to trust to Providence.  We have consequently staid in our apartments through it all, although two slight cases have occurred in the hotel, and hundreds around it.

The manner in which individuals known to us have vanished, as it were, from before our eyes, has been shockingly sudden.  To-day the report may be that the milkman is gone; yesterday it was the butcher’s boy; the day before the poulterer, and presently a new servant appears with a message from a friend, and on inquiring for his predecessor, we learn that he is dead.  Ten or fifteen cases of this sort have occurred among those with whom we are in constant and immediate connexion.