Dthemetri’s orders in respect to these matters were frustrated by the deaths of the tradespeople and others whom he employed, that at last I became quite accustomed to the peculiar manner which he assumed when he prepared to announce a new death to me.  The poor fellow naturally supposed that I should feel some uneasiness at hearing of the “accidents” which happened to persons employed by me, and he therefore communicated their deaths as though they were the deaths of friends.  He would cast down his eyes and look like a man abashed, and then gently, and with a mournful gesture, allow the words, “Morto, signor,” to come through his lips.  I don’t know how many of such instances occurred, but they were several, and besides these (as I told you before), my banker, my doctor, my landlord, and my magician all died of the plague.  A lad who acted as a helper in the house which I occupied lost a brother and a sister within a few hours.  Out of my two established donkey-boys, one died.  I did not hear of any instance in which a plague-stricken patient had recovered.

Going out one morning I met unexpectedly the scorching breath of the kamsin wind, and fearing that I should faint under the horrible sensations which it caused, I returned to my rooms.  Reflecting, however, that I might have to encounter this wind in the Desert, where there would be no possibility of avoiding it, I thought it would be better to brave it once more in the city, and to try whether I could really bear it or not.  I therefore mounted my ass and rode to old Cairo, and along the gardens by the banks of the Nile.  The wind was hot to the touch, as though it came from a furnace.  It blew strongly, but yet with such perfect steadiness, that the trees bending under its force remained fixed in the same curves without perceptibly waving.  The whole sky was obscured by a veil of yellowish grey, that shut out the face of the sun.  The streets were utterly silent, being indeed almost entirely deserted; and not without cause, for the scorching blast, whilst it fevers the blood, closes up the pores of the skin, and is terribly distressing, therefore, to every animal that encounters it.  I returned to my rooms dreadfully ill.  My head ached with a burning pain, and my pulse bounded quick and fitfully, but perhaps (as in the instance of the poor Levantine, whose death I was mentioning), the fear and excitement which I felt in trying my own wrist may have made my blood flutter the faster.

It is a thoroughly well believed theory, that during the continuance of the plague you can’t be ill of any other febrile malady—­an unpleasant privilege that! for ill I was, and ill of fever, and I anxiously wished that the ailment might turn out to be anything rather than plague.  I had some right to surmise that my illness may have been merely the effect of the hot wind; and this notion was encouraged by the elasticity of my spirits, and by a strong forefeeling that much of my destined life in this world was yet