Katharina at once spoke her name and the old man answered her, saying kindly, but with difficulty:  “Ah, it is you, you, my child!”

She took up the lamp and went close to the sick man.  He put out his lean arm to welcome her; but, as her approach brought the light near to him he covered his eyes, crying out distressfully:  “No, no; that hurts.  Take away the lamp.”

Katharina set it down on a low chest behind the head of the bed; then she went up to the sufferer, gave him her mother’s message, and asked him how he was and why he was left alone.  He could only give incoherent answers which he gasped out with great difficulty, bidding her go close to him for he could not hear her distinctly.  He was very ill, he told her—­ dying.  It was good of her to have come for she had always been his pet, his dear, good little girl.

“And it was a happy impulse that brought you,” he added, “to receive an old man’s blessing.  I give it you with my whole heart.”

As he spoke he put forth his hand and she, following an instinctive prompting, fell on her knees by the side of the couch.

He laid his burning right hand on her head and murmured some words of blessing; she, however, scarcely heeded them, for his hand felt like lead and its heat oppressed and distressed her dreadfully.  It was a sincere grief to her to see this true old friend of her childhood suffering thus —­perhaps indeed dying; at the same time she did not forget what had brought her here—­still, she dared not disturb him in this act of love.  He gave her his blessing—­that was kind; but his mutterings did not come to an end, the weight of the hot hand on her head grew heavier and heavier, and at last became intolerable.  She felt quite dazed, but with an effort she collected her senses and then perceived that the old man had wandered off from the usual formulas of blessing and was murmuring disconnected and inarticulate words.

At this she raised the terrible, fevered hand, laid it on the bed, and was about to ask him whether he had betrayed her to Benjamin, and if he had mentioned her name, when—­Merciful God! there on his cheeks were the same livid spots that she had noticed on those of the plague stricken man in Medea’s house.  With a cry of horror she sprang up, snatched at the lamp, held it over the sufferer, heedless of his cries of anguish, looked into his face, and pulled away the weary hands with which he tried to screen his eyes from the light.  Then, having convinced herself that she was not mistaken, she fled from room to room out into the hall.

Here she was met by the housekeeper, who took the lamp out of her hand and was about to question her; but Katharina only screamed: 

“The plague is in the house!  Lock the doors!” and then rushed away, past the leech who was coming in.  With one bound she was in the chariot, and as the horses started she wailed out to the nurse: