who, only the day before yesterday, had brought home her pretty new sandals, had died of the plague, Katharina scolded her sharply and bid her be silent.  But as the maid knelt before her to unfasten her sandals, Katharina herself took up the story again, asking her whether the shoemaker’s pretty young wife had also been attacked.  The girl said that she was still alive, but that the old mother-in-law and all the children had been shut into the house, and even the shutters barred as soon as the corpse had been brought out.  The authorities had ordered that this should be done in every case, so that the pestilence might not pervade the streets or be disseminated among the healthy.  Food and drink were handed to the captives through a wicket in the door.  Such regulations, she added, seemed particularly well-considered and wise.  But she would have done better to keep her opinions to herself, for before she had done speaking Katharina gave her an angry push with her foot.  Then she desired her not to be sparing with the ’smegma’,—­[A material like soap, but used in a soft state.]—­and to wash her hair as thoroughly as possible.

This was done; and Katharina herself rubbed her hands and arms with passionate diligence.  Then she had water poured over her head again and again, till, when she desired the maid to desist, she had to lean breathless and almost exhausted against the marble.

But in spite of smegma and water she still felt the pressure of the burning hand on top of her head, and her heart seemed oppressed by some invisible load of lead.

Her mother! oh, her mother!  She had kissed her there, where the plague had actually touched her, and in fancy she could hear her gasping and begging for a drink of water like the dying wretches to whom her fate had led her.  And then—­then came the servants of the senate and shut her into the pestilential house with the sick; she saw the pest in mortal form, a cruel and malignant witch; behind her, tall and threatening, stood her inexorable companion Death, reaching out a bony hand and clutching her mother, and then all who were in the house with her, and last of all, herself.

Her arms dropped by her side:  powerful and terrible as she had felt herself this morning, she was now crushed by a sense of miserable and impotent weakness.  Her defiance had been addressed to a mortal, a frail, tender woman; and God and Fate had put her in the front of the battle instead of Heliodora.  She shuddered at the thought.

As she went up from the bath-room, her mother met her in the hall and said: 

“What, still here, Child?  How you startled me!  And is it true?  Is Plotinus really ill of a complaint akin to the plague?”

“Worse than that, mother,” she replied sadly.  “He has the plague; and I remembered that a bath is the right thing when one has been in a plague-stricken house; you, too, have kissed and touched me.  Pray have the fire lighted again, late as it is, and take a bath too.”