"Hawthorne, Nathaniel - Lady Eleanores Mantle" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hawthorne Nathaniel)

hitherto cheerful visage betokened that the communication could be
of no agreeable import. A very few moments afterwards it was announced
to the guests that an unforeseen circumstance rendered it necessary to
put a premature close to the festival.

The ball at the Province House supplied a topic of conversation for
the colonial metropolis for some days after its occurrence, and
might still longer have been the general theme, only that a subject of
all-engrossing interest thrust it, for a time, from the public
recollection. This was the appearance of a dreadful epidemic, which,
in that age and long before and afterwards, was wont to slay its
hundreds and thousands on both sides of the Atlantic. On the
occasion of which we speak, it was distinguished by a peculiar
virulence, insomuch that it has left its traces- its pit-marks, to use
an appropriate figure- on the history of the country, the affairs of
which were thrown into confusion by its ravages. At first, unlike
its ordinary course, the disease seemed to confine itself to the
higher circles of society, selecting its victims from among the proud,
the well-born, and the wealthy, entering unabashed into stately
chambers, and lying down with the slumberers in silken beds. Some of
the most distinguished guests of the Province House- even those whom
the haughty Lady Eleanore Rochcliffe had deemed not unworthy of her
favor- were stricken by this fatal scourge. It was noticed, with an
ungenerous bitterness of feeling, that the four gentlemen- the
Virginian, the British officer, the young clergyman, and the
Governor's secretary- who had been her most devoted attendants on
the evening of the ball, were the foremost on whom the plague stroke
fell. But the disease, pursuing its onward progress, soon ceased to be
exclusively a prerogative of aristocracy. Its red brand was no
longer conferred like a noble's star, or an order of knighthood. It
threaded its way through the narrow and crooked streets, and entered
the low, mean, darksome dwellings, and laid its hand of death upon the
artisans and laboring classes of the town. It compelled rich and
poor to feel themselves brethren then; and stalking to and fro
across the Three Hills, with a fierceness which made it almost a new
pestilence, there was that mighty conqueror- that scourge and horror
of our forefathers- the Small-Pox!

We cannot estimate the affright which this plague inspired of yore,
by contemplating it as the fangless monster of the present day. We
must remember, rather, with what awe we watched the gigantic footsteps
of the Asiatic cholera, striding from shore to shore of the
Atlantic, and marching like destiny upon cities far remote which
flight had already half depopulated. There is no other fear so
horrible and unhumanizing as that which makes man dread to breathe
heaven's vital air lest it be poison, or to grasp the hand of a
brother or friend lest the gripe of the pestilence should clutch
him. Such was the dismay that now followed in the track of the
disease, or ran before it throughout the town. Graves were hastily
dug, and the pestilential relics as hastily covered, because the