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 to come, and yet to be fulfilled. That was my instinctive
belief, but when I carefully weighed the probabilities on the one
side and on the other, I could not help seeing that the strength of
argument was all against me. There was a strong antecedent
likelihood in FAVOUR of my being struck by the same blow as the
rest of the people who had been dying around me. Besides, it
occurred to me that, after all, the universal opinion of the
Europeans upon a medical question, such as that of contagion, might
probably be correct, and IF IT WERE, I was so thoroughly
"compromised," and especially by the touch and breath of the dying
medico, that I had no right to expect any other fate than that
which now seemed to have overtaken me. Balancing as well as I
could all the considerations which hope and fear suggested, I
slowly and reluctantly came to the conclusion that, according to
all merely reasonable probability, the plague had come upon me.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 121 of 170
Words from 63773 to 64293
of 89094
