a town in mourning. in the suburban stations, so crowded but three weeks since, there was nobody, and nobody in the train we travelled by. no coolies for the baggage, no carriages, and the tramcars running down the wide, deserted road carried no passengers. the hotel was closed, all the servants had fled in terror of the plague, which was raging with increased violence. every shop[pg 92] had the shutters up; the great market, full of golden fruit and shaded by the flowering trees, was equally empty, and in the bazaar the rare wayfarers hurried by in silence.
in the evening at byculla, in the street of the disreputable, in front of a house hermetically closed, and painted with a round red spot for each person who had died there, a fire of sulphur was burning with a livid glow. only one gambling-house tried to tempt customers with a great noise of harmonium and tom-toms; and from a side street came a response of muffled tambourines and castanets. first the dead, wrapped in red stuff and tied to a bamboo, and then the procession turned into the lighted street. white shapes crowded by, vanishing at once, and the harmonium again rose above the silence with its skipping tunes, and the tom-toms beating out of time—and attracted no one.
