It ranks with the storm and the reef of rocks, as a deadly foe. Its name, let fall, produces the same effect as the wind that whistles, or the surf that roars. Looks are interchanged on hearing it; and thought recurs to the absent, if not to the dead.

Ropars, on this occasion, dwelt mainly on those about him; and in truth, no one could have better right than he to be ill at ease. Thrown in former days upon a station where the yellow fever was epidemic, he had seen the seamen of the fleet decimated around him, and had himself barely escaped, as if by miracle. The remembrance of that butchery, as he termed it, was too vivid, and he had too often described it to Geneviève, for their firmness not now to be shaken. They troubled not themselves on their own account, but on account of those whose existence was so dear to them. Mathieu's first thought was of his wife and of his children; the first impulse of Geneviève was to fold them in her arms, and to declare that they must all go away. Some trouble had the old sailor in making her comprehend that, even if retreating were not dishonorable for him, it had become impossible. The long-boat had made sail for the frigate, and the yellow flag was hoisted at the lazaretto. Quarantine had begun for all who happened to be at Trébéron. Not a soul could henceforth pass beyond its limits: and Ropars pointed out to Geneviève the gun-boat sent by the health officer, which had been brought to bear at half cable's-length distance from the island, and cut off from it all intercourse by boats. They were in fact definitively penned in with the epidemic, and condemned to run its risk to the end.But the agitation of Mathieu, in which surprise had worked its part, did not last long. The quarter-master soon regained his original strength of mind, which had been slightly unhinged in the tendernesses of his domestic life; and, regardless of his own previous words, he set himself seriously to soothing the terror of Geneviève by underrating the danger that they incurred. After all, they were not here in a state of things that favoured the disease; they had not to contend against the enervating sun of the Havannah or Brazil; this was not one of those awful contagions that spread from house to house like a fire, leaving behind it the dead alone--it was a disorder partly spent, and from which, with certain precautions, escape was easy. The chief and the most indispensable of these precautions was to avoid going near the apartments occupied by those who had been brought into quarantine, and never to stay to leeward of the lazaretto. Josèphe and Francine were at once informed of this. Geneviève explained to them every thing that they were to do, with a minuteness of detail, that savoured 

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