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At this epoch, the number of lepers or ladres becoming so large, they were obliged to confine themselves to certain portions of the country, and they took for their patron St. Lazare, and small hospitals were built and dedicated to this saint. Under Louis VIII 2000 of these hospitals were counted, and later, according to Dupony, there were 19,000 in the French kingdom.
And to-day, more than eighteen hundred years later, lepers gather on the slopes of Mount Zion, and hover at the gates of Jerusalem, and crouch in the shadow of the tomb of David, crying for the bread of mercy.
Directly in front of me, in the stand, was an American, a veteran of the Civil War, who had fought on the Confederate side. He was sixty- five years of age, but that did not prevent him from running up a good score. Strapping Hawaiian policemen, lepers, khaki-clad, were also shooting, as were Portuguese, Chinese, and kokuas the latter are native helpers in the Settlement who are non-lepers.
Market men, half naked and very lean, were coming in from Tamsloht and Amsmiz, guiding their heavy-laden donkeys past the crumbling walls and the steep valley that separates Elhara from the town. Some scores of lepers had left their quarters, a few hiding terrible disfigurement under great straw hats, others quite careless of their deplorable disease.
"Bend me, then, your bow!" cried the other. "What! will ye be a man?" Dick crossed himself. "Would ye have me shoot upon a leper?" he cried. "The hand would fail me. Nay, now," he added "nay, now, let be! With sound men I will fight, but not with ghosts and lepers. Which this is, I wot not. One or other, Heaven be our protection!"
The cry brought the others, and when Piang caught sight of them, he almost lost hope. Would he be able to escape the contamination of this island? With mad shrieks, the lepers gave chase, eager to lay hands on one so lately relegated to their colony. Was he not a leper too? What right had he to scorn them, his brothers? Hotter, fiercer grew the chase.
The disease is not slow in running its course. After about four years it usually attacks some vital organ, and the leper dies. Until the year 1873 the lot of the lepers on their help them, that all hearts were turned in love towards him. He first made the discovery when he had been at Molokai about ten years. He happened to drop some boiling water on his foot, and it gave him no pain.
All along the way, as He journeyed in Galilee, Judea or Samaria, he gave help and healing to the sick and sinful. When He heard the sad cry of the lepers, He drew near them and gave them cleansing. Those possessed of evil spirits, the blind, the soul sick, the unrealizing, hardened woman at the well, the beautiful, loving Magdelen, all found in Him a response to their utmost need.
"Perhaps if I go and stand near her and do that she will take notice of me." "Take notice of him, the enslaving thing!" thought Kathryn. "She'd jump for all her talk about lepers any girl would. He's TOO nice! There's something about HIM too." Robin did not jump. She had no time to do it because one dance followed another so quickly and some of them were even divided in two or three pieces.
To me this refuge represented the most various phases of human life, shadowed by misfortune; sometimes the peace of the graveyard without the dead, who speak in the language of epitaphs; one day I saw in it the home of lepers; another, the house of the Atridae; but, above all, I found there provincial life, with its contemplative ideas, its hour-glass existence.
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