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The cold in the rooms was so great that hands and feet of many were frozen. Sometimes prisoners shaking with frost would sneak out at night to find a little wood. Some Westphalians who had tried this were beaten to death. Some of the prisoners were literally eaten up by lice.
In those days the rice grew ready husked, and the cotton bushes bore cloth all ready woven and men did not have to pick the lice out of each others' hair; men's skulls grew loose and each man could lift off his own skull and clean it and then replace it. But all this was spoilt by the misdeeds of a serving girl of one of the Rajas.
If only the book could have been illustrated by the pencil of Randolph Caldecott, such a union of sympathy between author and artist would have produced a work unparalleled in rural literature. It is amusing to watch them hunting over the lower side of the leaf like a sporting dog in a turnip field, and devouring the lice in quantities.
"His usual oath which he swore at least a thousand times a day was 'God damn my blood," he wrote, "and God so infected his blood that it bred lice in an incredible number, so that for twenty days he never washed his shirts but burned them.
"It is a ladybird." "Yes, of course, we know that, papa; but Nancy and I say it is a bug, and Louise says it's a beetle," explained Polly. "Louise is right," was his reply. "It is classed as a beetle. It is one of the best friends the farmer has, and the fruit grower too." "How is it useful to him?" asked Nancy. "Why, it eats the lice that spoil certain plants and leaves and grain.
The Trilby craze has overrun the land like the "grip" bacillus or the seven-year locust. Here in America it has become almost as disgusting as the plague of lice sent upon Egypt to eat the chilled steel veneering off the heart of Pharaoh the fickle. Everything is Trilby. We have Trilby bonnets and bonbons, poses and plays, dresses and drinks.
Before this dirty miracle the magicians of Egypt shrank dismayed. They made a feeble and altogether unsuccessful attempt to imitate Aaron's performance, and then drew back, declining to continue the contest. The lice settled them. "This," said they, "is the finger of God." But Pharaoh still refused to knuckle under. Even against the force of this supreme wonder his heart was steeled.
"M. P..., mayor of Crepy-au-Mont, knew how to restrain some low fellows who would have been only too glad to revolutionize his village.... And yet he was a republican.... One day, speaking of the revolutionary system, he said: 'They always say that it will not hold on; meanwhile, it sticks like lice. " "A general assembly of the inhabitants of Coucy and its outskirts was held, in which everybody was obliged to undergo an examination, stating his name, residence, birth-place, present occupation, and what he had done during the Revolution."
Nor could he find a comfortable position to lie in and kept twisting and turning and moaning. The other men were snoring or fidgeting restlessly. At length a fitful slumber came upon me and a confusion of rotting bodies swarming with monstrous lice passed before my closed eyes.
All that was necessary to be done during the day attending roll call, drawing and cooking rations, killing lice and washing could be disposed of in an hour's time, and we were left with fifteen or sixteen waking hours, for which there was absolutely no employment.
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