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Updated: June 6, 2025
His humble dress and the outline of his haggard face showed that he was probably one of the poor Hebrew exiles who still dwelt in great numbers in the vicinity. His pallid skin, dry and yellow as parchment, bore the mark of the deadly fever which ravaged the marsh-lands in autumn.
From his position he looked across the courtyard toward the garden where stiff cypress-trees stood sentry among the mignonette and the roses, now in the full glory of their autumn bloom. Beyond the garden, the rough outline of the walls cut a straight line across the distant plains, which melted away into the haze of the marsh-lands by the banks of the Gironde far to the westward.
Yes, on that dark night, with that wild unsteady north wind howling, though it was May time, it was doubtless dismal enough in the forest, where the boughs clashed eerily, and where, as the wanderer in that place hurried along, strange forms half showed themselves to him, the more fearful because half seen in that way: dismal enough doubtless on wide moors where the great wind had it all its own way: dismal on the rivers creeping on and on between the marsh-lands, creeping through the willows, the water trickling through the locks, sounding faintly in the gusts of the wind.
The draining of marsh-lands and levels began the exile of wild-fowl; and now the increasing preservation of trout adds to the difficulties under which these birds strive to retain a hold upon inland waters. The Thames is too long and wide for complete exclusion; but it is surprising how few moorhens even are to be seen along the river. Lesser rivers are still more empty, as it were, of life.
These are trifling incidents, yet they are the straws, telling that the wind blows from the marsh-lands of inexactness not from the mountain tops of truth. Once a woman loses a sense of the great value of absolute truthfulness, she has blurred the clear mirror of her soul.
I had a confused idea that this was the 'good week. Great heavens!" Gwynne had watched her with considerable interest and curiosity. But he answered, soothingly: "Well, what of it? The tide turns, doesn't it." It happened that he had had no experience of marsh-lands. "Yes in six hours." "Six hours! Well, what of it? It is all in the day's work. Look at it as a jolly adventure."
As yet the plains of Pisa had not been reduced to marsh-lands by the combined negligence and jealousy of the Florentine Republic, neither had the rich country that lay around Rome been converted into a barren desert by the wars of the Colonna and Orsini families; not yet had the Marquis of Marignan razed to the ground a hundred and twenty villages in the republic of Siena alone; and though the Maremma was unhealthy, it was not yet a poisonous marsh: it is a fact that Flavio Blando, writing in 1450, describes Ostia as being merely less flourishing than in the days of the Romans, when she had numbered 50,000 inhabitants, whereas now in our own day there are barely 30 in all.
So far as these were concerned, there was little danger in going away empty from the city. Then the two horsemen rode on in silence. They were far out in the marsh-lands before Kosmaroff spoke. "I am sure," he then said, "that I was seen as I climbed back over the wall. I heard a stir among the rifles. But they could not recognize me. It is just possible that I may not be suspected.
At last they set out, in full daylight, on a high river still encumbered by ice. It was much warmer during the day now; but the evenings were cold, and a thick mist usually arose from the marsh-lands. This soon enveloped them, and they swept on unseen. None could have followed them into the mist, for none had Kosmaroff's knowledge of the river.
His pallid skin, dry and yellow as parchment, bore the mark of the deadly fever which ravaged the marsh-lands in autumn. The chill of death was in his lean hand, and, as Artaban released it, the arm fell back inertly upon the motionless breast.
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