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Thus, according to the story, Merlin was shut in, a corrupted and putrifying body with a living soul, to which still inhered the faculty of returning in audible sounds a prophetic answer to such as resorted to it as an oracle.
Corpses of dead soldiers with blackening faces covered with flies were rotting in the sun, and the reek of putrifying flesh was nauseating. Added to this the heat was overpowering, the artillery was firing short, and there was little or no water obtainable. The Battalion was in touch with the French, and there were a few Frenchmen in the trenches with the men.
Where and what is this end of mankind, if the last generation of the globe is to perish with the destruction of this globe, or languish and die even before that destruction, and if nothing will be left of mankind beyond the soulless material for new formations in their putrifying corpses and desolate homes and works of art?
The flower whose exquisite beauty and attractive sweetness once excited so much desire, is faded, and mingled with common dust! There lies a form, which was so lovely and so beloved, to furnish a repast for creeping worms! How bereft of that spirit which once animated it! How altered and defaced by the putrifying touch of mortality!
The reader can only take my word for it that this smell was probably the worst ever known on the earth, unless he accepts as true the story of Tobit and the "fishy fumes" by means of which that ancient hero defended himself in his retreat from the pursuing devil. It was the smell of carrion, of putrifying flesh, and of that old and ever-newly moistened crust of dust and coagulated blood.
One might incline to think, that the prejudice in favour of bad smells had not quite abandoned the inhabitants, who could allow for months, and that even in the consummating fervour of the summer sun, and in open despite of his face too, of putrifying dunghills within the precincts of their city.
But so it is, Sir, that of this vast number of dead bodies that go putrifying up and down the streets, not one of them has come to us to be buried. Though we should be loth to be any hindrance to our good friends the physicians, yet we cannot but take notice what infection Her Majesty's subjects are liable to from the horrible stench of so many corpses.
A moldly moldering molish voice, suggesting putrifying tracts and orifices, answers with a cob-webbish patience so far beyond despair as to be indescribable: "La soupe." "Well, the soup, I just gave it to you, Monsieur Savy." "Must have a little something else. My money is chez le directeur. Please take my money which is chez le directeur and give me anything else."
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