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Here are some extracts from a still longer letter written to my mother much about the same time: "I hear Lady S has committed another novel, called The Three Peers, no doubt l'un pire que l'autre!... I have a great many kind messages to you from that very charming person Madame Récamier, who fully intends meeting you at Venice with Chateaubriand in October, for so she told me on Sunday. I met her at Miss Clarke's some time ago, and as I am a bad pusher I am happy to say she asked to be introduced to me, and was, thanks to you, my kind friend! She pressed me to go and see her, which I have done two or three times, and am going to do again at her amiable request on Thursday. I think that her fault is that she flatters a little too much. And flattery to one whose ears have so long been excoriated by abuse does not sound safe. However, all is right when she speaks of you. And the point she most eulogised in you is that which I have heard many a servile coward who could never go and do likewise" [no indication is to be found either in this letter or elsewhere to whom she alludes], "select for the same purpose, namely, your straightforward, unflinching, courageous integrity.... Balzac is furious at having his new play suppressed by Thiers, in which Arnauld acted Louis Philippe, wig and all, to the life; but, as I said to M. Dupin, 'Cest tout naturel que M. Thiers ne permetterait
Two results of her letter were then pleasant, sweet as two draughts of nectar; but applying my lips for the third time to the cup, and they were excoriated as with vinegar and gall.
Blandy in his last illness; that he was first called in upon Saturday evening, the 10th of August last; that the deceased complained that after drinking some water gruel on Monday night, the 5th of August, he perceived a grittiness in his mouth, attended with a pricking-burning, especially about his tongue and throat; that he had a pricking and burning in his stomach, accompanied with sickness; a pricking and griping in his bowels; but that afterwards he purged and vomited a good deal, which had lessened those symptoms he had complained of; that on Tuesday night, the 6th of August, he took more gruel, and had immediately a return of the same symptoms, but more aggravated; that he had besides hiccups, cold sweats, great anxieties, prickings in every external as well as internal part of his body, which he compared to so many needles darting at the same time into all parts of him; but the doctor tells you at the time he saw him he said he was easy, except in his mouth, his nose, lips, eyes, and fundament, and some transient pinchings in his bowels, which the doctor then imputed to the purgings and vomitings, for he had had some bloody stools; that he imputed the sensations upwards to the fumes of something he had taken the Monday and Tuesday before; that he inspected the parts affected, and found his tongue swelled, his throat excoriated and a little swelled, his lips dry, and pimples on them, pimples on the inside of his nostrils, and his eyes bloodshot; that next morning he examined his fundament, which he found surrounded with ulcers; his pulse trembled and intermitted, his breath was interrupted and laborious, his complexion yellowish, and he could not without the greatest difficulty swallow a teaspoonful of the thinnest liquid; that he then asked him if he had given offence to any person whatever.
Indeed, ants, mosquitoes, and sand-flies literally feast upon the wayfarer, until the entire surface of his face and limbs becomes excoriated. How the natives with their exposed bodies exist under such circumstances is a mystery. The redundancy of insect and reptile life is wonderful in equatorial regions, but as regards the mosquito, where is this pest not encountered?
"Oh, Monsieur, Monsieur!" cried Rosalie, and, snatching a scarf from her bosom, thrust it in upon the excoriated breast, as Charley, hardly realising what had happened, choked back moans of pain. "What did he do?" he gasped. "The iron cross from the church door!" she answered. "A minute, one minute, Monsieur!"
Let the reader imagine fifteen unfortunate men, almost naked; their bodies and faces disfigured by the scorching beams of the sun; ten of the fifteen were hardly able to move; our limbs were excoriated, our sufferings were deeply imprinted on our features, our eyes were hollow, and almost wild, and our long beards rendered our appearance still more frightful; we were but the shadows of ourselves.
There was need of his virile championship, and none will say that there was ever in him undue thought of self or indifference to the best humanity. My father held fast to the sharp-cornered saint and prophet, though somewhat excoriated in the association.
The sea-water had almost entirely excoriated the skin of our lower extremities; we were covered with contusions or wounds, which, irritated by the salt water, extorted from us the most piercing cries. About twenty of us only were capable of standing upright or walking.
So it was while the picture of his home scene remained unbroken and serene; but the hideous mass of last night's holocaust was now before his eyes, with little streams of smoke rising from the cindered pile, and a hundred things with which his eyes had been familiar lay distorted, excoriated and useless.
After a little burnt oakum had excoriated his nose, and a certain quantity of the cold salt-water from alongside had wetted through his bed-clothes, Mr Vanslyperken was completely recovered, and was able to speak and look about him. Corporal Van Spitter trembled a little as his commandant fixed his eyes upon him, and he redoubled his attention.
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