270 FRISCHMANN
how hard they fought with themselves, who knows how they suffered, and what they endured?
And even if I live many years and grow old, I shall never forget the day and the men, and what was done on it, for they were no ordinary men, but great heroes.
Those were bitter times, such as had not been for long, and such as will not soon return.
A great calamity had descended on us from Heaven, and had spread abroad among the towns and over the country : the cholera had broken out.
The calamity had reached us from a distant land, and entered our little town, and clutched at young and old.
By day and by night men died like flies, and those who were left hung between life and death.
Who can number the dead who were buried in those days! Who knows the names of the corpses which lay about in heaps in the streets !
In the Jewish street the plague made great ravages: there was not a house where there lay not one dead not a family in which the calamity had not broken out.
In the house where we lived, on the second floor, nine people died in one day. In the basement there died a mother and four children, and in the house oppo- site we heard wild cries one whole night through, and in the morning we became aware that there was no one left in it alive.
The grave-diggers worked early and late, and the corpses lay about in the streets like dung. They stuck one to the other like clay, and one walked over dead bodies.
