Military life in Italy : sketches - Societa italiana di storia militare

drum waked the whole corps
ia a moment, and a band of soldiers
was gathered.
THE CHOLERA OF 1867. 413
They lighted their lanterns, drew out their
carts, took picks and spades, the officer of the guard placed
himself at the head of the escort, and they started. They
arrived in silence at the place indicated, the streets empty and
the houses closed and abandoned. After much difficulty they
broke down the doors and an unendurable odor of decay repelled
the soldiers. " " Courage
! One goes forward with a lantern;
the others follow slowly with their hands over their mouths,
casting their eyes timidly around the sepulchral chamber.
Stretched out on the ground on sacks of straw or rags, nude
or illy wrapped, in horrible filth, lay the bodies, side by side, or
one on top of the other, carelessly thrown together
: the faces
swollen, specked with black the mouth discolored
; by bloodstained
saliva ;
the bodies swollen, covered with large venous
spots and a net-work of green stripes
from the intestines
and veins ;
all the members resting on the ground, quite
crushed ; every semblance of humanity distorted or lost and
;
here and there, in those portions which were most decayed, the
first manifestations of animal life. Yet they were obliged to
approach those horrible couches, and seize and separate the
different members, raise those bodies one by one, and
carry them to the carts r
seeing them change and decompose
more horribly at every step, and drop here arid there a
fetid rag, or some other more filthy trace of itself. Oh,
it was
quite another thing from seeing the dead on the battle-field
stretched out in a pool of blood, torn by shot, or lacerated and
mutilated by the cannon-balls Then, the shouts of a thousand
comrades resound about us, we see battalions, gleaming
!
with bayonets, moving here and there through the fields and on