Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 2).djvu/52

 'You will lose yours. All the people are sickly'

'They are sickly chiefly because they are dirty. The heats never hurt me; I bathe twice a day. But strangers are always ill here. If they wait too long, they die.'

'Do you wish that I should die?'

'No; I do not. That is why I tell you to go away while it is time. If you stay much longer the fever will get in your blood, in your bones, it will be like fire inside you, and your limbs will feel to you no better than the dry empty canes in autumn. The fever has never touched me, but I have seen it often; and then there is the ague that comes with it, and you shiver as if you were up to your throat in snow, though the air is like the blast of an oven round you. It will be a pity if you wait for that. You will never be the same man again after it, even if you do throw it off you in time.'

'But why are you so well here?'

'I do not know. Why are the roebucks well, and the boars, and the hares? I and they belong to the soil; you are a stranger.'