Since then he had discovered that he had progressed not one step farther than that terrified slave boy on BelleAeur Plantation, in terms of what life could and could not take away.

It was June. A deadly time in New Orleans.

"That's absolute nonsense," blustered a railway speculator in a dark gray coat. "Tom Jenkins says he's been down the river almost to the Belize and there hasn't been a sign of yellow jack, much less the cholera, anywhere in the countryside."

"Not in the countryside, no." Dr. Ker of the Charity Hospital took a glass of champagne from the little waiter's tray with a polite nod of thanks. "On the whole the cholera isn't a disease of the countryside. We've had two cases of yellow fever here in the city."

"Two?" Granville snorted. "Well, there's a reason to turn tail and run, by gosh! Are you sure they were yellow fever, Doctor? Dr. Connaud-he's my physician, and a splendid fellow with a knife, just splendid!-says it isn't possible that there should be epidemics three summers in a row."

"It's the newspapers," declared Colonel Pritchard. "Damned journalists'll print anything that'll sell their filthy rags. They don't care about the local businesses, or what it does to a city's property values if word gets around there's fever. All they think about is getting a few more copies sold.

As for you, Dr. Ker, I'm sure you'll find if you open those two so-called fever victims up that there's some kind of reason for the same symptoms..."

Was that what young Gabriel had walked from Rue Douane in the old French town to tell him?

January wondered. What he wouldn't tell the servants of this stranger's house? That Olympe was sick? Or her husband, Paul? One of the other children?

Yellow fever? Cholera?

Not cholera, he prayed desperately. Blessed Virgin, please, not that.

And while his arms trembled with fatigue, and his heart squeezed with dread, and he felt as if someone were trying to pry his shoulder blades loose with crowbars, he skipped through moulinets, bris?s, cross-passes, and olivettes, as lightly as a happy child running in a meadow of flowers. A wave of faintness passed over him; he concentrated on ballottes and glissades, on the glittering protection of the music's beauty that could almost carry his mind away from the pain.