Read "A Steam Voyage down the Danube, Volume 1" by Michael J. Quin online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
♦ HUNGARIAN REFORMS ♦
After coffee we rose from the table, and the Count and I walked to the Lazaretto, a clean, airy building, about a mile from Orsova. As he was about to go to Bucharest, and on his return from Wallachia would be obliged to perform quarantine in that edifice, he was desirous of examining the apartments which he was destined to occupy. We found the establishment in excellent order, clean, healthy, and very pleasantly situated. The wife of its medical superintendent was one of the most beautiful women I had ever beheld. She was sitting alone at a window, melancholy as if she were a captive, and indeed, as she observed to the Count, how could she be otherwise, exiled as she was in this solitude from every chance of society? She was pale and downcast; her voice came in touching tones from her heart; and though she brightened up for a while, while we were speaking to her at the casement, the too bright lustre of her black eyes indicated that her health was deeply undermined by consumption. She spoke French very well, and the Count informed me that she was an intelligent and accomplished woman, but that the solitude of the place had broken down her spirits.