To this, however, he added in postscript: 'but what epidemic?'

I had momentarily lost sight of the fact that Zaleski had so absolutely
cut himself off from the world, that he was not in the least likely to
know anything even of the appalling series of events to which I had
referred. And yet it is no exaggeration to say that those events had
thrown the greater part of Europe into a state of consternation, and
even confusion. In London, Manchester, Paris, and Berlin, especially
the excitement was intense. On the Sunday preceding the writing of my
note to Zaleski, I was present at a monster demonstration held in Hyde
Park, in which the Government was held up on all hands to the popular
derision and censure--for it will be remembered that to many minds the
mysterious accompaniments of some of the deaths daily occurring
conveyed a still darker significance than that implied in mere
self-destruction, and seemed to point to a succession of purposeless
and hideous murders. The demagogues, I must say, spoke with some
wildness and incoherence. Many laid the blame at the door of the
police, and urged that things would be different were they but placed
under municipal, instead of under imperial, control. A thousand
panaceas were invented, a thousand aimless censures passed. But the
people listened with vacant ear. Never have I seen the populace so
agitated, and yet so subdued, as with the sense of some impending doom.
The glittering eye betrayed the excitement, the pallor of the cheek the
doubt, the haunting _fear_. None felt himself quite safe; men
recognised shuddering the grin of death in the air. To tingle with
affright, and to know not why--that is the transcendentalism of terror.
The threat of the cannon's mouth is trivial in its effect on the mind
in comparison with the menace of a Shadow. It is the pestilence that
walketh _by night_ that is intolerable. As for myself, I confess to
being pervaded with a nameless and numbing awe during all those weeks.