The following day he rose at his accustomed hour,—­transacted business, and was even able to take his ride in the olive woods, accompanied, as usual, by his long train of Suliotes.  He complained, however, of perpetual shudderings, and had no appetite.  On his return home he remarked to Fletcher that his saddle, he thought, had not been perfectly dried since yesterday’s wetting, and that he felt himself the worse for it.  This was the last time he ever crossed the threshold alive.  In the evening Mr. Finlay and Mr. Millingen called upon him.  “He was at first (says the latter gentleman) gayer than usual; but on a sudden became pensive.”

On the evening of the 11th his fever, which was pronounced to be rheumatic, increased; and on the 12th he kept his bed all day, complaining that he could not sleep, and taking no nourishment whatever.  The two following days, though the fever had apparently diminished, he became still more weak, and suffered much from pains in the head.

It was not till the 14th that his physician, Dr. Bruno, finding the sudorifics which he had hitherto employed to be unavailing, began to urge upon his patient the necessity of being bled.  Of this, however, Lord Byron would not hear.  He had evidently but little reliance on his medical attendant; and from the specimens this young man has since given of his intellect to the world, it is, indeed, lamentable,—­supposing skill to have been, at this moment, of any avail,—­that a life so precious should have been intrusted to such ordinary hands.  “It was on this day, I think,” says Count Gamba, “that, as I was sitting near him, on his sofa, he said to me, ’I was afraid I was losing my memory, and, in order to try, I attempted to repeat some Latin verses with the English translation, which I have not endeavoured to recollect since I was at school.  I remembered them all except the last word of one of the hexameters.’”

To the faithful Fletcher, the idea of his master’s life being in danger seems to have occurred some days before it struck either Count Gamba or the physician.  So little, according to his friend’s narrative, had such a suspicion crossed Lord Byron’s own mind, that he even expressed himself “rather glad of his fever, as it might cure him of his tendency to epilepsy.”  To Fletcher, however, it appears, he had professed, more than once, strong doubts as to the nature of his complaint being so slight as the physician seemed to suppose it, and on his servant renewing his entreaties that he would send for Dr. Thomas to Zante, made no further opposition; though still, out of consideration for those gentlemen, he referred him on the subject to Dr. Bruno and Mr. Millingen.  Whatever might have been the advantage or satisfaction of this step, it was now rendered wholly impossible by the weather,—­such a hurricane blowing into the port that not a ship could get out.  The rain, too, descended in torrents, and between the floods on the land-side and the sirocco from the sea, Missolonghi was, for the moment, a pestilential prison.