But this great effort had exhausted him.  He tottered; his eyes dosed; and he fainted away in the arms of his sailor, stammering,—­

“That letter, doctor, that letter; read it, and you will see I must go.”

Raising his lieutenant, and holding him like a child in his arms, Lefloch carried him back to his bed; but, for more than ten minutes, the doctor and the faithful sailor were unable to tell whether they had not a corpse before their eyes, and were wasting all their attentions.

No!  It was Lefloch who first noticed a slight tremor.

“He moves!” he cried out.  “Look, commandant, he moves!  He is alive!  We’ll pull him through yet.”

They succeeded, in fact, to rekindle this life which had appeared so nearly extinct; but they did not bring back that able intellect.  The cold and indifferent look with which Daniel stared at them, when he at last opened his eyes once more, told them that the tottering reason of the poor man had not been strong enough to resist this new shock.  And still he must have retained some glimpses of the past; for his efforts to collect his thoughts were unmistakable.  He passed his hands mechanically over his forehead, as if trying to remove the mist which enshrouded his mind.  Then a convulsion shook him; and his lips overflowed with incoherent words, in which the recollection of the fearful reality, and the extravagant conceptions of delirium, were strangely mixed.

“I foresaw it,” said the chief surgeon.  “I foresaw it but too fully.”

He had by this time exhausted all the resources of his skill and long experience; he had followed all the suggestions nature vouchsafed; and he could do nothing more now, but wait.  Picking up the fatal letter, he went into the embrasure of one of the windows to read it.  Daniel had in his wanderings said enough to enable the doctor to understand the piercing cry of distress contained in the poor girl’s letter; and Lefloch, who watched him, saw a big tear running down his cheek, and in the next moment a flood of crimson overspread his face.

“This is enough to madden a man!” he growled.  “Poor Champcey!”

And like a man who no longer possesses himself, who must move somehow, he stuffed the letter in his pocket, and went out, swearing till the plaster seemed to fall from the ceiling.

Precisely at the same hour, the magistrate, who had been notified of the trial, came to ask for news.  Seeing the old surgeon cross the hospital yard, he ran up and asked, as soon as he was within hearing,—­

“Well?”

The doctor went a few steps farther, and then replied in a tone of despair,—­

“Lieut.  Champcey is lost!”

“Great God!  What do you mean?”

“What I think.  Daniel has a violent brain-fever, or rather congestion of the brain.  Weakened, exhausted, extenuated as he is, how can he endure it?  He cannot; that is evident.  It would take another miracle to save him now; and you may rest assured it won’t be done.  In less than twenty-four hours he will be a dead man, and his assassins will triumph.”