in anything but his brain. And yet this redoubtable fever had
ceased. It besieged with its last palpitations the tense extremities; it
ended by yielding as midnight struck.

The physician, seeing the incontestable improvement, returned to Blois,
after having ordered some prescriptions, and declared that the comte was
saved. Then commenced for Athos a strange, indefinable state. Free to
think, his mind turned towards Raoul, that beloved son. His imagination
penetrated the fields of Africa in the environs of Gigelli, where M. de
Beaufort must have landed with his army. A waste of gray rocks, rendered
green in certain parts by the waters of the sea, when it lashed the
shore in storms and tempest. Beyond, the shore, strewed over with these
rocks like gravestones, ascended, in form of an amphitheater among
mastic-trees and cactus, a sort of small town, full of smoke, confused
noises, and terrified movements. All of a sudden, from the bosom of
this smoke arose a flame, which succeeded, creeping along the houses,
in covering the entire surface of the town, and increased by degrees,
uniting in its red and angry vortices tears, screams, and supplicating
arms outstretched to Heaven.

There was, for a moment, a frightful _pele-mele_ of timbers falling
to pieces, of swords broken, of stones calcined, trees burnt and
disappearing. It was a strange thing that in this chaos, in which Athos
distinguished raised arms, in which he heard cries, sobs, and groans,
he did not see one human figure. The cannon thundered at a distance,
musketry madly barked, the sea moaned, flocks made their escape,
bounding over the verdant slope. But not a soldier to apply the match
to the batteries of cannon, not a sailor to assist in maneuvering the
fleet, not a shepherd in charge of the flocks. After the ruin of the
village, the destruction of the forts which dominated it, a ruin and
destruction magically wrought without the co-operation of a single human
being, the flames were extinguished, the smoke began to subside, then
diminished in intensity, paled and disappeared entirely. Night then came
over the scene; night dark upon the earth, brilliant in the firmament.
The large blazing stars which spangled the African sky glittered and
gleamed without illuminating anything.

A long silence ensued, which gave, for a moment, repose to the troubled
imagination of Athos; and as he felt that that which he saw was not
terminated, he applied more attentively the e