o the middle of the room,
crying, with a terrible voice,--

"My clothes, Lefloch, my clothes!"

The doctor had hastened forward to support him; but he pushed him aside
with one arm, continuing,--

"By the holy name of God, Lefloch, make haste! Run to the harbor,
wretch! there must be a steamer there. I buy it. Let it get up steam,
instantly. In an hour I must be on my way."

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.