nt the
medicine, which La Mole placed on a small silver chafing-dish, and
having taken this precaution, went to bed.

This action on the part of La Mole gave Coconnas a little quietude. He
tried to shut his eyes, but his feverish slumbers were only a
continuation of his waking delirium. The same phantom which haunted him
by day came to disturb him by night; across his hot eyelids he still saw
La Mole as threatening as ever, and a voice kept repeating in his ear:
"Midnight, midnight, midnight!"

Suddenly the echoing note of a clock's bell awoke in the night and
struck twelve. Coconnas opened his blood-shot eyes; the fiery breath
from his breast scorched his dry lips, an unquenchable thirst devoured
his burning throat; the little night lamp was burning as usual, and its
dim light made thousands of phantoms dance before his wandering eyes.

And then a horrible vision--he saw La Mole get out of bed, and after
walking up and down the room two or three times, as the sparrow-hawk
flits before the little bird it is trying to fascinate, come toward him
with his fist clinched.

Coconnas seized his poniard and prepared to plunge it into his enemy.

La Mole kept coming nearer.

Coconnas muttered:

"Ah! here you are again! you are always here! Come on! You threaten me,
do you! you smile! Come, come, come! ah, you still keep coming nearer, a
step at a time! Come, come, and let me kill you."

And suiting the action to the word, just as La Mole bent down to him,
Coconnas flashed out the poniard from under the clothes; but the effort
he made in rising exhausted him, the weapon dropped from his hand, and
he fell back upon his pillow.

"There, there!" said La Mole, gently lifting his head; "drink this, my
poor fellow, for you are burning up."

It was really a cup La Mole presented to Coconnas, who in the wild
excitement of his delirium took it to be a threatening fist.

But at the nectarous sensation of this beneficent draught, soothing his
lips and cooling his throat, Coconnas's reason, or rather his instinct,
came back to him, a never before experienced feeling of comfort pervaded
his frame; he turned an intelligent look at La Mole, who was supporting
him in his arms, and smiling on him; and from those eyes, so lately
glowing with fury, a tear rolled down his burning cheek, which drank it
with avidity.

"_Mordi!_" whispered Coconnas, as he fell back on his bolster. "If I get
over this, Monsieur de la Mole, you shall be my