lling of
the veins of his forehead and the contraction of the muscles round the
eye, trace the terrible conflict which was going on between the living
energetic mind and the inanimate and helpless body. Barrois, his
features convulsed, his eyes suffused with blood, and his head thrown
back, was lying at full length, beating the floor with his hands, while
his legs had become so stiff, that they looked as if they would break
rather than bend. A slight appearance of foam was visible around the
mouth, and he breathed painfully, and with extreme difficulty.

Villefort seemed stupefied with astonishment, and remained gazing
intently on the scene before him without uttering a word. He had not
seen Morrel. After a moment of dumb contemplation, during which his face
became pale and his hair seemed to stand on end, he sprang towards the
door, crying out, "Doctor, doctor! come instantly, pray come!"

"Madame, madame!" cried Valentine, calling her step-mother, and running
up-stairs to meet her; "come quick, quick!--and bring your bottle of
smelling-salts with you."

"What is the matter?" said Madame de Villefort in a harsh and
constrained tone.

"Oh, come, come!"

"But where is the doctor?" exclaimed Villefort; "where is he?" Madame de
Villefort now deliberately descended the staircase. In one hand she held
her handkerchief, with which she appeared to be wiping her face, and in
the other a bottle of English smelling-salts. Her first look on entering
the room was at Noirtier, whose face, independent of the emotion which
such a scene could not fail of producing, proclaimed him to be in
possession of his usual health; her second glance was at the dying man.
She turned pale, and her eye passed quickly from the servant and rested
on the master.

"In the name of heaven, madame," said Villefort, "where is the doctor?
He was with you just now. You see this is a fit of apoplexy, and he
might be saved if he could but be bled!"

"Has he eaten anything lately?" asked Madame de Villefort, eluding
her husband's question. "Madame," replied Valentine, "he has not even
breakfasted. He has been running very fast on an errand with which my
grandfather charged him, and when he returned, took nothing but a glass
of lemonade."

"Ah," said Madame de Villefort, "why did he not take wine? Lemonade was
a very bad thing for him."

"Grandpapa's bottle of lemonade was standing just by his side; poor
Barrois was very thirsty, and was thankful to dr