One can guess Wolfe's fearful despair that night. A month had passed. He had accomplished worse than nothing. In another month the fleet must leave the St. Lawrence to avoid autumn storms. Fragile at all times, Wolfe fell ill, ill of fever and of chagrin, and those officers over whose head he had been promoted did not spare their criticisms, their malice. It is so easy to win battles of life and war in theory. As for Quebec, it was felt the siege was over, the contest won. Still bad news had come from the west. Niagara had fallen before the English, and the forts on Lake Champlain were abandoned to Amherst. Nothing now barred the English advance down the Richelieu to Montreal. Montcalm dispatches Lévis to Montreal with eight hundred men. {268} Why did Amherst not come to Wolfe's aid? His enemies say because the commanding general was so sure the siege of Quebec would fail that he did not want any share of the blame. That may be unjust. Amherst was of the slow, cautious kind, who marched doggedly to victory. He may not have wished to risk a second Ticonderoga. Wolfe's position was now desperate. His only alternatives were success or ruin. "You can't cure me," he told his surgeon, "but mend me up so I can go on for a few days." What he did in those few days left his name immortal. Robert Stobo, who had been captured from Washington's battalions on the Ohio, and who knew every foot of Quebec from five years of captivity, had escaped, joined Wolfe, and drawn plans of all surroundings. From his ship above Quebec Wolfe could see there was one path just behind the city where men might ascend to the Plains of Abraham outside the rear wall, but the path was guarded, and Bougainville's troops patrolled westward as far as Cape Rouge. [Illustration: LOUIS JOSEPH, MARQUIS DE MONTCALM] It was now September. From their trenches above the river the French could see the English evacuating camp at Montmorency. They were jubilant. Surely the English were giving up the siege. Night after night English transports loaded with soldiers ascended the St. Lawrence above Quebec. What did it mean? Was it a feint to draw Montcalm's men away from the east side? {269} The French general was sleeplessly anxious. He had not passed a night in bed since the end of June. The fall rains were beginning, and another month of work in the trenches meant half the army invalided.