It was night. In a large chamber, richly furnished, but dimly lighted, in the mansion in the Rue du Helder, the same apartment once inhabited by the Countess de Morcerf, motionless, and seemingly lifeless, with a countenance as pale as alabaster, and as still, lay M. Dantes, the Deputy from Marseilles. Although, in the ashy pallor of the lips and brow, and the fixed, serene, almost stern aspect of the immovable face, might be read unmistakable evidence of an exhausting and dangerous constitutional shock to the system, yet none of that emaciation, over which broods the shadow of the angel of death, resulting from protracted illness, was there to be seen. The broad white forehead--the raven hair, sparsely sprinkled with silver--the round temples--the delicately penciled brow, encircling, like a sable arch, the large and almond-formed eye--the full calm lip, and the chiseled chin and nostril--all these were as perfect now as when last before the reader. The cheek was, perhaps, slightly sunken, but it could not be more pallid than when last beheld; and but for that nameless quietude--that "rapture of repose," as Lord Byron well expresses it--that placid languor which sleeps on the features, which illness always creates and which spiritualizes and intellectualizes the most common features, the invalid might be supposed to be enjoying the most quiet slumber. Excepting the invalid, there was no one in that chamber save the faithful Ali, who moved noiselessly about, from time to time, or sat immovably upon the floor and gazed on his master's pallid face. As the silvery tones of the chamber clock tinkled forth the third quarter after ten, the door opened, and a small, dark, thin man, with large whiskers, keen, penetrating eyes, broad, bald forehead, thinly covered with gray hair, and apparently about fifty years of age, briskly entered. It was Dr. Orfila, a name somewhat known in medical science. Approaching the bed, he placed his fingers upon the sick man's pulse, and gazed earnestly on his face for some time in silence. "Strange!" he at length muttered; "the most powerful drugs in the most unheard-of quantities are powerless! Who, then, is this man, whose nature so differs from that of every one else? Can he so have accustomed his system to poisons, that, as with the King of Pontus, they are ineffectual to help or to harm him? His constitution must be iron! The vitality of a dozen men is in him, or he'd have been dead a month ago. Well, it's plain he's no worse, if he's no better. Drugs are useless, and he must be left to nature and his amazing constitution. This stupor, this utter death of all the faculties and senses for so long a time, is wonderful. Fever, delirium, anything but this death-like trance. It seems as if this man had been sleepless all his life before, and that now his overwrought brain and heart were compensating themselves for the toil and wakefulness of years. Could I but excite the nerves!"