The Marquis stared at me, took my hand, and earnestly asked if I was ill. I could answer only with a deep groan. Gradually the process of restoration was completed; and I was able, though very faintly, to tell him how very ill I had been; and then to describe the violation of my letters, during the time of his absence from the carriage. "Good heaven!" he exclaimed, "the miscreant did not get at my dispatch-box?" I satisfied him, so far as I had observed, on that point. He placed the box on the seat beside him, and opened and examined its contents very minutely. "Yes, undisturbed; all safe, thank heaven!" he murmured. "There are half-a-dozen letters here, that I would not have some people read, for a great deal." He now asked with a very kind anxiety all about the illness I complained of. When he had heard me, he said-- "A friend of mine once had an attack as like yours as possible. It was on board-ship, and followed a state of high excitement. He was a brave man like you; and was called on to exert both his strength and his courage suddenly. An hour or two after, fatigue overpowered him, and he appeared to fall into a sound sleep. He really sank into a state which he afterwards described so, that I think it must have been precisely the same affection as yours." "I am happy to think that my attack was not unique. Did he ever experience a return of it." "I knew him for years after, and never heard of any such thing. What strikes me is a parallel in the predisposing causes of each attack. Your unexpected, and gallant hand-to-hand encounter, at such desperate odds, with an experienced swordsman, like that insane colonel of dragoons, your fatigue, and, finally, your composing yourself, as my other friend did, to sleep." "I wish," he resumed, "one could make out who that _coquin_ was, who examined your letters. It is not worth turning back, however, because we should learn nothing. Those people always manage so adroitly. I am satisfied, however, that he must have been an agent of the police. A rogue of any other kind would have robbed you." I talked very little, being ill and exhausted, but the Marquis talked on agreeably.