Not being able to find in Egypt the facilities he desired to embark for India, he proceeded to Syria, with the intention of joining the caravan which left Damascus for Bassora. But he fell dangerously ill at Acre. His intellectual faculties, affected by so many extraordinary events, broke down in an alarming fashion. He was seized by a religious exaltation and by an unfortunate devotion, for he distributed to his neighbours the money which remained to him. And Loustaunau lived on alms in a miserable hut in the orchards of Acre. "The Lion of the State and the Tiger in war" wandered miserably across the country. Having retained, the recollection of the brilliant part which prophecies had played in his splendid past, he was seized with a passion for the Bible, and made it his study to find a link between present events and ancient narrations. People called him "the prophet" and respected his inoffensive folly. On learning of the arrival of Lady Hester, he had hastened to her, armed with a thousand sacred texts announcing her coming. He imagined, besides, that she was on pilgrimage to Jerusalem, but he was not embarrassed to give another direction to his prophecies. Lady Hester received him very cordially, divining immediately what marvellous advantage she might derive, not from his flashes of lucidity which revealed the keen good sense of the peasant, lofty sentiments and an astonishing memory, but from his Biblical extravagances. In consequence, she bestowed upon him alms in abundance. Mentally, she already relegated Pierre to the rank of minor prophet. Loustaunau withdrew soon in torrents of rain. The tents were overturned like umbrellas, and Lady Hester had two narrow escapes of being buried under her own. But it was said that that evening the doctor did not have a moment's respite and that the march past of frightened people did not cease. Towards midnight they came to inform him that a Frank had arrived from Acre. He hastened into the dining-tent and found a young Dalmatian who was about to put on the uniform of an officer of the British Navy. Signor Thomaso Coschich--he bore this sonorous name--explained with much importance and volubility that he had been dragoman to the Princess of Wales during her journey from Palermo to Constantinople; that he had crossed the Mediterranean, in the midst of war, on a walnut-shell, so well that the fishermen of Cyprus had not recovered from their astonishment, and that he had come to find Lady Hester to take her back to England.