On April 9, while riding with Gamba, he was caught in a violent storm of rain. "I should make a fine soldier if I did not know how to stand such a trifle as this," he said to his companion; but two hours after his return he was shivering and complaining: "I am in great pain," he said to Gamba. "I should not care for dying but I cannot bear these pains." On April 11, he was well enough to ride again, but on the 12th, he was in bed with what was diagnosed as rheumatic fever, and the fever never again left him. The inevitable proposal to bleed him was repeated. At first he resisted, with the usual talk about the lancet being more deadly than the sword, but in the end he acquiesced. "There!" he said. "You are, I see, a d----d set of butchers. Take away as much blood as you like, and have done with it." They took twenty ounces of blood from him. It was an absurd treatment, and probably hastened the end; but he had bad doctors, and even the good doctors of these days knew no better. Moreover his constitution was shattered. He was falling to pieces like an old ruin, and it is doubtful whether the wisest treatment could have saved him. There was a further rally, however, and Gamba, who was laid up in an adjoining apartment with a sprained ankle, hobbled in to see him. "I contrived," he writes, "to walk to his room. His look alarmed me much. He was too calm. He talked to me in the kindest way, but in a sepulchral tone. I could not bear it. A flood of tears burst from me, and I was obliged to retire." Soon after this, the final delirium set in. His attendants stood by his bedside weeping copiously. They could not, says Cordy Jeaffreson cynically, have wept more copiously "if there had been a prize of a thousand guineas for the one who wept most." Afterwards he was alone, at one time with Parry, and at another time with Fletcher; and of his last articulate words there is more than one account. It is told that he spoke of Greece: "I have given her my time, my money, and my health--what could I do more? Now I give her my life." It is told that he gesticulated wildly, as if mounting a breach to an assault, and calling, half in English, half in Italian: "Forward--forward--courage--follow my example--don't be afraid." It is told again that he stammered unintelligible messages to Lady Byron and to his sister.