error.[210] On his wounded horse, covered with blood and with his clothes rent, he threw himself into the midst of the agitated groups, exclaiming, “To me, my children! I am your admiral. Rally around me!”[211] Heroic, but unavailing efforts! Supreme appeal of a voice till then so dear, but now unrecognized--a voice which had just uttered its last words! The bewildered soldiers remained insensible to these generous supplications, and it was only when daylight began to illumine this field of carnage that the confusion ceased with the cause which had produced it. But then the Turks, who had had time to recover their courage, and who proved themselves as prompt in rallying as they had been alert in taking to flight, rushed on, shouting the name of the Prophet, and with irresistible impetuosity became in their turn assailants, and pursued the French to the very gates of Candia.[212] When, under the shelter of the ramparts, an account was taken of the loss, and after the wounded who had managed to reach the town had been examined, Beaufort’s absence was perceived. Those who explain this absence by an abduction which Colbert, his enemy, had ordered, do not fail to note the presence of the Minister’s brother, Colbert de Maulevrier, by the side of Beaufort during the battle, and they see in the commandant of the Guards the executioner of the Minister’s vengeance. But how can this singular belief be held, when a letter from Maulevrier to his brother, the first which he wrote to him after the battle, far from giving the Minister an account of Beaufort’s abduction, contains these words:[213]--“The unhappy fate of M. l’Amiral is the most deplorable thing in the world. As I was obliged to go backwards and forwards during the whole time that the attack lasted, in order to assemble what I could of the troops, there was no one of whom I did not make inquiries respecting him,[214] and not one could ever tell me anything of him.” It is true that these words, if they destroy the supposition of an abduction ordered by Colbert, may still allow it to be supposed that Beaufort was a prisoner of the Turks. But the laconism of this portion of the letter is accounted for when one discovers from the remainder of it that the writer was suffering from his wounds, worn-out with fatigue, and solely preoccupied with his restoration to health. It is true again that Navailles, in his despatch, makes use of the word _perte_,[215] applicable equally to the death of the Admiral and to the hypothesis that he was a prisoner in the hands of the Turks. But how can a single doubt remain when the account addressed to the Minister of Marine states that the Chevalier de Flacourt, having been sent to the Turkish camp with a flag of truce, for the purpose of making inquiries respecting the Admiral, learned that he was not among the prisoners;[216] and when a report addressed to Colbert on the 27th, not by a sick man, deprived of news,