midnight
It soon gained the head . The physician made two successive bleedings , which unlodged it , but left the patient very weak , and without power of action in anything but his brain . And yet this redoubtable fever had ceased . It besieged with its last palpitations the stiffened extremities ; it ended by yielding as midnight struck . The physician , seeing the incontestable improvement , returned to Blois , after having ordered some prescriptions , and declared that the comte was saved . Then commenced for Athos a strange , indefinable state . Free to think , his mind turned toward Raoul , that beloved son .