The Count of Monte Cristo

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and fly into superhuman regions; fear nothing, there is a watch over
you; and if your wings, like those of Icarus, melt before the sun, we
are here to ease your fall." He then said something in Arabic to Ali,
who made a sign of obedience and withdrew, but not to any distance. As
to Franz a strange transformation had taken place in him. All the bodily
fatigue of the day, all the preoccupation of mind which the events of
the evening had brought on, disappeared as they do at the first approach
of sleep, when we are still sufficiently conscious to be aware of the
coming of slumber. His body seemed to acquire an airy lightness, his
perception brightened in a remarkable manner, his senses seemed to
redouble their power, the horizon continued to expand; but it was not
the gloomy horizon of vague alarms, and which he had seen before he
slept, but a blue, transparent, unbounded horizon, with all the blue of
the ocean, all the spangles of the sun, all the perfumes of the summer
breeze; then, in the midst of the songs of his sailors,--songs so clear
and sonorous, that they would have made a divine harmony had their notes
been taken down,--he saw the Island of Monte Cristo, no longer as a