Holding his head between his hands, he wept for a long time.
His steed had wandered away; his dogs had forsaken him; the solitude seemed to threaten him with unknown perils.

Impelled by a sense of sickening terror, he ran across the fields, and choosing a path at random, found himself almost immediately at the gates of the castle.
That night he could not rest, for, by the flickering light of the hanging lamp, he beheld again the huge black stag.

He fought against the obsession of the prediction and kept repeating: "No! No! No! I cannot slay them!" and then he thought: "Still, supposing I desired to?
--" and he feared that the devil might inspire him with this desire.
During three months, his distracted mother prayed at his bedside, and his father paced the halls of the castle in anguish.

He consulted the most celebrated physicians, who prescribed quantities of medicine.

Julian's illness, they declared, was due to some injurious wind or to amorous desire.