y swallow too large a morsel,
and when he had swallowed it, he began to stamp his feet, so as to get
more.

I was seized with pity for this saddening and ridiculous Tantalus, and
interposed on his behalf:

"Come, give him a little more rice!" But Simon replied: "Oh! no, my dear
fellow, if he were to eat too much, it would harm him, at his age."

I held my tongue, and thought over those words. Oh, ethics! Oh, logic!
Oh, wisdom! At his age! So they deprived him of his only remaining
pleasure out of regard for his health! His health! What would he do with
it, inert and trembling wreck that he was? They were taking care of his
life, so they said. His life? How many days? Ten, twenty, fifty, or a
hundred? Why? For his own sake? Or to preserve for some time longer the
spectacle of his impotent greediness in the family.

There was nothing left for him to do in this life, nothing whatever. He
had one single wish left, one sole pleasure; why not grant him that last
solace until he died?

After we had played cards for a long time, I went up to my room and to
bed; I was low-spirited and sad, sad, sad! and I sat at my window. Not a
sound could be heard outside but the beautiful warbling of a bird in a
tree, somewhere in the distance. No doubt the bird was singing in a low
voice during the night, to lull his mate, who was asleep on her eggs. And
I thought of my poor friend's five children, and pictured him to myself,
snoring by the side of his ugly wife.

SUICIDES

To Georges Legrand.

Hardly a day goes by without our reading a news item like the following
in some newspaper:

"On Wednesday night the people living in No. 40 Rue de-----,
were awakened by two successive shots. The explosions seemed to come from
the apartment occupied by M. X----. The door was broken in and
the man was found bathed in his blood, still holding in one hand the
revolver with which he had taken his life.

"M. X----was fifty-seven years of age, enjoying a comfortable
income, and had everything necessary to make him happy. No cause can be
found for his action."

What terrible grief, what unknown suffering, hidden despair, secret
wounds drive these presumably happy persons to suicide? We search, we
imagine tragedies of love, we suspect financial troubles, and, as we
never find anything definite, we apply to these deaths the word
"mystery."

A letter found on the desk of one of these "suicides without cause," and
written during his last n