kill himself, It must be something simple
and natural, which would preclude the idea of suicide. For he clung to
his reputation, to the name bequeathed to him by his ancestors; and if
his death awakened any suspicion people's thoughts might be, perhaps,
directed toward the mysterious crime, toward the murderer who could not
be found, and they would not hesitate to accuse him of the crime.

A strange idea came into his head, that of allowing himself to be crushed
by the tree at the foot of which he had assassinated little Louise Roque.
So he determined to have the wood cut down and to simulate an accident.
But the beech tree refused to crush his ribs.

Returning to his house, a prey to utter despair, he had snatched up his
revolver, and then did not dare to fire it.

The dinner bell summoned him. He could eat nothing, and he went upstairs
again. And he did not know what to do. Now that he had escaped the first
time, he felt himself a coward. Presently he would be ready, brave,
decided, master of his courage and of his resolution; now he was weak and
feared death as much as he did the dead girl.

He faltered:

"I dare not venture it again--I dare not venture it."

Then he glanced with terror, first at the revolver on the table and next
at the curtain which hid his window. It seemed to him, moreover, that
something horrible would occur as soon as his life was ended. Something?
What? A meeting with her, perhaps. She was watching for him; she was
waiting for him; she was calling him; and it was in order to seize him in
her turn, to draw him toward the doom that would avenge her, and to lead
him to die, that she appeared thus every night.

He began to cry like a child, repeating:

"I will not venture it again--I will not venture it."

Then he fell on his knees and murmured:

"My God! my God!" without believing, nevertheless, in God. And he no
longer dared, in fact, to look at his window, where he knew the
apparition was hiding, nor at his table, where his revolver gleamed. When
he had risen up he said:

"This cannot last; there must be an end of it"

The sound of his voice in the silent room made a chill of fear pass
through his limbs, but as he could not bring himself to come to a
determination, as he felt certain that his finger would always refuse to
pull the trigger of his revolver, he turned round to hide his head under
the bedclothes and began to reflect.

He would have to find some way in which he could