hed by
the tree at the foot of which he had assassinated little Louise Roque.
So he determined to have his wood cut down, and to simulate an accident.
But the beech-tree refused to smash his ribs.

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

The dinner bell summoned him. He could eat nothing, and then he went
up-stairs again. And he did not know what he was going to do. Now that
he had escaped the first time, he felt himself a coward. Presently, he
would be ready, fortified, 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 will not venture it again--I will 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 her object was to
seize him in her turn, to draw him towards the doom that would avenge
her, and to lead him to die so that she might exhibit herself 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 out through his window where he knew the
apparition was visible 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 shiver 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 plunged into reflection.

He would have to find some way in which he could force himself to die,
to invent some device against himself, which would not permit of any
hesitation on his part, any delay, any possible regrets. He envied
condemned criminals who are led to the scaffold surrounded by soldiers.
Oh! if he could only beg of some one to shoot him; if he could,
confessing the state of his soul, confessing his crime to a sure friend
who would never divulge it, obtain