r brother
had left the house; but as the deepest silence prevailed, he concluded
that the departure had been arranged beforehand, and lay down again
and slept.

Little, considering the gravity of the question, has been written on
the subject of suicide; it has not been studied. Perhaps it is a
disease that cannot be observed. Suicide is one effect of a sentiment
which we will call self-esteem, if you will, to prevent confusion by
using the word "honor." When a man despises himself, and sees that
others despise him, when real life fails to fulfil his hopes, then
comes the moment when he takes his life, and thereby does homage to
society--shorn of his virtues or his splendor, he does not care to
face his fellows. Among atheists--Christians being without the
question of suicide--among atheists, whatever may be said to the
contrary, none but a base coward can take up a dishonored life.

There are three kinds of suicide--the first is only the last and acute
stage of a long illness, and this kind belongs distinctly to
pathology; the second is the suicide of despair; and the third the
suicide based on logical argument. Despair and deductive reasoning had
brought Lucien to this pass, but both varieties are curable; it is
only the pathological suicide that is inevitable. Not infrequently you
find all three causes combined, as in the case of Jean-Jacques
Rousseau.

Lucien having made up his mind fell to considering methods. The poet
would fain die as became a poet. At first he thought of throwing
himself into the Charente and making an end then and there; but as he
came down the steps from Beaulieu for the last time, he heard the
whole town talking of his suicide; he saw the horrid sight of a
drowned dead body, and thought of the recognition and the inquest;
and, like some other suicides, felt that vanity reached beyond death.

He remembered the day spent at Courtois' mill, and his thoughts
returned to the round pool among the willows that he saw as he came
along by the little river, such a pool as you often find on small
streams, with a still, smooth surface that conceals great depths
beneath. The water is neither green nor blue nor white nor tawny; it
is like a polished steel mirror. No sword-grass grows about the
margin; there are no blue water forget-me-nots, nor broad lily leaves;
the grass at the brim is short and thick, and the weeping willows that
droop over the edge grow picturesquely enough. It is easy to imagine a