e
thought of a crime revives my spirits, of violence and murder, either or
both, I am really incapable of carrying out the design. The countess is
an admirable monster who would crave for pardon, and not every man is an
Othello.'

"'She is like every woman who is beyond our reach,' Rastignac
interrupted.

"'I am mad,' I cried; 'I can feel the madness raging at times in my
brain. My ideas are like shadows; they flit before me, and I cannot
grasp them. Death would be preferable to this life, and I have carefully
considered the best way of putting an end to the struggle. I am not
thinking of the living Foedora in the Faubourg Saint Honore, but of my
Foedora here,' and I tapped my forehead. 'What to you say to opium?'

"'Pshaw! horrid agonies,' said Rastignac.

"'Or charcoal fumes?'

"'A low dodge.'

"'Or the Seine?'

"'The drag-nets, and the Morgue too, are filthy.'

"'A pistol-shot?'

"'And if you miscalculate, you disfigure yourself for life. Listen to
me,' he went on, 'like all young men, I have pondered over suicide.
Which of us hasn't killed himself two or three times before he is
thirty? I find there is no better course than to use existence as a
means of pleasure. Go in for thorough dissipation, and your passion or
you will perish in it. Intemperance, my dear fellow, commands all forms
of death. Does she not wield the thunderbolt of apoplexy? Apoplexy is
a pistol-shot that does not miscalculate. Orgies are lavish in all
physical pleasures; is not that the small change for opium? And the riot
that makes us drink to excess bears a challenge to mortal combat with
wine. That butt of Malmsey of the Duke of Clarence's must have had a
pleasanter flavor than Seine mud. When we sink gloriously under the
table, is not that a periodical death by drowning on a small scale? If
we are picked up by the police and stretched out on those chilly benches
of theirs at the police-station, do we not enjoy all the pleasures of
the Morgue? For though we are not blue and green, muddy and swollen
corpses, on the other hand we have the consciousness of the climax.

"'Ah,' he went on, 'this protracted suicide has nothing in common with
the bankrupt grocer's demise. Tradespeople have brought the river into
disrepute; they fling themselves in to soften their creditors' hearts.
In your place I should endeavor to die gracefully; and if you wish
to invent a novel way of doing it, by struggling with life after this
manner, I will be yo