o conduct himself with greater
dignity, in the false position to which all this infamy had led him; he
was rescuing his memory from opprobrium, and repairing the injury done
to his accomplice, so far as the wit of a man of the world could nullify
the result of the poet's trustfulness.

If Lucien had been taken back to one of the lower cells, he would have
been wrecked on the impossibility of carrying out his intentions, for
those boxes of masonry have no furniture but a sort of camp-bed and a
pail for necessary uses. There is not a nail, not a chair, not even a
stool. The camp-bed is so firmly fixed that it is impossible to move it
without an amount of labor that the warder would not fail to detect,
for the iron-barred peephole is always open. Indeed, if a prisoner under
suspicion gives reason for uneasiness, he is watched by a gendarme or a
constable.

In the private rooms for which prisoners pay, and in that whither Lucien
had been conveyed by the judge's courtesy to a young man belonging to
the upper ranks of society, the movable bed, table, and chair might
serve to carry out his purpose of suicide, though they hardly made it
easy. Lucien wore a long blue silk necktie, and on his way back from
examination he was already meditating on the means by which Pichegru,
more or less voluntarily, ended his days. Still, to hang himself, a man
must find a purchase, and have a sufficient space between it and the
ground for his feet to find no support. Now the window of his room,
looking out on the prison-yard, had no handle to the fastening; and the
bars, being fixed outside, were divided from his reach by the thickness
of the wall, and could not be used for a support.

This, then, was the plan hit upon by Lucien to put himself out of the
world. The boarding of the lower part of the opening, which prevented
his seeing out into the yard, also hindered the warders outside from
seeing what was done in the room; but while the lower portion of the
window was replaced by two thick planks, the upper part of both halves
still was filled with small panes, held in place by the cross pieces
in which they were set. By standing on his table Lucien could reach the
glazed part of the window, and take or break out two panes, so as to
have a firm point of attachment in the angle of the lower bar. Round
this he would tie his cravat, turn round once to tighten it round his
neck after securing it firmly, and kick the table from under his feet.