longer ask his wife to intercede for him. He was without money of his
own, with out the means of obtaining it; from his wife he had ceased to
expect even sympathy, and from the world he knew, the fact that he was
a self-made king caused him always to be pointed out with ridicule as a
charlatan, as a jest.

The soldier of varying fortunes, the duellist and dreamer, the devout
Catholic and devout Buddhist, saw the forty-third year of his life only
as the meeting-place of many fiascos.

His mind was tormented with imaginary wrongs, imaginary slights,
imaginary failures.

This young man, who could paint pictures, write books, organize colonies
oversea, and with a sword pick the buttons from a waistcoat, forgot the
twenty good years still before him; forgot that men loved him for the
mistakes he had made; that in parts of the great city of Paris his name
was still spoken fondly, still was famous and familiar.

In his book on the "Ethics of Suicide," for certain hard places in life
he had laid down an inevitable rule of conduct.

As he saw it he had come to one of those hard places, and he would not
ask of others what he himself would not perform.

From Mexico he set out for California, but not to the house his wife had
prepared for him.

Instead, on February 9, 1898, at El Paso, he left the train and
registered at a hotel.

At 7.30 in the evening he went to his room, and when, on the following
morning, they kicked in the door, they found him stretched rigidly upon
the bed, like one lying in state, with, near his hand, a half-emptied
bottle of poison.

On a chair was pinned this letter to his wife:

"My DEAREST,--No news from you, although you have had plenty of time to
write. Harvey has written me that he has no one in view at present to
buy my land. Well, I shall have tasted the cup of bitterness to the very
dregs, but I do not complain. Good-by. I forgive you your conduct toward
me and trust you will be able to forgive yourself. I prefer to be a dead
gentleman to a living blackguard like your father."

And when they searched his open trunk for something that might identify
the body on the bed, they found the crown of Trinidad.

You can imagine it: the mean hotel bedroom, the military figure with
its white face and mustache, "_a la_ Louis Napoleon," at rest upon the
pillow, the startled drummers and chambermaids peering in from the hall,
and the landlord, or coroner, or doctor, with a bewildered countenance,