ldier after another
killed himself in a certain sentry box where one had committed suicide
in the camp at Boulogne. It is a known fact that Napoleon was obliged to
have the hut burned which had harbored an idea that had become a mortal
infection.

Louis' room had perhaps the same fatal effect as that sentry box.

These two facts would then be additional evidence in favor of his theory
of the transfusion of Will. I was conscious of strange disturbances,
transcending the most fantastic results of taking tea, coffee, or opium,
of dreams or of fever--mysterious agents, whose terrible action often
sets our brains on fire.

I ought perhaps to have made a separate book of these fragments of
thought, intelligible only to certain spirits who have been accustomed
to lean over the edge of abysses in the hope of seeing to the bottom.
The life of that mighty brain, which split up on every side perhaps,
like a too vast empire, would have been set forth in the narrative of
this man's visions--a being incomplete for lack of force or of weakness;
but I preferred to give an account of my own impressions rather than to
compose a more or less poetical romance.

Louis Lambert died at the age of twenty-eight, September 25, 1824, in
his true love's arms. He was buried by her desire in an island in the
park at Villenoix. His tombstone is a plain stone cross, without name or
date. Like a flower that has blossomed on the margin of a precipice, and
drops into it, its colors and fragrance all unknown, it was fitting
that he too should fall. Like many another misprized soul, he had often
yearned to dive haughtily into the void, and abandon there the secrets
of his own life.

Mademoiselle de Villenoix would, however, have been quite justified
in recording his name on that cross with her own. Since her partner's
death, reunion has been her constant, hourly hope. But the vanities of
woe are foreign to faithful souls.

Villenoix is falling into ruin. She no longer resides there; to the end,
no doubt, that she may the better picture herself there as she used to
be. She had said long ago:

"His heart was mine; his genius is with God."

CHATEAU DE SACHE. June-July 1832.

ADDENDUM

The following personages appear in other stories of the Human Comedy.

Lambert, Louis
A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
A Seaside Tragedy

Lefebvre
A Seaside Tragedy

Meyraux
A Distinguished Provincial