ok a last look at the old house, stole softly along
the passage, and opened the street door; but in spite of his caution, he
awakened Kolb, who slept on a mattress on the workshop floor.

"Who goes there?" cried Kolb.

"It is I, Lucien; I am going away, Kolb."

"You vould haf done better gif you at nefer kom," Kolb muttered audibly.

"I should have done better still if I had never come into the world,"
Lucien answered. "Good-bye, Kolb; I don't bear you any grudge for
thinking as I think myself. Tell David that I was sorry I could not bid
him good-bye, and say that this was my last thought."

By the time the Alsacien was up and dressed, Lucien had shut the house
door, and was on his way towards the Charente by the Promenade de
Beaulieu. He might have been going to a festival, for he had put on his
new clothes from Paris and his dandy's trinkets for a drowning shroud.
Something in Lucien's tone had struck Kolb. At first the man thought of
going to ask his mistress whether she knew that her 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 f