ain die as became a poet. At first he thought of throwing himself
into the Charente and making an end then and there; but as he came
down the steps from Beaulieu for the last time, he heard the whole town
talking of his suicide; he saw the horrid sight of a drowned dead body,
and thought of the recognition and the inquest; and, like some other
suicides, felt that vanity reached beyond death.

He remembered the day spent at Courtois' mill, and his thoughts returned
to the round pool among the willows that he saw as he came along by the
little river, such a pool as you often find on small streams, with a
still, smooth surface that conceals great depths beneath. The water is
neither green nor blue nor white nor tawny; it is like a polished steel
mirror. No sword-grass grows about the margin; there are no blue water
forget-me-nots, nor broad lily leaves; the grass at the brim is short
and thick, and the weeping willows that droop over the edge grow
picturesquely enough. It is easy to imagine a sheer precipice beneath
filled with water to the brim. Any man who should have the courage to
fill his pockets with pebbles would not fail to find death, and never be
seen thereafter.

At the time while he admired the lovely miniature of a landscape, the
poet had thought to himself, "'Tis a spot to make your mouth water for a
_noyade_."

He thought of it now as he went down into L'Houmeau; and when he took
his way towards Marsac, with the last sombre thoughts gnawing at his
heart, it was with the firm resolve to hide his death. There should be
no inquest held over him, he would not be laid in earth; no one should
see him in the hideous condition of the corpse that floats on the
surface of the water. Before long he reached one of the slopes, common
enough on all French highroads, and commonest of all between Angouleme
and Poitiers. He saw the coach from Bordeaux to Paris coming up at full
speed behind him, and knew that the passengers would probably alight
to walk up the hill. He did not care to be seen just then. Turning off
sharply into a beaten track, he began to pick the flowers in a vineyard
hard by.

When Lucien came back to the road with a great bunch of the yellow
stone-crop which grows everywhere upon the stony soil of the vineyards,
he came out upon a traveler dressed in black from head to foot. The
stranger wore powder, there were silver buckles on his shoes of Orleans
leather, and his brown face was scarred and seamed a