e choose Etampes? A train had just gone, and there would
not be another one for two hours. He was much annoyed at this, and
as he could not wait there two hours, he wended his way, to kill
time, toward the Jardin des Plantes. He had not been there for ten
or twelve years--not since, when at school, his teachers had brought
him there to look at the animals. Nothing had changed. There were
the groves and parterres, the lawns and lanes, the beasts and birds,
as before. The principal avenue was nearly deserted. He took a
seat opposite the mineralogical museum. He reflected on his
position. He glanced back through the departed years, and did not
find one day among those many days which had left him one of those
gracious memories which delight and console. Millions had slipped
through his prodigal hands, and he could not recall a single useful
expenditure, a really generous one, amounting to twenty francs. He,
who had had so many friends, searched his memory in vain for the
name of a single friend whom he regretted to part from. The past
seemed to him like a faithful mirror; he was surprised, startled at
the folly of the pleasures, the inane delights, which had been the
end and aim of his existence. For what had he lived? For others.

"Ah, what a fool I was!" he muttered, "what a fool!"

After living for others, he was going to kill himself for others.
His heart became softened. Who would think of him, eight days
hence? Not one living being. Yes--Jenny, perhaps. Yet, no.
She would be consoled with a new lover in less than a week.

The bell for closing the garden rang. Night had come, and a thick
and damp mist had covered the city. The count, chilled to the bones,
left his seat.

"To the station again," muttered he.

It was a horrible idea to him now--this of shooting himself in the
silence and obscurity of the forest. He pictured to himself his
disfigured body, bleeding, lying on the edge of some ditch. Beggars
or robbers would despoil him. And then? The police would come and
take up this unknown body, and doubtless would carry it, to be
identified, to the Morgue. "Never!" cried he, at this thought, "no,
never!"

How die, then? He reflected, and it struck him that he would kill
himself in some second-class hotel on the left bank of the Seine.

"Yes, that's it," said he to himself.

Leaving the garden with the last of the visitors, he wended his way
toward the Latin Quarter. The carelessness which he had assumed
in