ion to release himself from
his torture with a blow of the stiletto. And indeed, with a sudden
spasm, the long-suffering creature becomes motionless, lies at
full-length, flat upon the ground. There is not a movement; the
inertia is complete. Is the Scorpion dead? It really looks like it.
Perhaps he has pinked himself with a thrust of his sting that escaped
me in the turmoil of the last efforts. If he has actually stabbed
himself, if he has resorted to suicide, then he is dead beyond a
doubt: we have just seen how quickly he succumbs to his own venom.

In my uncertainty, I pick up the apparently dead body with the tip of
my forceps and lay it on a bed of cool sand. An hour later, the
alleged corpse returns to life, as lusty as before the ordeal. I
repeat the process with a second and third specimen. The results are
the same. After the frantic plunges of the desperate victim, we have
the same sudden inertia, with the creature sprawling flat as though
struck by lightning, and the same return to life on the cool sand.

It seems probable that those who invented the story of the Scorpion
committing suicide were deceived by this sudden swoon, this paralysing
spasm, into which the high temperature of the enclosure throws the
exasperated beast. Too quickly convinced, they left the victim to burn
to death. Had they been less credulous and withdrawn the animal in
good time from its circle of fire, they would have seen the apparently
dead Scorpion return to life and thus assert its profound ignorance of
suicide.

Apart from man, no living thing knows the last resource of a voluntary
end, because none has a knowledge of death. As for us, to feel that we
have the power to escape from the miseries of life is a noble
prerogative, upon which it is good to meditate, as a sign of our
elevation above the commonalty of the animal world; but in point of
fact it becomes cowardice if from the possibility we pass to action.

He who proposes to go to that length should at least repeat to himself
what Confucius, the great philosopher of the yellow race, said
five-and-twenty centuries ago. Having surprised a stranger in the
woods fixing to the branch of a tree a rope wherewith to hang himself,
the Chinese sage addressed him in words the gist of which was as
follows:

"However great your misfortunes, the greatest of all would be to yield
to despair. All the rest can be repaired; this one is irreparable. Do
not believe that all is lost for yo