'When Nature abhors, she speaks it aloud: the creature that lives with
a false life is soon destroyed. Unfruitfulness, painful existence,
early destruction, these are her curses, the tokens of her
displeasure.']

[Greek: Argos de andron echaerothae outo, oste oi douloi auton eschon
panta ta praegmata, archontes te kai diepontes, es ho epaebaesan hoi
ton apolomenon paides.] HERODOTUS. [Footnote: 'And Argos was so
depleted of Men (i.e. _after the battle with Cleomenes_) that the
slaves usurped everything--ruling and disposing--until such time as the
sons of the slain were grown up.']

To say that there are epidemics of suicide is to give expression to
what is now a mere commonplace of knowledge. And so far are they from
being of rare occurrence, that it has even been affirmed that every
sensational case of _felo de se_ published in the newspapers is sure to
be followed by some others more obscure: their frequency, indeed, is
out of all proportion with the _extent_ of each particular outbreak.
Sometimes, however, especially in villages and small townships, the
wildfire madness becomes an all-involving passion, emulating in its
fury the great plagues of history. Of such kind was the craze in
Versailles in 1793, when about a quarter of the whole population
perished by the scourge; while that at the _Hôtel des Invalides_ in
Paris was only a notable one of the many which have occurred during the
present century. At such times it is as if the optic nerve of the mind
throughout whole communities became distorted, till in the noseless and
black-robed Reaper it discerned an angel of very loveliness. As a
brimming maiden, out-worn by her virginity, yields half-fainting to the
dear sick stress of her desire--with just such faintings, wanton fires,