"Excuse me for taking such a tone, but you'll admit I'm right! To
ask a convict how he got into prison, or a suicide why he shot
himself is not generous . . . and indelicate. To think of gratifying
idle curiosity at the expense of another man's nerves!"

"There is no need to excite yourself. . . . It never occurred to
me to question you about your motives."

"You would have asked. . . . It's what people always do. Though it
would be no use to ask. If I told you, you would not believe or
understand. . . . I must own I don't understand it myself. . . .
There are phrases used in the police reports and newspapers such
as: 'unrequited love,' and 'hopeless poverty,' but the reasons are
not known. . . . They are not known to me, nor to you, nor to your
newspaper offices, where they have the impudence to write 'The diary
of a suicide.' God alone understands the state of a man's soul when
he takes his own life; but men know nothing about it."

"That is all very nice," I said, "but you oughtn't to talk. . . ."

But my suicide could not be stopped, he leaned his head on his fist,
and went on in the tone of some great professor:

"Man will never understand the psychological subtleties of suicide!
How can one speak of reasons? To-day the reason makes one snatch
up a revolver, while to-morrow the same reason seems not worth a
rotten egg. It all depends most likely on the particular condition
of the individual at the given moment. . . . Take me for instance.
Half an hour ago, I had a passionate desire for death, now when the