pedestrian, was more than he could bear. Madness began to dance and
whirl and shake her bells at the gates of the fantastic palace in
which the poet had been dreaming. In this extremity, Nathan waited for
some lucky accident, determined not to kill himself until the final
moment.

During the last days employed by the legal formalities required before
proceeding to arrest for debt, Raoul went about, in spite of himself,
with that coldly sullen and morose expression of face which may be
noticed in persons who are either fated to commit suicide or are
meditating it. The funereal ideas they are turning over in their minds
appear upon their foreheads in gray and cloudy tints, their smile has
something fatalistic in it, their motions are solemn. These unhappy
beings seem to want to suck the last juices of the life they mean to
leave; their eyes see things invisible, their ears are listening to a
death-knell, they pay no attention to the minor things about them.
These alarming symptoms Marie perceived one evening at Lady Dudley's.
Raoul was sitting apart on a sofa in the boudoir, while the rest of
the company were conversing in the salon. The countess went to the
door, but he did not raise his head; he heard neither Marie's
breathing nor the rustle of her silk dress; he was gazing at a flower
in the carpet, with fixed eyes, stupid with grief; he felt he had
rather die than abdicate. All the world can't have the rock of Saint
Helena for a pedestal. Moreover, suicide was then the fashion in
Paris. Is it not, in fact, the last resource of all atheistical
societies? Raoul, as he sat there, had decided that the moment had
come to die. Despair is in proportion to our hopes; that of Raoul had
no other issue than the grave.

"What is the matter?" cried Marie, flying to him.