A strange idea came into his head, that of allowing himself to be crushed by the tree at the foot of which he had assassinated little Louise Roque.  So he determined to have the wood cut down and to simulate an accident.  But the beech tree refused to crush his ribs.

Returning to his house, a prey to utter despair, he had snatched up his revolver, and then did not dare to fire it.

The dinner bell summoned him.  He could eat nothing, and he went upstairs again.  And he did not know what to do.  Now that he had escaped the first time, he felt himself a coward.  Presently he would be ready, brave, decided, master of his courage and of his resolution; now he was weak and feared death as much as he did the dead girl.

He faltered: 

“I dare not venture it again—­I dare not venture it.”

Then he glanced with terror, first at the revolver on the table and next at the curtain which hid his window.  It seemed to him, moreover, that something horrible would occur as soon as his life was ended.  Something?  What?  A meeting with her, perhaps.  She was watching for him; she was waiting for him; she was calling him; and it was in order to seize him in her turn, to draw him toward the doom that would avenge her, and to lead him to die, that she appeared thus every night.

He began to cry like a child, repeating: 

“I will not venture it again—­I will not venture it.”

Then he fell on his knees and murmured: 

“My God! my God!” without believing, nevertheless, in God.  And he no longer dared, in fact, to look at his window, where he knew the apparition was hiding, nor at his table, where his revolver gleamed.  When he had risen up he said: 

“This cannot last; there must be an end of it”

The sound of his voice in the silent room made a chill of fear pass through his limbs, but as he could not bring himself to come to a determination, as he felt certain that his finger would always refuse to pull the trigger of his revolver, he turned round to hide his head under the bedclothes and began to reflect.

He would have to find some way in which he could force himself to die, to play some trick on himself which would not permit of any hesitation on his part, any delay, any possible regrets.  He envied condemned criminals who are led to the scaffold surrounded by soldiers.  Oh! if he could only beg of some one to shoot him; if after confessing his crime to a true friend who would never divulge it he could procure death at his hand.  But from whom could he ask this terrible service?  From whom?  He thought of all the people he knew.  The doctor?  No, he would talk about it afterward, most probably.  And suddenly a fantastic idea entered his mind.  He would write to the magistrate, who was on terms of close friendship with him, and would denounce himself as the perpetrator of the crime.  He would in this letter confess everything, revealing how his soul