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 had been tortured, how he had resolved to die, how he had hesitated about carrying out his resolution and what means he had employed to strengthen his failing courage.  And in the name of their old friendship he would implore of the other to destroy the letter as soon as he had ascertained that the culprit had inflicted justice on himself.  Renardet could rely on this magistrate; he knew him to be true, discreet, incapable of even an idle word.  He was one of those men who have an inflexible conscience, governed, directed, regulated by their reason alone.

Scarcely had he formed this project when a strange feeling of joy took possession of his heart.  He was calm now.  He would write his letter slowly, then at daybreak he would deposit it in the box nailed to the outside wall of his office; then he would ascend his tower to watch for the postman’s arrival; and when the man in the blue blouse had gone away, he would cast himself head foremost on the rocks on which the foundations rested, He would take care to be seen first by the workmen who had cut down his wood.  He could climb to the projecting stone which bore the flagstaff displayed on festivals, He would smash this pole with a shake and carry it along with him as he fell.

Who would suspect that it was not an accident?  And he would be killed outright, owing to his weight and the height of the tower.