“Really!”

“Oh, as for me, I am not complaining.”

“Will you inform me how you carry on this establishment?”

“With pleasure.  You may become a member when you please.  It is a club.”

“A club!”

“Yes, monsieur, founded by the most eminent men in the country, by men of the highest intellect and brightest intelligence.  And,” he added, laughing heartily, “I swear to you that every one gets a great deal of enjoyment out of it.”

“In this place?”

“Yes, in this place.”

“You surprise me.”

“Mon Dieu, they enjoy themselves because they have not that fear of death which is the great killjoy in all our earthly pleasures.”

“But why should they be members of this club if they do not kill themselves?”

“One may be a member of the club without being obliged for that reason to commit suicide.”

“But then?”

“I will explain.  In view of the enormous increase in suicides, and of the hideous spectacle they presented, a purely benevolent society was formed for the protection of those in despair, which placed at their disposal the facilities for a peaceful, painless, if not unforeseen death.”

“Who can have authorized such an institution?”

“General Boulanger during his brief tenure of power.  He could never refuse anything.  However, that was the only good thing he did.  Hence, a society was formed of clear-sighted, disillusioned skeptics who desired to erect in the heart of Paris a kind of temple dedicated to the contempt for death.  This place was formerly a dreaded spot that no one ventured to approach.  Then its founders, who met together here, gave a grand inaugural entertainment with Mmes.  Sarah Bernhardt, Judic, Theo, Granier, and twenty others, and Mme. de Reske, Coquelin, Mounet-Sully, Paulus, etc., present, followed by concerts, the comedies of Dumas, of Meilhac, Halevy and Sardon.  We had only one thing to mar it, one drama by Becque which seemed sad, but which subsequently had a great success at the Comedie-Francaise.  In fact all Paris came.  The enterprise was launched.”

“In the midst of the festivities!  What a funereal joke!”

“Not at all.  Death need not be sad, it should be a matter of indifference.  We made death cheerful, crowned it with flowers, covered it with perfume, made it easy.  One learns to aid others through example; one can see that it is nothing.”

“I can well understand that they should come to the entertainments; but did they come to . . .  Death?”

“Not at first; they were afraid.”

“And later?”

“They came.”

“Many of them?”

“In crowds.  We have had more than forty in a day.  One finds hardly any more drowned bodies in the Seine.”

“Who was the first?”

“A club member.”

“As a sacrifice to the cause?”

“I don’t think so.  A man who was sick of everything, a ‘down and out’ who had lost heavily at baccarat for three months.”