I walked up and down the vast cold room of the marble palazzo, arraying before me in overwhelming numbers the arguments for selfdestruction.  On a table in the middle of the room stood a phial of prussic acid which I had procured long before in London, it being a conviction of mine that every man ought to have ready to hand a sure means of exit from the world.  I paused many times in front of the little blue phial.  One lift of the hand, one toss of the head, and all would be over.  At last I extracted the cork, and the faint smell of almonds reached my nostrils.  I recorked the phial and lit a cigarette.  This I threw away half smoked and again approached the table of death.  I began to feel a strong natural disinclination to swallow the stuff.  “This,” said I, “is sheer animal cowardice.”  I again uncorked the phial.  A new phase of the matter appeared to me.  “It is the act of a craven to shirk the responsibilities of life.  Can you be such a meanspirited creature as not even to have the courage to live?” “No,” said I, “I have a valiant spirit,” and I set down the bottle.  “Bah,” whispered the familiar imp of suicide at my elbow.  “You are just afraid to die.”  I took up the bottle again.  But the other taunter had an argument equally strong, and once more I put the phial uncorked on the table.

Thus between two cowardices, one of which I must choose, stood I, like the ass of Buridan.  I lit another cigarette and excogitated the problem.  I smoked two cigarettes, walking up and down that vast, chill apartment, while the air grew sickly sweet with the smell of almonds, which intensified the physical repugnance the first faint odour had occasioned.  I began to shiver with cold.  The stove had burned out before I entered, and I had not considered it worth while to have it filled for the few minutes that would remain to me to live.  I had not reckoned on the ass’s bundles of cowardice.

“I may as well be warm,” thought I, “while I prove to my complete satisfaction that it is more cowardly to live than to die.  There is no very great hurry.”

I caught up a travelling-rug with which I had tried to soften the asperities of an imitation Louis XV couch, and throwing it over my shoulders, resumed my pilgrimage.  I soon lost myself in the problem and did not notice a corner of the rug gradually slipping down towards the floor.

“I’ll do it!” I cried at last, making a sudden dive towards the table.  But the ironical corner of the rug had reached the ground.  I stepped on it, tripped, and instinctively caught the table to steady myself.  The table, a rickety gueridon, overbalanced, and away rolled my uncorked phial of prussic acid and fell into a hundred pieces on the tessellated floor.

“Solvitur,” said I, grimly, “ambulando.”