The count, chilled to the bones,
left his seat.
"To the station again," muttered he.
It was a horrible idea to him now--this of shooting himself in the
silence and obscurity of the forest. He pictured to himself his
disfigured body, bleeding, lying on the edge of some ditch. Beggars
or robbers would despoil him. And then? The police would come and
take up this unknown body, and doubtless would carry it, to be
identified, to the Morgue. "Never!" cried he, at this thought, "no,
never!"
How die, then? He reflected, and it struck him that he would kill
himself in some second-class hotel on the left bank of the Seine.
"Yes, that's it," said he to himself.
Leaving the garden with the last of the visitors, he wended his way
toward the Latin Quarter. The carelessness which he had assumed
in the morning gave way to a sad resignation. He was suffering;
his head was heavy, and he was cold.
"If I shouldn't die to-night," he thought, "I shall have a terrible
cold in the morning."
This mental sally did not make him smile, but it gave him the
consciousness of being firm and determined. He went into the Rue
Dauphine and looked about for a hotel.
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