SOON, unable to stay a minute longer in my tower, I would go downstairs in the dark, open the door to the staircase as furtively as a murderer, and go wandering in the woods.
After walking a while wherever chance led me, waving my arms and embracing the winds, which escaped my grasp as surely as the shadow I pursued, I would lean against the trunk of a beech. I would gaze at the crows that my presence had sent flying from one tree to another, and at the moon gliding through the bare treetops of the forest. I would have liked to inhabit this dead world that mirrored the pallor of the grave. I felt neither the chill nor the moisture of the night air, and not even the glacial breath of dawn could have dragged me from the depths of my thoughts, if only the village bell had not begun to toll.
In most of the villages of Brittany, it is traditionally at daybreak that the bell for the dead is tolled. This peal, of three long repeated notes, makes for a somewhat droning, melancholy, bucolic air. Nothing was better suited to my sick and wounded soul than to be summoned back to the tribulations of existence by the bell that announced its end. I would picture the shepherd dead in his insignificant hut; I would see him being laid to rest in a cemetery no less obscure. What had he come to do on earth? What was I myself doing in this world? Since I should have to go in the end, would it not be better to set off in the freshness of morning, and arrive early, than to make the voyage under the burdensome heat of the day? A flush of desire rose in my face, and the idea of ceasing to be took hold of my heart like a sudden joy. In my time of youthful error, I often hoped that I would not outlive happiness: there was a degree of felicity in my first success that made me wish for annihilation.
More and more fettered to my phantom, and unable to enjoy what did not exist, I was like one of those mutilated men who dream of unattainable ecstasies and construct fantastic pleasures to equal the tortures of hell. Beyond this, I had a presentiment of my miserable future. Ingenious at inventing sufferings, I had positioned myself between two poles of despair. Sometimes, I considered myself to be no more than a cipher, incapable of rising above the vulgar herd; sometimes, I seemed to sense in myself qualities that would never be appreciated. A secret instinct warned me that, as I made my way in the world, I would find nothing of what I sought.
Everything nourished my bitterness and disgust. Lucile was unhappy; my mother did not console me; my father only made me conscious of the agonies of my life. His peevishness had increased with age; the years had stiffened his soul as well as his body. He spied on me incessantly in order to scold me. When I came back from my wild excursions and saw him sitting on the staircase, I would as soon have died as have to enter the castle. But to flee would only mean delaying my punishment. Obliged to appear at dinner, I would sit exiled on the edge of my chair, my cheeks wet with rain and my hair tangled. Beneath my father’s gaze, I would hold myself motionless and feel the sweat beading on my brow. The last glimmer of reason fled from me.
I now come to a moment when I need some strength to confess my weakness. The man who attempts to take his own life shows not so much the vigor of his soul as the failure of his character.
I had a hunting rifle with a damaged trigger that often went off uncocked. I loaded this gun with three bullets and went to an unfrequented corner of the Grand Mall. I cocked the rifle, put the muzzle in my mouth, and struck the butt-end against the ground. I repeated this action several times, but the gun did not go off. When a game-keeper appeared, I suspended my resolution. A fatalist, lacking willpower and knowledge, I reasoned that my hour had not come, and I delayed the execution of my plan. If I had killed myself, everything that I was would be buried with me. No one would know what had led me to my death. I would have gone to swell the crowd of nameless unfortunates, and no one could have followed the trail of my sorrows as one follows a wounded man by the trail of his blood.
Those who might be troubled by these descriptions and tempted to imitate these follies, those who wish to attach themselves to my memory by sympathizing with my delusions, must remember that they are hearing only the voice of a dead man. Reader, whom I shall never meet, know that nothing is left. All that remains of me is in the hands of the living God who has judged me.