His mind was tormented with imaginary wrongs, imaginary slights,
imaginary failures.
This young man, who could paint pictures, write books, organize
colonies oversea, and with a sword pick the buttons from a
waistcoat, forgot the twenty good years still before him; forgot that
men loved him for the mistakes he had made; that in parts of the
great city of Paris his name was still spoken fondly, still was
famous and familiar.
In his book on the "Ethics of Suicide," for certain hard places in
life he had laid down an inevitable rule of conduct.
As he saw it he had come to one of those hard places, and he
would not ask of others what he himself would not perform.
From Mexico he set out for California, but not to the house his
wife had prepared for him.
Instead, on February 9, 1898, at El Paso, he left the train and
registered at a hotel.
At 7.30 in the evening he went to his room, and when, on the
following morning, they kicked in the door, they found him
stretched rigidly upon the bed, like one lying in state, with, near
his hand, a half-emptied bottle of poison.
On a chair was pinned this letter to his wife:
"My DEAREST,--No news from you, although you have had
plenty of time to write. Harvey has written me that he has no one
in view at present to buy my land. Well, I shall have tasted the cup
of bitterness to the very dregs, but I do not complain.
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