He walked up and down, stamping his feet and lifting his knees very high, as certain actors do when feigning madness. And he said: "Swagger, my lad, swagger! The eyes of the gods are upon you! Lift up your head! Pull in your stomach, hang it! Throw out your chest! . . . Everything is breaking up around you. What do you care? . . . It's the final disaster, I've played my last card, a kingdom in the gutter, I've lost Europe, the whole world ends in smoke. . . . Well . . . and what of it? Laugh, laugh! Be Lupin, or you're in the soup. . . . Come, laugh! Louder than that, louder, louder! That's right! . . . Lord, how funny it all is! Dolores, old girl, a cigarette!" He bent down with a grin, touched the dead woman's face, tottered for a second and fell to the ground unconscious. * * * * * After lying for an hour, he came to himself and stood up. The fit of madness was over; and, master of himself, with relaxed nerves, serious and silent, he considered the position. He felt that the time had come for the irrevocable decisions that involve a whole existence. His had been utterly shattered, in a few days, under the assault of unforeseen catastrophes, rushing up, one after the other, at the very moment when he thought his triumph assured. What should he do? Begin again? Build up everything again? He had not the courage for it. What then? The whole morning, he roamed tragically about the park and gradually realized his position in all its slightest details. Little by little, the thought of death enforced itself upon him with inflexible rigor. But, whether he decided to kill himself or to live, there was first of all a series of definite acts which he was obliged to perform. And these acts stood out clearly in his brain, which had suddenly become quite cool. The mid-day Angelus rang from the church-steeple. "To work!" he said, firmly. He returned to the chalet in a very calm frame of mind, went to his room, climbed on a stool, and cut the rope by which Pierre Leduc was hanging: "You poor devil!" he said. "You were doomed to end like that, with a hempen tie around your neck. Alas, you were not made for greatness: I ought to have foreseen that and not hooked my fortune to a rhymester!" He felt in the young man's clothes and found nothing. But, remembering Dolores' second pocket-book, he took it from the pocket where he had left it. He gave a start of surprise. The pocket-book contained a bundle of letters whose appearance was familiar to him; and he at once recognized the different writings.