On the table, not a book: all were sold. Not a photograph, not a letter: he had no father, no mother, no relations. What was there to make him cling to life? With a sudden movement he put his head into the slip-knot and pulled at the rope until the noose gripped his neck. And, kicking the chair from him with both feet, he leapt into space. * * * * * Ten seconds, fifteen seconds passed, twenty formidable, eternal seconds. . . . The body gave two or three jerks. The feet had instinctively felt for a resting-place. Then nothing moved. . . . A few seconds more. . . . The little glazed door opened. Sernine entered. Without the least haste he took the sheet of paper to which the young man had set his signature, and read: "Tired of living, ill, penniless, hopeless, I am taking my own life. Let no one be accused of my death. "GÉRARD BAUPRÉ. "_30 April._" He put back the paper on the table where it could be seen, picked up the chair and placed it under the young man's feet. He himself climbed up on the table and, holding the body close to him, lifted it up, loosened the slip-knot and passed the head through it. The body sank into his arms. He let it slide along the table and, jumping to the floor, laid it on the bed. Then, with the same coolness, he opened the door on the passage: "Are you there, all the three of you?" he whispered. Some one answered from the foot of the wooden staircase near him: "We are here. Are we to hoist up our bundle?" "Yes, come along!" He took the candle and showed them a light. The three men trudged up the stairs, carrying the sack in which the "fellow" was tied up. "Put him here," he said, pointing to the table. With a pocket-knife, he cut the cords round the sack. A white sheet appeared, which he flung back. In the sheet was a corpse, the corpse of Pierre Leduc. "Poor Pierre Leduc!" said Sernine. "You will never know what you lost by dying so young! I should have helped you to go far, old chap. However, we must do without your services. . . . Now then, Philippe, get up on the table; and you, Octave, on the chair. Lift up his head and fasten the slip-knot." Two minutes later, Pierre Leduc's body was swinging at the end of the rope. "Capital, that was quite simple! Now you can all of you go. You, Doctor, will call back here to-morrow morning; you will hear of the suicide of a certain Gérard Baupré: you understand, Gérard Baupré. Here is his farewell letter. You will send for the divisional surgeon and the commissary; you will arrange that neither of them notices that the deceased has a cut finger or a scar on one cheek. . . ." "That's easy." "And you will manage so as to have the report written then and there, to your dictation." "That's easy." "Lastly, avoid having the body sent to the Morgue and make them give permission for an immediate burial." "That's not so easy." "Try. Have you examined the other one?"