“My ideas about suicide are not” (he added) “the outcome of reading nor of example; they are the result of much reflection. I have long since familiarized myself with the idea of death; it no longer seems to me a sad thing, but rather a certain refuge from the troubles of life.... When I consider my own situation, and that of my country; when I think of what I have been, what I am, and what I may become, I can find no reason for valuing my own life. Moreover, I live in an age of crime, and it is my native land that is most subjected to its sway.” And Frotté went on to describe his past life to his friend, telling him of the way he had behaved hitherto, of the principles that had guided him, the hopes he had cherished in the brighter opening days of life; then the disappointments and the discomfitures that had overwhelmed him. The events he had lived through filled his mind with bitterness. “I was born to be a good son and a good friend, a tender lover, a good soldier, a loyal subject--in a word, a decent fellow. But it breaks my heart to see how my compatriots have altered from kindly human beings to crazy ruffians, and have so accustomed themselves to slaughter, incendiarism, murder, and robbery, that they can never again be what they used to be. They have trampled every virtue under foot; they torture the hearts that still love them.... And my own profession, soldiering, is dishonoured; there is no glory about it now; my country is in a state of anarchy which appals me.” Very evident in these pages, written in a delicate cramped handwriting, is the continual bent towards self-analysis, towards minute details of feeling, towards a lofty and remote attitude, so markedly characteristic of Frotté’s prose. Many pages of the thick, ribbed paper, fastened together with a sky-blue ribbon, are filled with the same kind of reflections; then he suddenly breaks off altogether. Had he carried out his intention? Was that why he ceased to write? Not at all; for two months later, on April 10, there is a further confession, and the young soldier-philosopher begins by admitting that he has changed his mind; he defends himself on that point, and says that reflection has made him resolve to give up such gloomy views for himself. First of all, the fear of causing irreparable grief to his father had made him pause (and yet their relations do not seem to have been so affectionate as of yore);[21] and then the desire to settle certain debts, considerable enough, that he would leave behind him.