His measure was full. The Nemesis he had so long seemed to escape had overtaken him, and he must patiently endure her fury with fettered hands. Fortune, love, honor, all were lost, irrevocably lost, and every accusation he wished to heap upon others recoiled upon himself. He was the cause of his own misery, he alone. Fate had given him everything he desired; but he had only demanded that which contained the germ of his ruin. No disaster had befallen him which was not the punishment of a crime. Absorbed in these reflections, the deeply-humbled man slowly returned and reached the wood. The bright rays of the autumn sunlight fell through the branches and made the yellow leaves glitter like gold; the farther he went the more quiet and pleasant it became. The withered foliage, alternated with the dark-green hue of a dense grove of firs; the forest murmured and whispered to him in a soothing tone,--he did not hear it, did not remember that the enchanted ground be entered was his own property; his heart remained closed, no source of comfort could force an entrance. In silent agony the man was collecting his thoughts to pass a stern, hopeless judgment upon himself. A bench stood beside a beautiful forest stream; he involuntarily turned towards it, and sat down with his face turned towards the rushing water. He did not think of going home: he had one no longer; the house in which he lived contained nothing dear to him; the whole world had no spot where love and joy awaited him, where he would be missed; if he remained away, society had no place for him to fill, no interests which it would confide to him. What was he better than an outcast, a homeless man? Could he endure the disgrace of such a life? Was it not more honorable to extinguish it in the pure current of this stream? Who would lose, from whom would he take anything, if he cast off the burden of a hated, purposeless existence? And yet God had so endowed him that his death must have made a void in the world, if he had been to it what he ought. He gazed down into the murmuring water, which incessantly glided by him pursued by the wind; his soul allowed itself be carried on by the waves like a loosened vine. The eternally changing movement before his eyes made him giddy; he looked away, and now, for the first time, became aware to what thoughts he had involuntarily yielded. Did no power then live in him except that of despising and destroying himself? Could he atone for his faults by committing a crime against himself? Should he steal away like an unfaithful steward who allowed the property intrusted to his care to go to ruin? Should he add to the dishonor which had fallen upon his name the eternal disgrace of suicide, incur Cornelia's contempt, because he could not bear the loss of her love? No, he had not fallen so low as not to repel such a thought with a blush.