And that death was achieved by the most hideous route--insanity. Restless, travelling incessantly, fearful of darkness, of his own shadow, he was like an Oriental magician who had summoned malignant spirits from outer space only to be destroyed by them. Not in Corsica or Sicily, in Africa nor the south of France, did Guy fight off his rapidly growing disease. He worked hard, he drank hard, but to no avail; the blackness of his brain increased. Melancholia and irritability supervened; he spelled words wrong, he quarrelled with his friends, he instituted a lawsuit against a New York newspaper, _The Star_; then the persecution craze, folie des grandeurs, frenzy. The case was "classic" from the beginning, even to the dilated pupils of his eyes, as far back as 1880. The 1st of January, 1892, he had promised to spend with his mother at Villa de Ravenelles, at Nice. But he went, instead, against his mother's wishes, to Ste.-Marguerite in company with two sisters, society women, one of them said to have been the heroine of Notre Coeur. The next day he arrived, his features discomposed, and in a state of great mental excitement. He was tearful and soon left for Cannes with his valet, Francois. What passed during the night was never exactly known, except that Guy attempted suicide by shooting, and with a paper-knife. The knife inflicted a slight wound; the pistol contained blank cartridges--Francois had suspected his master's mood, and told the world later of it in his simple loving memoirs--and his forehead was slightly burned. Some months previous he had told Doctor Fremy that between madness and death he would not hesitate; a lucid moment had shown him his fate, and he sought death. After a week, during which two stout sailors of his yacht, _Bel Ami_, guarded him, as he sadly walked on the beach regarding with tear-stained cheeks his favourite boat, he was taken to Passy, to Doctor Blanche's institution. One of his examining physicians there was Doctor Franklin Grout, who later married Flaubert's niece, Caroline Commanville. July 6, 1893, Maupassant died, as a lamp is extinguished for lack of oil. But the year he spent at the asylum was wretched; he became a mere machine, and perhaps the only pleasure he experienced was the hallucination of bands of black butterflies that seemed to sweep across his room. Monsieur Maynial does not tell of the black butterflies, the truth of which I can vouch for, as I heard the story from Lassalle, the French barytone, a friend of Maupassant's.