Monsieur de Boissy, a French dramatic writer and satirist, being reduced to great indigence, resolved to commit suicide. As he considered this action in no other light than as a friendly relief from further misery, he not only persuaded his wife to bear him company, but prevailed on her not to leave their child of five years old behind them, to the mercy of that world in which they had experienced so little sympathy and happiness. Nothing now remained but to fix on the mode of their death. They at length agreed to starve themselves. This not only seemed to them the most natural consequence of their condition, but also saved them from committing a violence either on their child, themselves, or each other, of which perhaps neither Boissy nor his wife found themselves capable. They determined therefore to wait with unshaken constancy the arrival of death under the meagre form of famine; and accordingly they shut themselves up in the solitude of their apartment, where, on account of their distresses, they had little reason to dread the interruption of company. They began, and resolutely persisted in their plan of starving themselves to death with their child. If any one called by chance at their apartment, they found it locked, and receiving no answer, it was concluded that nobody was at home. A friend, however, from that kind of instinct perhaps with which the spirit of friendship abounds, began to apprehend that something must be much amiss with Boissy, as he could neither find him at home, nor get intelligence concerning him. Under much anxiety he returned once more to his apartment; and, whether from hearing any groans from within, or suspecting something was wrong, he ventured to break open the door. Boissy and his wife had been so much in earnest, that it was now three days since they had taken any sustenance, and they were so far on their way to their intended home, that they were in sight, as it were, of the gates of death. The friend, entering into the room where this scene of death was going forward, found the miserable pair in such a situation as to be insensible of his intrusion. Boissy and his wife had no eyes but for each other, and were not sitting in, but rather supported from falling on the ground by two chairs set opposite to each other. Their hands were locked together, and in their ghastly looks was painted a kind of rueful compassion for their child, which hung at the mother’s knee, and seemed as if looking up to her for nourishment, in its natural tenaciousness of life. This group of wretchedness did not less shock than afflict his friend. But soon collecting from circumstances what it must mean, his first care was not to expostulate with Boissy or his wife, but to engage them to receive his succours, in which he found no small difficulty. Their resolution had been taken in earnest. They had got over the worst, and were in sight of their port. Their friend, however, took the right way of reconciling them to live