He knew well, however, that it was not an apparition, that the dead do not come back, and that his sick soul, his soul possessed by one thought alone, by an indelible remembrance, was the only cause of his punishment, the only evoker of the dead girl brought back by it to life, called up by it and raised by it before his eyes in which the ineffaceable image remained imprinted. But he knew, too, that he could not cure it, that he would never escape from the savage persecution of his memory; and he resolved to die, rather than to endure these tortures any longer. Then, he thought of how he would kill himself. He wished for something simple and natural, which would preclude the idea of suicide. For he clung to his reputation, to the names bequeathed to him by his ancestors; and if there were any suspicion as the cause of his death, people's thoughts might be perhaps directed towards the mysterious crime, towards the murderer who could not be found, and they would not hesitate to accuse him of the crime. A strange idea came into his head, that of getting himself crushed by the tree at the foot of which he had assassinated little Louise Roque. So he determined to have his wood cut down, and to simulate an accident. But the beech-tree refused to smash his ribs. Returning to his house, a prey to utter despair he had snatched up his revolver, and then he did not dare to fire it. The dinner bell summoned him. He could eat nothing, and then he went up-stairs again. And he did not know what he was going to do. Now that he had escaped the first time, he felt himself a coward. Presently, he would be ready, fortified, decided, master of his courage and of his resolution; now, he was weak and feared death as much as he did the dead girl. He faltered: "I will not venture it again--I will not venture it." Then he glanced with terror, first at the revolver on the table, and next at the curtain which hid his window. It seemed to him, moreover that something horrible would occur as soon as his life was ended. Something? What? A meeting with her perhaps. She was watching for him; she was waiting for him; she was calling him; and her object was to seize him in her turn, to draw him towards the doom that would avenge her, and to lead him to die so that she might exhibit herself thus every night. He began to cry like a child, repeating: "I will not venture it again--I will not venture it." Then, he fell on his knees, and murmured: "My God! my God!" without believing, nevertheless, in God. And he no longer dared, in fact, to look out through his window where he knew the apparition was visible nor at his table where his revolver gleamed. When he had risen up, he said: "This cannot last; there must be an end of it."