Some, difficulties, meet full many;
I find them not, nor seek for any.
It was in this book the Frenchman wrote his intention of destroying himself, and fortunate was it for the guide, that he made it known in this manner, and exonerated him from the suspicion, which would otherwise have attached to him, of having been implicated in his death. I understood that the agitation, into which the poor fellow was thrown from the circumstance itself, and his apprehensions of the consequences, threw him into a fever, from which he was not sufficiently recovered to be able, at this time, to leave his bed. The hermit unfortunately was unacquainted with the French language, or the dreadful catastrophe might have been prevented. The book was sent to the police, and the leaf in question taken out, and retained, and every enquiry made to prove and account for the circumstance.
Shortly after this period, I met with an English gentleman at Florence, Mr. H⸺, who had travelled from France to Naples with this unfortunate man, and lodged for a length of time in the same house with him, and who informed me that he was a merchant of Nants, which place, in consequence of his affairs becoming embarrassed, he had quitted with such money as he was enabled to collect; and which being expended, his necessities impelled him to this deliberate act of suicide, forgetting that in thus terminating his sublunary cares, he was sacrificing his hopes and interest in a future world.
“Shall worldly glory impotent and vain,
That fluctuates like the billows of the main?
Shall this with more respect thy bosom move,
Than zeal for crowns that never fade above?
Avert it Heaven! be here thy will resign’d
Religion claims this conquest o’er the mind.”