Midnight . . . the twelve tragic strokes of midnight, to which so many a despairing man has hitched the last second of his existence!
At the twelfth stroke, he stood up again and, bravely this time, without trembling, looked at the sinister rope. He even tried to give a smile, a poor smile, the pitiful grimace of the doomed man whom death has already seized for its own.
Swiftly he climbed the chair and took the rope in one hand.
For a moment, he stood there, motionless: not that he was hesitating or lacking in courage. But this was the supreme moment, the one minute of grace which a man allows himself before the fatal deed.
He gazed at the squalid room to which his evil destiny had brought him, the hideous paper on the walls, the wretched bed.
On the table, not a book: all were sold. Not a photograph, not a letter: he had no father, no mother, no relations. What was there to make him cling to life?
With a sudden movement he put his head into the slip-knot and pulled at the rope until the noose gripped his neck.
And, kicking the chair from him with both feet, he leapt into space.
Ten seconds, fifteen seconds passed, twenty formidable, eternal seconds. . . .