But the Prince of Trinidad felt he could no longer beg, even for the money belonging to his wife, from the man he had insulted. He could no longer ask his wife to intercede for him. He was without money of his own, with out the means of obtaining it; from his wife he had ceased to expect even sympathy, and from the world he knew, the fact that he was a self-made king caused him always to be pointed out with ridicule as a charlatan, as a jest.
The soldier of varying fortunes, the duellist and dreamer, the devout Catholic and devout Buddhist, saw the forty-third year of his life only as the meeting-place of many fiascos.
His mind was tormented with imaginary wrongs, imaginary slights, imaginary failures.
This young man, who could paint pictures, write books, organize colonies oversea, and with a sword pick the buttons from a waistcoat, forgot the twenty good years still before him; forgot that men loved him for the mistakes he had made; that in parts of the great city of Paris his name was still spoken fondly, still was famous and familiar.
In his book on the “Ethics of Suicide,” for certain hard places in life he had laid down an inevitable rule of conduct.
As he saw it he had come to one of those hard places, and he would not ask of others what he himself would not perform.
From Mexico he set out for California, but not to the house his wife had prepared for him.
Instead, on February 9, 1898, at El Paso, he left the train and registered at a hotel.
At 7.30 in the evening he went to his room, and when, on the following morning, they kicked in the door, they found him stretched rigidly upon the bed, like one lying in state, with, near his hand, a half-emptied bottle of poison.
On a chair was pinned this letter to his wife: