Now look at our Easy Chair survey of such an unfortunate matter:
"Monsieur B——, a widower of great respectability, was married to his second wife several years previous to the Revolution of 1848. The embarrassments which this event occasioned to several of the most considerable of his debtors, involved him in pecuniary difficulties of a serious character.
"Being of a sensitive nature, and unable to meet at that period his more immediate engagements, he became the victim of an intense mortification, which no efforts of his friends could relieve, and which gradually settled into entire mental alienation.
"He had still ample fortune, and lived in the enjoyment of his usual luxuries. His attentions to his new wife (who is represented as exceedingly beautiful) were, of course, less decided and punctilious than before, but there were observed no indications of any special hostility.
"Things wore on in this way for a year or more, when it was observed that Monsieur B—— absented himself at a certain time of the day for many hours, from home, without allowing his wife to suspect his whereabouts. His manœuvres to prevent pursuit, and avoid observation, were most adroit, and utterly forbade detection.
"Meantime the guardians of the cemetery of Père le Chaise had observed at a certain hour of the day a well-dressed individual make his appearance at the gates, and disappear upon the heights, within the inclosure of a little Gothic tomb, erected to the memory of Madame B——.
"The guardians having ascertained that the visitor was the husband of the deceased lady, with true Parisian politeness, avoided any special observation.
"It was ascertained afterward, however, that he employed these stolen hours in laboring upon the tomb—a pocket-knife, his only implement, and a single crazy hope—(which will appear in the sequel)—his only aim. Having, after four or five months of daily toil, finished his work, he waited only the absence of his wife to carry into execution his plan. For this he had not long to wait; she had promised a visit to the country; and upon the very day following her departure, Monsieur B—— hurried to his old rendezvous at Père le Chaise, and with the same knife with which he had worked his way into the stone sarcophagus in which the body of his first wife reposed, he severed the head from the trunk, transported it under cover of his cloak to his home; placed it before him upon the table; kindled a brazier of charcoal; wrote a last word to his living partner, and then, with his pipe in his mouth, and in face of the ghastly head from the tomb—he died upon his chair!"
There is in this story, insufferable as it may seem to delicate-minded readers, strong illustration of the French love of the horrible—of French passion—and of that French spirit of Dramatism, which would turn even the vulgarity of suicide into the heroism of a Tragedy.