But
supposing that the countess did follow him to some foreign country;
she would come without fortune, despoiled of everything, and then,
alas! she would merely be one more embarrassment to him. A mind of a
second order, and a proud mind like that of Nathan, would be likely to
see, under these circumstances, and did see, in suicide the sword to
cut the Gordian knots. The idea of failure in the face of the world
and that society he had so lately entered and meant to rule, of
leaving the chariot of the countess and becoming once more a muddied
pedestrian, was more than he could bear. Madness began to dance and
whirl and shake her bells at the gates of the fantastic palace in
which the poet had been dreaming. In this extremity, Nathan waited for
some lucky accident, determined not to kill himself until the final
moment.
During the last days employed by the legal formalities required before
proceeding to arrest for debt, Raoul went about, in spite of himself,
with that coldly sullen and morose expression of face which may be
noticed in persons who are either fated to commit suicide or are
meditating it. The funereal ideas they are turning over in their minds
appear upon their foreheads in gray and cloudy tints, their smile has
something fatalistic in it, their motions are solemn. These unhappy
beings seem to want to suck the last juices of the life they mean to
leave; their eyes see things invisible, their ears are listening to a
death-knell, they pay no attention to the minor things about them.
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