Suicide

And so it was. We burst the door, and found him suspended by a
silk handkerchief to a beam that traversed the apartment. He had
raised himself upon a chair, which he had kicked over after the knot
had been adjusted. Such a proceeding evinced the most determined
resolution.

We took him down with all despatch, but life had already been
long extinct. He must have been hanging two hours. His face was
perfectly livid--his eyeballs dilated--his mouth distorted--but the
neck remained unbroken. He had died by suffocation. I pass over the
ordinary proceedings--the consternation, the clamor, the attendance
of the grave-looking gentlemen with lancet and lotion. They did
a great deal, of course, in doing nothing. Nothing could be done.
Then followed the "crowner's" inquest. A paper, addressed to the
landlord, was submitted to them, and formed the burden of their
report.

"I die by my own hands," said this document, "that I may lose the
sense of pain, bodily and mental. I die at peace with the world.
It has never wronged me. I am the source of my own sorrows, as I
am the cause of my own death. I will not say that I die sane. I am
doubtful on that head. I am sure that I have been the victim of a
sort of madness for a very long time. This has led me to do wrong,
and to meditate wrong--has made me guilty of many things, which,
in my better moments of mind and body, I should have shrunk from
in horror. I write this that nobody may be suspected of sharing
in a deed the blame of which must rest on my head only."