I saw others lying on miserable beds; mothers with children; elderly people near starvation; young girls tortured by the results of sex – all stiff corpses now, strangled or suffocated while the night burner smoked on in the middle of the room. Most sinister of all, I pictured those loitering by night on deserted bridges. The water flowed with a gentle murmur under the arches … unseen … but how close was its cold, dank smell! Feared and desired at the same time. They dare not! Yet they must. A distant clock chimes and suddenly in the vast, shadowy silence, the sound of a body hitting the water, a few cries, more splashes as arms flail the surface. Sometimes not even that, but if the hands are bound, or a stone tied to the feet, the simple slice of a clean dive.

Oh those poor people! Those poor, poor people! How I felt for them! How many deaths I died with them. Reading on, I suffered all their pain, endured all their torments. I knew everything that had brought them to such a pitch. I knew only too well how vile and hideous life can be. None better. How easily could I understand these weak creatures, poor victims of unfortunate circumstance alone, with their loved ones lost perhaps and all hope of restitution gone. Gone too was any belief in a once harsh but now merciful God, and gone for them all dreams of happiness or joy. They had had enough. They wanted simply to end either the unremitting tragedy of their lives or the shameful absurdity of it all.

Suicide. The one power left to the powerless, the one hope of the hopeless, the single sublime act of courage left to the defeated. Of course there is a way out of this life. We need only open the door and pass through to the other side. Nature has taken pity and left us a loophole after all. We are no longer her captives. The desperate give thanks! Those now bereft of all illusion may still walk on with minds and hearts at ease. They have nothing to fear while there is still a way out. If they wish to leave there is always that door in reserve which not even the gods can close to them forever.