The
fumes and the gasping came from a garret over the two rooms forming
her dwelling, and she supposed that a young man who had but lately
come to lodge in this attic--which had been vacant for three years
--was committing suicide. She ran upstairs, broke in the door by a
push with her peasant strength, and found the lodger writhing on a
camp-bed in the convulsions of death. She extinguished the brazier;
the door was open, the air rushed in, and the exile was saved. Then,
when Lisbeth had put him to bed like a patient, and he was asleep,
she could detect the motives of his suicide in the destitution of the
rooms, where there was nothing whatever but a wretched table, the
camp-bed, and two chairs.
On the table lay a document, which she read:
"I am Count Wenceslas Steinbock, born at Prelia, in Livonia.
"No one is to be accused of my death; my reasons for killing
myself are, in the words of Kosciusko, _Finis Polonioe_!
"The grand-nephew of a valiant General under Charles XII. could
not beg. My weakly constitution forbids my taking military
service, and I yesterday saw the last of the hundred thalers which
I had brought with me from Dresden to Paris. I have left
twenty-five francs in the drawer of this table to pay the rent I owe
to the landlord.
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