opened, there was a manifest improvement in gaiety. Only two were

seated - one in a chair in the recess of the window, with his head

hanging and his hands plunged deep into his trouser pockets, pale,

visibly moist with perspiration, saying never a word, a very wreck

of soul and body; the other sat on the divan close by the chimney,

and attracted notice by a trenchant dissimilarity from all the

rest. He was probably upwards of forty, but he looked fully ten

years older; and Florizel thought he had never seen a man more

naturally hideous, nor one more ravaged by disease and ruinous

excitements. He was no more than skin and bone, was partly

paralysed, and wore spectacles of such unusual power, that his eyes

appeared through the glasses greatly magnified and distorted in

shape. Except the Prince and the President, he was the only person

in the room who preserved the composure of ordinary life.

There was little decency among the members of the club. Some

boasted of the disgraceful actions, the consequences of which had

reduced them to seek refuge in death; and the others listened

without disapproval. There was a tacit understanding against moral

judgments; and whoever passed the club doors enjoyed already some

of the immunities of the tomb. They drank to each other's

memories, and to those of notable suicides in the past. They

compared and developed their different views of death - some

declaring that it was no more than blackness and cessation; others

full of a hope that that very night they should be scaling the

stars and commencing with the mighty dead.

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