We have more than forty a day. Practically no drowned are found in the Seine.”

“Who was the first aspirant?”

“A member of the club.”

“A God-fearer?”

“I don’t think so. A sot, a ruined man, who had lost heavily at baccara for three months.”

“Really?”

“Our second was an Englishman, an eccentric. Then we had a lot of publicity in the newspapers; we told all about our methods; we made up deaths which we thought would attract. But the main impulse came from the lower classes.”

“What are your methods?”

“Would you like to go round? I could explain as we went.”

“Very much indeed.”

He took his hat, opened the door, motioned me before him into a gambling-room where men were playing as they play in all dives. He led me across several rooms. Everywhere was lively and gay chatter. I have rarely seen so vivacious a club, so animated, so mirthful.

As I seemed surprised, the secretary challenged me:

“Oh, the club has an unprecedented rage. The right people from all over the globe become members in order to have the air of mocking death. Once they are here, they think they have to be gay in order not to seem afraid. So they joke, laugh, play the buffoon; they have wit and learn to acquire it. Nowadays it is the most frequented and the most amusing place in Paris. The women even are getting busy to organise an annexe for themselves.”

“And in spite of all this, you have plenty of suicides in the house?”

“As I told you, between forty and fifty a day. The upper classes are rare, but there are plenty of poverty-stricken devils. And the middle classes too send a good many.”

“And how⁠ ⁠… is it done?”

“Asphyxiation⁠ ⁠… very gently.”

“Your apparatus?”

“A gas of our own invention. We hold the patent. On the other side of the building are the public entrances. Three little doors opening into side alleys. When a man or a women knocks, we begin by interrogating them; then we offer them assistance, help, protection. If our client accepts, we make inquiries and often we succeed in saving them.”

“Where do you find the money?”

“We possess a great deal. The membership subscription is very high. Then it is good form to make donations to the institute. The names of all donors are printed in the Figaro. Moreover, every wealthy man’s suicide costs a thousand francs, a good pose to die in. The poor die gratis.”

“How do you recognise the poor?”

“Oh, we guess, sir! And, too, they have to bring a certificate of indigence from the local police. If you knew how sinister their entry is! I have only visited that part of the establishment once; I shall never visit it again. As premises, they are nearly as good as this part, nearly as rich and comfortable, but the people⁠ ⁠… the people!!! If you could only see them arrive, old people in rags who are on the point of death, people starving of misery for months, fed at the corners like street dogs; tattered, gaunt women who are ill, paralysed, incapable of making a living, and who say to us after having related their circumstances: ‘You see, it can’t go on, for I can do nothing and earn nothing.’ I saw one old woman of eighty-seven who had lost all her children and all her grandchildren, and who had been sleeping out of doors for six weeks. I was sick with emotion at the sight. But then, we have so many different cases, without mentioning those who say nothing save to ask: ‘Where is it?’ Those we let in and it is all over at once.”

I repeated, with constricted heart:

“And⁠ ⁠… where is it?”

“Here.”

He opened a door, and went on:

“Come in. It is the room specially reserved for members, and the one that is used least. As yet we have had no more than eleven annihilations.”

“Oh, you call it an⁠ ⁠… annihilation?”

“Yes, sir. After you.”

I hesitated, but at last went in. It proved a delightful gallery, a kind of conservatory, which pale blue, soft rose, and light green glasses surrounded poetically in a kind of landscape tapestry. In this charming room there were divans, magnificent palms, sweet-scented flowers, particularly roses, books on the table, the Revue des Deux Mondes, boxes of duty-paid cigars, and, what surprised me, Vichy pastiles in a bonbonnière.

As I showed my astonishment my guide said: “Oh, people often come here for a chat,” and went on:

“The public rooms are like this, though furnished more simply.”

I asked a question.

He pointed with his finger to a chaise-longue upholstered in creamy crêpe de Chine with white embroidery, beneath a tall shrub of species unknown to me, round the foot of which ran a flower bed of reseda.

The secretary added in a lower voice:

“The flower and the scent can be changed at will, for our gas, which is quite imperceptible, lends to death the scene of whatever flower the subject prefers. It is volatilised with essences. Would you like to smell it for a second?”

“No, thanks,” I replied quickly, “not yet.”

He began laughing.

“Oh, there’s no danger, sir. I have made sure of that myself several times.”

I was afraid to appear cowardly. I replied:

“Well, I’m quite agreeable.”

“Sit down on the ‘putter-to-sleep,’ then.”

Slightly nervous, I seated myself on the low chair upholstered in crêpe de Chine, and then lay full length. Almost at once I was enveloped by a delicious scene of reseda. I opened my mouth to receive it more easily, for my soul was already growing torpid, was forgetting, was savouring, in the first discomfort of asphyxiation, the bewitching intoxication of an enchanting and withering opium.

I was shaken by the arm.

“Ah, sir,” said the secretary, laughing, “I see that you are letting yourself get caught.”


But a voice, a real and not a dream voice, greeted me with a pleasant ring:

“Morning, sir, I trust you’re well.”

My dream fled. I saw the Seine beneath the sun, and, coming along the path, the local policeman, who touched his black képi with its silver braid with his right hand.

I answered:

“Good

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