Confession of a Child of the Century, Book I

Upon awaking the following morning I experienced a feeling of such deep disgust with myself, and felt so degraded in my own eyes that a horrible temptation assailed me. Then I sat down and looked gloomily about the room, my eyes resting mechanically on a brace of pistols that decorated the walls.

When the suffering mind stretches its hands, so to speak, toward annihilation, when the soul forms some violent resolution, there seems to be an independent physical horror in the act of touching the cold steel of some deadly weapon; the fingers stiffen in anguish, the arm grows cold and hard. Nature recoils as the condemned walks to death. I can not express what I experienced, unless it was as if my pistol had said to me: "Think what you are about to do."