Returning from an excursion to Lake Silvaplana, she found in her chamber a basket containing a veritable sheaf of Alpine flowers, freshly gathered, and among them not only _Edelweiss_ in profusion, but several very rare plants, and the rarest of all a certain bell-flower creeper, which smells like the apricot, and which, except in some districts of the Engadine, is only found now in Siberia.

This splendid bouquet was accompanied by a note, thus conceived: "A man who had had enough of life, resolved to hang himself.

To execute his dolorous design, he selected a lonely and dismal spot, where there grew a solitary oak, whose sap was nearly exhausted.

As he was engaged in securing his cord, a bird alighted on the half-dead tree and began to sing.

The man said to himself: 'Since there is no spot so miserable that a bird will not deign to sing in it, I will have the courage to live.' And he lived.
"I arrived in this village disgusted with life, sorrowful and so weary that I longed to die.