Nicolas Chamfort - Suicide

Suicide

Chamfort is the very exemplar of the botched suicide. Unable to tolerate the prospect of being imprisoned once more, in September 1793 he locked himself into his office and shot himself in the face. The pistol malfunctioned and he did not die even though he shot off his nose and part of his jaw. He then repeatedly stabbed his neck with a paper cutter, but failed to cut an artery. He finally used the paper cutter to stab himself in the chest. He dictated to those who came to arrest him the well-known declaration Moi, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas de Chamfort, déclare avoir voulu mourir en homme libre plutôt que d'être reconduit en esclave dans une maison d'arrêt ("I, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas de Chamfort, hereby declare my wish to die a free man rather than to continue to live as a slave in a prison") which he signed in a firm hand and in his own blood. His butler found him unconscious in a pool of blood. From then until his death at Paris the following year, he suffered intensely and was attended to by a gendarme, whom he paid a crown a day.

To the Abbé Sieyès Chamfort had given fortune in the title of a pamphlet (Qu'est-ce que le Tiers-État ? Tout. Qu'a-t-il ? Rien), and Sieyès was likewise the person to whom he told his famous sarcastic bon mot Ah ! mon ami, je m'en vais enfin de ce monde, où il faut que le cœur se brise ou se bronze. Thus the maker of constitutions followed the dead wit to the grave.