“Monsieur le President du Conseil, I will not remind you of the events of the last few years.  France, resolving to pursue a splendid dream of dominion over North Africa, has had to part with a portion of the Congo.  I propose to heal the painful wound by giving her thirty times as much as she has lost.  And I turn the magnificent and distant dream into an immediate certainty by joining the small slice of Morocco which you have conquered to Senegal at one blow.

“To-day, Greater France in Africa exists.  Thanks to me, it is a solid and compact expanse.  Millions of square miles of territory and a coastline stretching for several thousand miles from Tunis to the Congo, save for a few insignificant interruptions.”

“It’s a Utopia,” Valenglay protested.

“It’s a reality.”

“Nonsense!  It will take us twenty years’ fighting to achieve.”

“It will take you exactly five minutes!” cried Don Luis, with irresistible enthusiasm.  “What I offer you is not the conquest of an empire, but a conquered empire, duly pacified and administered, in full working order and full of life.  My gift is a present, not a future gift.

“I, too, Monsieur le President du Conseil, I, Arsene Lupin, had cherished a splendid dream.  After toiling and moiling all my life, after knowing all the ups and downs of existence, richer than Croesus, because all the wealth of the world was mine, and poorer than Job, because I had distributed all my treasures, surfeited with everything, tired of unhappiness, and more tired still of happiness, sick of pleasure, of passion, of excitement, I wanted to do something that is incredible in the present day:  to reign!

“And a still more incredible phenomenon:  when this thing was accomplished, when the dead Arsene Lupin had come to life again as a sultan out of the Arabian Nights, as a reigning, governing, law-giving Arsene Lupin, head of the state and head of the church, I determined, in a few years, at one stroke, to tear down the screen of rebel tribes against which you were waging a desultory and tiresome war in the north of Morocco, while I was quietly and silently building up my kingdom at the back of it.

“Then, face to face with France and as powerful as herself, like a neighbour treating on equal terms, I would have cried to her, ’It’s I, Arsene Lupin!  Behold the former swindler and gentleman burglar!  The Sultan of Adrar, the Sultan of Iguidi, the Sultan of El Djouf, the Sultan of the Tuaregs, the Sultan of Aubata, the Sultan of Brakna and Frerzon, all these am I, the Sultan of Sultans, grandson of Mahomet, son of Allah, I, I, I, Arsene Lupin!’

“And, before taking the little grain of poison that sets one free—­for a man like Arsene Lupin has no right to grow old—­I should have signed the treaty of peace, the deed of gift in which I bestowed a kingdom on France, signed it, below the flourishes of my grand dignitaries, kaids, pashas, and marabouts, with my lawful signature, the signature to which I am fully entitled, which I conquered at the point of my sword and by my all-powerful will:  ‘Arsene I, Emperor of Mauretania!’”