I shall have, I think, just enough strength left to reach Mentone—­this place is intolerable now—­and there I shall put myself under the care of a capable physician who, with his abominable drugs, will doubtless begin the cheerful work of inducing the mental decay which I suppose must precede physical dissolution.

I must confess that I am disappointed with the manner of my exit.  I had imagined it quite different.  I had beheld myself turning with a smile and a jest for one last view of the faces over which I, in my eumoirous career, had cast the largesse of happiness, and the vanishing with a gallant carelessness through the dusky portals.  Instead of that, here am I sneaking out of life by the back door, covering my eyes for very shame.  And glad?  Oh, God, how glad I am to slink out of it!

I have indeed accomplished the thing which I set out to do.  I have severed a boy from the object of his passion.  What an achievement for the crowning glory of a lifetime!  And at what a cost:  one fellow-creature’s life and another’s reason.  On me lies the responsibility.  Vauvenarde, it is true, did not adorn this grey world, but he drew the breath of life, and, through my jesting agency, it was cut off.  Anastasius Papadopoulos, had he not come under my malign influence would have lived out his industrious, happy and dream-filled days.  Lesser, but still great price, too, has been paid.  Jealous hatred, misery and failure for the being I care most for in the world, the shame of a sordid scandal to those that hold me dear, the hopeless love and speedy mourning of a woman not without greatness.

I have tried to make a Tom Fool of Destiny—­and Destiny has proved itself to be the superior jester of the two, and has made a grim and bedraggled Tom Fool of me.

. . .  I must end this.  I have just fallen in a faint on the floor, and Rogers has revived me with some drops Hunnington had given me in view of such a contingency.

These are the last words I shall write.  Life is too transcendentally humorous for a man not to take it seriously.  Compared with it, Death is but a shallow jest.

CHAPTER XVI

It is many weeks since I wrote those words which I thought were to be my last.  I read them over now, and laugh aloud.  Life is more devilishly humorous than I in my most nightmare dreams ever imagined.  Instead of dying at Mentone as I proposed, I am here, at Mustapha Superieur, still living.  And let me tell you the master joke of the Arch-Jester.

I am going to live.

I am not going to die.  I am going to live.  I am quite well.

Think of it.  Is it farcical, comical, tragical, or what?