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?

This is how it has befallen. The last thing I remember of the
old condit