realities behind these words--realities that can touch the heart of
a confirmed _marroneur_? Cold and pitiless, Nature sits aloft like a
mathematician, with his balance regulating the storm-pulses of this
troubled world. Bah! I fling myself in her teeth. I brazen it out. She
quails. For, since the accursed food passed my lips, the strength of a
million demons is in me. I am pitiless. I laugh to think of the fool
I once was in the days when I fed myself on _Baba au Rhum_, and other
innocent dishes. Now I have knowledge. I am my own good. I glance
haughtily into--[Ten rhapsodical pages omitted.--ED. _Punch_.] But
there came into my life a false priest, who was like the ghost of
a fair lost god--and because he was a fair lost, the cabmen loved
him not--and he had to die, and lie in the Morgue--the Morgue where
murdered men and women love to dwell--and thus he should discover the
Eternal Secret!

CHAPTER IV.

Again--again--again! The moon rose, shimmering like a _Marron Glacé_
over Paris. Oh! Paris, beauteous city of the lost. Surely in Babylon
or in Nineveh, where SEMIRAMIS of old queened it over men, never
was such madness--madness did I say? Why? What did I mean? Tush! the
struggle is over, and I am calm again, though my blood still hums
tumultuously. The world is very evil. My father died choked by a
_marron_. I, too, am dead--I who have written this rubbish--I am dead,
and sometimes, as I walk, my loved one glides before me in aërial
phantom shape, as on page 4, Vol. II. But I am dead--dead and
buried--and over my grave an avenue of gigantic chestnuts reminds the
passer-by of my fate: and on my tombstone it is written, "Here lies
one who danced a cancan and ate _marrons glacés_ all day. Be warned!"
THE END.