Ralph understood. The independent life of an artist allows one to disregard certain conventions. Aurelie was free. When the play came to an end—amid what ovation! He made his way to the dressing-room of the triumphant girl. The pretty fair head bent towards him. Their lips met. So ended the strange and dreadful affair of Juvains, which, for fifteen years, was the cause of so many crimes and such anguish. Ralph endeavored to snatch the small confederate of Jodot from his evil ways. He handed him over to the care of the widow Ancivel. But William’s mother, whom he had informed of the manner of her son’s death, took to drink. The child, corrupted too early, could not rise from the depths. They were obliged to shut him up in a reformatory. He escaped from it, found the widow, and both of them went to the United States. As for Marescal, having learned his lesson, but still obsessed with his lady-killing ideas, he rose in rank. One day he asked for an interview with M. Lenormand, the famous head of the detective police. At the end of the interview M. Lenormand came a little nearer to his inferior, and said to him, with a cigarette in his mouth: “Could you oblige me with a light?” and that in a tone which made Marescal tremble. He had instantly recognized Lupin. He recognized him again under other disguises, always mocking and with a winking eye. And every time he received point blank that terrible, bitter, biting, unexpected little sentence and so funny by reason of the effect it produced on him. “Could you oblige me with a light?” Ralph bought the estate of Juvains. But out of deference to the girl with the green eyes, he would not divulge the marvelous secret. The lake of Juvains and the Fountain of Jouvence may be reckoned among the number of the accumulated marvels and fabulous treasures that France will inherit from Arsène Lupin.