“Pardon me for the pain I am causing you, but it is better that we should part. I found again yesterday, my first lover Alcide, the man I fought with Léonie about. He is the handsome fellow who won the wrestling-match yesterday. I am going off with him. I could not give up that kind of life, except for the sort of money which Lerne promised me. I should have made you unhappy, and should have been unfaithful to you. All the rest amounts to nothing. I want a real man. It is not your fault, and so I hope this will not cause you any pain. Adieu for life. “EMMA BOURDICHET.” In the presence of so categorical an intimation, couched in jargon almost as barbarous as that of the Law Courts, I could only bow to fate. Moreover, were not those sentiments which Emma was expressing, exactly those which had charmed me in her? Had I not loved in her just that thirst for pleasure which was the cause of her bewitching beauty, and the cause of her infidelity? I had the energy and wisdom to defer the rest of my reflections until the morrow. They might have brought on weakness in action. I inquired about the first train for Paris, and sent for a mechanic to undertake to dispatch my 80 h. p. car, or, if you prefer to call it, the Klotz-automobile, to me. I was soon informed of the man’s arrival. Together we went to the garage. The car had disappeared! It can easily be imagined that I put the two treasonable acts together, and accused Emma of a secret complicity. But the Manager of the Hotel, thinking he had to do with audacious thieves, went off to the police-office. He came back, saying that they had found in a little street of the _faubourg_, a car with the number 234XY, which had been abandoned, as he thought, by thieves, for want of petrol. The tank was empty. “Ah! just so,” said I to myself. Klotz wanted to run away. He forgot about the exhaustion of the petrol, and there he is, paralyzed. I kept the true version of the incident to myself, and advised the mechanic to push the car to the train, without making the engine go. “Promise me this,” I insisted, “it is very important. My train is due, I must be off. Off you go, and remember, _no petrol_.” CHAPTER XVI THE WIZARD FINALLY DIES And now, here I am, in this house in the Avenue Victor Hugo, which I had taken for Emma, and I am alone with my strange memories, since she preferred to sacrifice her intoxicating and lucrative beauty to M. Alcide. Let us say no more about it! February is beginning. The fire is flaming behind me with the flapping sound of a waving flag. Since I came back to Paris, having nothing to do, and reading nothing, I write every evening and every morning, at this round table, the story of my singular adventures. Are they over yet? The Klotz-automobile is there in the coach-house, in a box which I have specially constructed for it.