"'For you,' he whispered breathlessly, in the French he had picked up during an edifying year in Paris. 'Ah, _mon ami_, this is the end--now I must die, and a glass of your excellent rum would help me to die gracefully. _Merci bien_--you are kindness personified! I wonder why: there is so little, in your eyes, that I can do. Yes, this is the end. I cannot complain--I have had my fun and paid for some of it, at least. Never again shall I watch the faces passing my table on the boulevard, nor sit with the brown people in a bush-clearing far from the church, while the drums throb and the sleek young girls twist and flutter their hands in the torchlight. No doubt you are thinking that I am a _drôle de type_, and so I am, by training and by birth--half savage, half _boulevardier_. But the time is short and I weary you with idle reflections; _allons_, to business! You can read the native Tahitian, eh? It is difficult for one who knows only the Samoan dialect. I had hoped to keep that paper to myself; the doctors say that men with my malady are always optimists. But you have treated me as one white man treats another--keep it, read it, and do as you please. Perhaps it is worth another glass of rum, _n'est-ce pas_? Another rum for Monsieur le Baron! They called me that in Paris, at the Grand Hotel--Ha, ha! Noble on both sides, _bon Dieu_!--my mother a cannibal Princess--Monsieur le Baron von Tesmar, Prince of Iriatai! How's that for a title, _hein_?' "At five o'clock, when the moonlight paled before the first flush of dawn, he turned his face away from me and died. I blew out the light and went on deck to give orders for his burial. Then, when I had my coffee, I lay down in my berth and unfolded the paper he had given me. It proved a quaint document--a letter in the native language from Turia to her son, written a few days before her death. Here it is--it is worth translating for your benefit:--