The Teeth of the Tiger - Maurice Leblanc (feel good books txt) 📗

“I used to see a great deal of him,” he says. “He was not a bad man. I will not go so far as to compare him with the Seven Sages, or even to hold him up as an example to future generations, but still we must judge him with a certain indulgence.

“He did a vast amount of good and a moderate amount of harm. Those who suffered through him deserved what they got; and fate would have punished them sooner or later if he had not forestalled her. Between a Lupin who selected his victims among the ruck of wicked rich men and some big company promoter who deliberately ruins numbers of poor people, would you hesitate for a moment? Does not Lupin come out best?

“And, on the other hand, what a host of good actions! What countless proofs of disinterested generosity! A burglar? I admit it. A swindler? I don’t deny it. He was all that. But he was something more than that. And, while he amused the gallery with his skill and ingenuity, he roused the general enthusiasm in other ways.

“People laughed at his practical jokes, but they loved his pluck, his courage, his adventurous spirit, his contempt for danger, his shrewd insight, his unfailing good humour, his reckless energy: all qualities that stood out at a period when the most active virtues of our race had reached their zenith, the period of the motor car and the aeroplane.⁠ ⁠…

“One day,” he said, as a joke, “I should like my epitaph to read, ‘Here lies Arsène Lupin, adventurer.’ ” That was quite correct. He was a master of adventure.

“And, if the spirit of adventure led him too often to put his hand in other people’s pockets, it also led him to battlefields where it gives those who are worthy opportunity to fight and win titles of distinction which are not within reach of all. It was there that he gained his. It is there that you should see him at work, spending his strength braving death, and defying destiny. And it is because of this that you must forgive him, even if he did sometimes get the better of a commissary of police or steal the watch of an examining magistrate. Let us show some indulgence to our professors of energy.”

And, nodding his head, Don Luis concludes:

“Then, you see, he had another virtue which is not to be despised. It is a virtue for which we should be grateful to him in these gray days of ours: he knew how to smile!”

The Teeth of the Tiger
was published in 1914 by
Maurice Leblanc.
It was translated from French in 1915 by
Alexander Louis Teixeira de Mattos.

This ebook was produced for
Standard Ebooks
by
Robin Whittleton,
and is based on a transcription produced in 2004 by
Juliet Sutherland, Mary Meehan, and The Online Distributed Proofreading Team
for
Project Gutenberg
and on digital scans available at the
Internet Archive.

The cover page is adapted from
Portrait of the Swedish Painter Gustaf Wolmar,
a painting completed in 1902 by
Johan Rohde.
The cover and title pages feature the
League Spartan and Sorts Mill Goudy
typefaces created in 2014 and 2009 by
The League of Moveable Type.

The first edition of this ebook was released on
April 24, 2019, 12:21 a.m.
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May you do good and not evil.
May you find forgiveness for yourself and forgive others.
May you share freely, never taking more than you give.

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