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Then I became certain that I would never be able to appease Ti-Chin-Fú. I spent the night in the palace thinking about abandoning the supernatural millions. Perhaps that would free me from that figure and his paper kite.
I abandoned the palace in Loreto and my life of luxury. I put on a worn coat and rented my old room in D. Augusta's house again. I also returned to the Ministry, bent over, to ask for my copyist's job and my twenty thousand réis.
Everyone thought that I was ruined. The newspapers mocked my poverty. The aristocrats ordered their coachmen to run me down in the streets. The clergy accused me of sorcery and the people threw stones at me. D. Augusta called me Enguiço and a shabby wretch when I complained about the steaks.
Despite that penance, Ti-Chin-Fú remained at my side. The millions lay unused and untouched in the banks. But they still belonged to me in fact.
Indignant, I returned noisily to the palace and to luxury. The windows lit up Loreto once more. Lines of servants in black silk uniforms filled the gate.
Lisbon immediately knelt at my feet again. D. Augusta wept and called me her beloved son. The newspapers called me Omnipotent and Omniscient. The aristocracy kissed my fingers and the clergy treated me like an idol. Everyone's respect changed immediately with my money. My contempt for humanity extended to the God who had created it. I spent weeks on the sofa, silent and gloomy, thinking about the happiness of not existing.
One night, I met the black-clad man in a deserted street. He carried the umbrella under his arm, as he had at our first meeting. He was the visitor who had caused me to inherit the millions with one ring of the bell. I ran to him and seized his coat. 'Free me from my riches!' I begged. 'Bring the Mandarin back to life and restore the peace of poverty to me!'
The man kindly replied that it was not possible. I threw myself at his feet and pleaded. But under the dim gaslight, I saw only the shape of a thin dog sniffing the rubbish. I never encountered that figure again.
Now the world seems to me like an enormous heap of ruins. My lonely soul groans like an exile among fallen columns. The flowers wither without being replaced, and every light seems like a torch to me. My lovers approach the bed in white dressing gowns. Then I weep, as if I saw my dead joys covered in shrouds.
I feel that I am dying. I have already made my will. In it, I leave the millions to the Devil because they belong to him.
To humanity, I leave only these words, without comment: 'Only the bread that our hands earn each day tastes good.' 'Never kill the Mandarin!'
And yet one idea comforts me as I die. Across the vast Chinese Empire, from north to south and west to east, no Mandarin would remain alive. You would kill them, reader, if you could kill them as easily as I did and inherit their millions. You are a creature improvised by God, a bad creation fashioned from bad clay, my fellow and my brother!
Angers, June 1880.