Legacy
Like Gustav Mahler, Maurice Leblanc wrote many farewells to Arsène Lupin (**The Hollow Needle**, **The Teeth of the Tiger**, **The Billions of Arsène Lupin**) but, like Michael Corleone, just when he thought he was out, they would pull him back in. Leblanc himself implicitly admits this in a short account of his relationship with the character, written in 1933 and used as a postface in this book : he had created Lupin for a commissioned job in 1907 and since then became a prisoner of his own success.
This **Le Dernier Amour d'Arsène Lupin** is his last farewell, and a delicious one.
**Le Dernier** was published only in 2012, found by Leblanc's granddaughter Florence Leblanc among her father's stuff, as she tells it, inside a beige folder. It was probably written between 1936 and 1937, and is very different from **Billions** (serialized in 1939 and published posthumously in 1941), because it is a much more personal project and tastes, I think purposefully, much more bittersweet.
So much so that, while Leblanc claims in the postface to be influenced by Balzac and Poe, I think there is a subconscious touch of Victor Hugo in **Le Dernier** : Lupin's
self-denial and obsession to secure Cora a good marriage because he thinks his past as the gentleman thief prevents him from loving her and, more importantly, his eagerness to do good on his last days, sound just like Jean Valjean in **Les Misérables**, especially when Valjean denies himself the right to be part of Cosette's happy life with Marius. Joséphin is Leblanc's version of Gavroche, although one could argue that his and his siblings' destitute condition is similar to that of Cosette with the Thenardiers, or the children in Dickens' **Bleak House**. All through the novella, there is this sense that everything will eventually flow into redemption and it actually does, although not as dramatically as Valjean's case.
The echoes of WWI are still heard here and the tensions of the approaching new conflict are also palpable. Lupin irreducibly claims in this book that his purpose is now to fight for universal peace. And justifies his actions aesthetically : rational arguments may fail us and emotions may fool us, so in order to decide about what to do with the rest of his life, among all options, Lupin chooses the 'most beautiful' one. I couldn't avoid thinking of Schiller and smiling.
That discussion comes in Lupin's conversation with the head of the British 'Intelligence Service' (or today MI6), and Leblanc's choice to include this agency in his last novel was also a big surprise. Maybe Leblanc got this reference from one of Ian Fleming's predecessors (maybe E Philips Oppenheim or W Somerset Maugham) but I was thrilled anyway at the idea that this, incidentally or not, makes Arsène Lupin bridge Sherlock Holmes to James Bond. Only a character whose books were written over a period of more than 30 years could possibly do that.
Indeed, one can argue that **Billions** is the conclusion of Lupin's career as a long-lived character, but **Le Dernier** is a kind of personal legacy to humanity. Here, Lupin is concerned with universal peace, with the education of a new generation, even with the study of deep-sea currents to generate sustainable energy (most likely referring to the research developed by Georges Claude at the time.) There were so many generous surprises in this book that I really didn't care much about its thin plot about Jeanne d'arc and Napoléon, or any occasional plot hole. I was simply too happy with this last book, just as Lupin was happy with his last love.