There was a real prince; and the claim too was
sufficiently real--only unfortunately it was not a valid claim. So the
prince lost his case on the last appeal and the beginning of de Barral's
end became manifest to the public in the shape of a half-sheet of note
paper wafered by the four corners on the closed door of The Orb offices
notifying that payment was stopped at that establishment.
Its consort The Sceptre collapsed within the week. I won't say in
American parlance that suddenly the bottom fell out of the whole of de
Barral concerns. There never had been any bottom to it. It was like the
cask of Danaides into which the public had been pleased to pour its
deposits. That they were gone was clear; and the bankruptcy proceedings
which followed were like a sinister farce, bursts of laughter in a
setting of mute anguish--that of the depositors; hundreds of thousands of
them. The laughter was irresistible; the accompaniment of the bankrupt's
public examination.
I don't know if it was from utter lack of all imagination or from the
possession in undue proportion of a particular kind of it, or from
both--and the three alternatives are possible--but it was discovered that
this man who had been raised to such a height by the credulity of the
public was himself more gullible than any of his depositors.
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