But that only a year ago a host of smart people
would have been only too pleased to take a hand at cards with him. Yes--he
went on--some of the very people who were there accommodated with seats
on the bench; and turning upon the counsel "You yourself as well," he
cried. He could have had half the town at his rooms to fawn upon him if
he had cared for that sort of thing. "Why, now I think of it, it took me
most of my time to keep people, just of your sort, off me," he ended with
a good humoured--quite unobtrusive, contempt, as though the fact had
dawned upon him for the first time.
This was the moment, the only moment, when he had perhaps all the
audience in Court with him, in a hush of dreary silence. And then the
dreary proceedings were resumed. For all the outside excitement it was
the most dreary of all celebrated trials. The bankruptcy proceedings had
exhausted all the laughter there was in it. Only the fact of wide-spread
ruin remained, and the resentment of a mass of people for having been
fooled by means too simple to save their self-respect from a deep wound
which the cleverness of a consummate scoundrel would not have inflicted.
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