by sea—with luck, that a railway magnate entered and gave his celebrated rendering of a boiler explosion. It appeared—when every one had partially recovered—that he was the proud possessor of ten francs and three sous. He also admitted to a wife suffering from something with a name that hurt, and various young railway magnates of both sexes. It transpired that the ten francs and three sous had been laboriously collected from his ménage only that morning; that the youngest hopeful had wept copiously on losing her life's savings; and further, that it was the limit of his resources. He had letters of credit, or something dangerous of that sort, to the extent of a few million; he was prepared to buy the whole one-donkey country by a stroke of the pen, but—in hard cash—he had ten francs and three sous. …
It was pathetic; it was dreadful. An American multi-millionaire, one of those strange beings of whom one reads, who corner tin-tacks and things, and ruin or make thousands with a word, reduced to ten francs and three sous.
For not another cent piece did America's pride obtain; not another sou to add to the three. Politely, firmly, a harassed clerk shooed him away. No, he could not tell him when the next boat would sail—perhaps to-morrow, perhaps in a fortnight. He did not know, and he did not care how he proposed to live during that period, and he had no intention of furnishing him with any money to do it with. He had definite orders from his firm: no cheques cashed under any circumstances whatever. He was
