The battleship was the Big Financier, who saw that a wreck was now inevitable, and was only concerned that there should be a fair distribution of the assets.

That meant, of course, that he should be served first, and then that those below the salt should get a share.
Revelation after revelation had been Jean Jacques' lot of late years, but the final revelation of his own impotence was overwhelming.

When he began to stir about among his affairs, he was faced by the fact that the law stood in his way.

He realized with inward horror his shattered egotism and natural vanity; he saw that he might just as well be in jail; that he had no freedom; that he could do nothing at all in regard to anything he owned; that he was, in effect, a prisoner of war where he had been the general commanding an army.
Yet the old pride intervened, and it was associated with some innate nobility; for from the hour in which it was known that Sebastian Dolores had escaped in a steamer bound for France, and could not be overhauled, and the chances were that he would never have to yield up the six thousand dollars, Jean Jacques bustled about cheerfully, and as though he had still great affairs of business to order and regulate.

It was a make-believe which few treated with scorn.