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.
A shamefaced amazement attended these proceedings in which de Barral was not being exposed alone.

For himself his only cry was: Time! Time! Time would have set everything right.

In time some of these speculations of his were certain to have succeeded.