We pass through periods dominated by this or that word--it may be
development, or it may be competition, or education, or purity or
efficiency or even sanctity. It is the word of the time. Well just then
it was the word Thrift which was out in the streets walking arm in arm
with righteousness, the inseparable companion and backer up of all such
national catch-words, looking everybody in the eye as it were. The very
drabs of the pavement, poor things, didn't escape the fascination . . .
However! . . . Well the greatest portion of the press were screeching in
all possible tones, like a confounded company of parrots instructed by
some devil with a taste for practical jokes, that the financier de Barral
was helping the great moral evolution of our character towards the newly-
discovered virtue of Thrift. He was helping it by all these great
establishments of his, which made the moral merits of Thrift manifest to
the most callous hearts, simply by promising to pay ten per cent.
interest on all deposits. And you didn't want necessarily to belong to
the well-to-do classes in order to participate in the advantages of
virtue. If you had but a spare sixpence in the world and went and gave
it to de Barral it was Thrift! It's quite likely that he himself
believed it. He must have. It's inconceivable that he alone should
stand out against the infatuation of the whole world. He hadn't enough
intelligence for that. But to look at him one couldn't tell . . . "

"You did see him then?" I said with some curiosity.

"I did. Strange, isn't it? It was only once, but as I sat with the
distressed Fyne who had suddenly resuscitated his name buried in my
memory with other dead labels of the past, I may say I saw him again, I
saw him with great vividness of recollection, as he appeared in the days
of his glory or splendour. No! Neither of these words will fit his
success. There was never any glory or splendour about that figure. Well,