ultitude he had deluded. Numbers of men in every profession and trade
would be blighted by his insolvency; old people who had been in easy
circumstances all their lives would have no place of repentance for
their trust in him but the workhouse; legions of women and children
would have their whole future desolated by the hand of this mighty
scoundrel. Every partaker of his magnificent feasts would be seen to
have been a sharer in the plunder of innumerable homes; every servile
worshipper of riches who had helped to set him on his pedestal, would
have done better to worship the Devil point-blank. So, the talk, lashed
louder and higher by confirmation on confirmation, and by edition after
edition of the evening papers, swelled into such a roar when night came,
as might have brought one to believe that a solitary watcher on the
gallery above the Dome of St Paul's would have perceived the night air
to be laden with a heavy muttering of the name of Merdle, coupled with
every form of execration.

For by that time it was known that the late Mr Merdle's complaint
had been simply Forgery and Robbery. He, the uncouth object of such
wide-spread adulation, the sitter at great men's feasts, the roc's egg
of great ladies' assemblies, the subduer of exclusiveness, the leveller
of pride, the patron of patrons, the bargain-driver with a Minister
for Lordships of the Circumlocution Office, the recipient of more
acknowledgment within some ten or fifteen years, at most, than had been
bestowed in England upon all peaceful public benefactors, and upon
all the leaders of all the Arts and Sciences, with all their works to
testify for them, during two centuries at least--he, the shining wonder,
the new constellation to be followed by the wise men bringing gifts,
until it stopped over a certain carrion at the bottom of a bath and
disappeared--was simply the greatest Forger and the greatest Thief that
ever cheated the gallows.

CHAPTER 26. Reaping the Whirlwind

With a precursory sound of hurried breath and hurried feet, Mr Pancks
rushed into Arthur Clennam's Counting-house. The Inquest was over, the
letter was public, the Bank was broken, the other model structures of
straw had taken fire and were turned to smoke. The admired piratical
ship had blown up, in the midst of a vast fleet of ships of all rates,
and boats of all sizes; and on the deep was nothing but ruin; nothing
but burning hulls, bursting magazines, great guns self-exploded