order to appear with befitting splendour as
knights and noblemen of Henrietta Maria's Court (Henrietta Maria, wife
of Hastings Hicks, Esq., Sudder Dewanee Adawlut), or as princes and
warriors surrounding the palanquin of Lalla Rookh (the lovely wife of
Hon. Cornwallis Bobus, Member of Council): all these splendours were
there. As carriage after carriage drove up from Calcutta, they were met
at Rummun Loll's gate by ghastly weeping servants, who announced their
master's demise.

On the next day the Bank at Calcutta was closed, and the day after, when
heavy bills were presented which must be paid, although by this time
Rummun Loll was not only dead but buried, and his widows howling over
his grave, it was announced throughout Calcutta that but 800 rupees were
left in the treasury of the B. B. C. to meet engagements to the amount
of four lakhs then immediately due, and sixty days afterwards the
shutters were closed at No. 175 Lothbury, the London offices of the B.
B. C. of India, and 35,000 pounds worth of their bills refused by their
agents, Messrs. Baines, Jolly and Co., of Fog Court.

When the accounts of that ghastly bankruptcy arrived from Calcutta, it
was found, of course, that the merchant-prince Rummun Loll owed the B.
B. C. twenty-five lakhs of rupees, the value of which was scarcely even
represented by his respectable signature. It was found that one of the
auditors of the bank, the generally esteemed Charley Conder (a capital
fellow, famous for his good dinners, and for playing low-comedy
characters at the Chowringhee Theatre), was indebted to the bank in
90,000 pounds; and also it was discovered that the revered Baptist
Bellman, Chief Registrar of the Calcutta Tape and Sealing-Wax Office
(a most valuable and powerful amateur preacher who had converted two
natives, and whose serious soirees were thronged at Calcutta), had
helped himself to 73,000 pounds more, for which he settled in the
Bankruptcy Court before he resumed his duties in his own. In justice
to Mr. Bellman, it must be said that he could have had no idea of the
catastrophe impending over the B. B. C. For, only three weeks before
that great bank closed its doors, Mr. Bellman, as guardian of the
children of his widowed sister Mrs. Green, had sold the whole of the
late Colonel's property out of Company's paper and invested it in the
bank, which gave a high interest, and with bills of which, drawn upon
their London correspondents, he had accommodated Mr