In consequence of the official liquidator’s report and the painful disclosures which took place at the sittings of the Committee of Inquiry, a prosecution was commenced against M. Ferdinand de Lesseps, his son Charles de Lesseps and other directors, for bribery and corruption. After a trial lasting nearly a month, during which the speech of the counsel for the defence occupied four whole days, M. de Lesseps and his son were sentenced to five years’ imprisonment, whilst the other directors were fined and sentenced to two years’ imprisonment. The news of the sentence caused a great sensation, many thinking it savoured of harshness. Ferdinand de Lesseps was lying ill at his country house during the whole of the trial, and although the news of the verdict was telegraphed to Madame de Lesseps, it was carefully kept from the aged invalid. Two days afterwards Charles de Lesseps paid a visit to his father and had a most affecting interview with him. On his son’s departure the old man relapsed into a condition of unconscious stupor. He never regained vigour or recovered from the shock which the failure of his plans and the scandals attached to that failure occasioned. Great care had to be taken lest news from the outside world of the second trial of his son and his colleagues (resulting in fines and imprisonment) should reach the enfeebled intellect and shattered frame and snap life’s thread; and it is said that the papers of the previous years recounting the progress of the work on the isthmus were read to him as if of current issue. Through two years of careful nursing and watching his life was prolonged till on 7 December, 1894, in his ninetieth year, there passed away one who, in spite of the clouds that overshadowed the close of his career, remains one of the most illustrious of Frenchmen. He was neither an engineer nor a financier, but had such magnetic personality and persuasive eloquence as enabled him to enlist the co-operation of practical men whom he inspired with his own enthusiasm, and his reputation outlives the jealousy and intrigue that brought about his ruin, for his name is indelibly inscribed on the roll of fame. The Official Receiver appointed to administer the affairs of the Panama Canal Company was faced with a grave responsibility. It was his paramount duty to safeguard, as far as possible, the interests of the shareholders by saving from the wreck anything that might remain of their investment. The principal asset, however, was the work already accomplished at so great a cost, and the value of this was necessarily contingent on the completion of the enterprise. On the other hand the experience of the company, with regard to health and labour difficulties, the ever-varying estimates as to cost and time for completion, the continual alterations as to the detail of the work, and the particular level at which it was best to construct the canal; and [Illustration: MAP OF THE REPUBLIC OF PANAMA]