This was probably the truth, so far as de Lesseps himself was personally concerned. Promoters, discoverers and inventors of genius are men of mighty faith in their respective enterprises. As a great anarchist once said of his own special nostrum for regenerating humanity at a blow: "All is moral that helps it, all is immoral that hinders it." So with de Lesseps. All was moral that got in money to construct his canal: all was immoral that checked the flow of cash to the Isthmus. But an enthusiast of this temper, "without power of calculation," is a very dangerous man, not only to the subscribers to his shares, but to the Republican politicians who confined their enthusiasm to the acquisition of hard cash for use not in Panama but in Paris. In 1888 the Panama Canal Company collapsed, and the thing was put into liquidation. But that was not the end of it. All sorts of schemes were afoot for carrying on the works and completing the canal before the concession expired in 1893. Although, however, from the date of the breakdown onwards--when it was stated that fully £70,000,000 would be needed in addition to the amount already expended or frittered away to carry out the canal--most virulent attacks were continually made upon prominent politicians and financiers, as well as upon the Directors of the Company, neither the political nor the legal consequences of the disaster were felt to the full extent until four years later. Judicial investigations, it is true, were going on. But it was an open secret that, in spite of the losses and complaints of the shareholders, and the strong desire of the public that the whole vast transaction should be exposed in every detail, the anxiety of men in high place was to calm down natural feeling in the matter. What made this attitude more suspicious was the fact that the Government had certainly not shown itself unfavourable to the scheme, but on the contrary had helped it, even when the gravest doubts had been thrown upon its practicability, at a cost vastly exceeding anything contemplated by the Company. In fact, an atmosphere of general distrust pervaded Paris and the whole of France. Yet Panama still had its friends, and it was believed that somehow or other the affair would be tided over.