As corollary of this particular informality of The Emperor’s Cigars, there occurred an incident which while grievous to the victims, made no little fun for us; its relation here may entertain you, and because of its natural connection with the main story, will come properly enough. At set intervals, the government held an auction of all confiscated goods. At these markets to which the public was invited to appear and bid, the government asserted nothing, guaranteed nothing. In disposing of such gear as these cigars, no box was opened; no goods displayed. One saw nothing but the cover, heard nothing but the surmise of an auctioneer, and thereupon, if impulse urged, bid what he pleased for a pig in a poke. Thus it came to pass that on the occasion when The Emperor’s Cigars were held aloft for bids, the garrulous lecturer employed in selling the collected plunder of three confiscation months, took up one of the two thousand boxes as a sample, and said: “I offer for sale a lot of two thousand packages, of which the one I hold in my hand is a specimen. Each package is supposed to contain fifty cigars. What am I bid for the lot? What offer do I hear?” That was the complete proffer as made by the government; for all that the bidding was briskly sharp. Those who had come to purchase were there for bargains not guarantees; moreover, there was the box; and could they not believe their experience? Each would-be bidder knew by the size and shape and character of the package that it was made for and should contain fifty cigars of the Emperor brand. Wherefore no one distrusted; the question of contents arose to no mind; and competition grew instant and close. Bid followed bid; five hundred dollars being the mark of each advance, as the noisy struggle between speculators for the lot’s ownership proceeded. At last those celebrated marketeers, Grove and Filtord, received the lot--one hundred thousand of The Emperor’s Cigars--for forty-five thousand dollars. What thoughts may have come to them later, when they searched their bargain for its merits, I cannot say. Not one word of inquiry, condemnation or complaint came from Grove and Filtord. Whatever their discoveries, or whatever their deductions, they maintained a profound taciturnity. Probably they did not care to court the laughter of fellow dealers by disclosures of the trap into which they had so blindly bid their way. Surely, they must in its last chapters have been aware of the swindle! To have believed in the genuineness of the goods would have dissipated what remnant of good repute might still have clung to that last of the Napoleons who was their inventor, and justified the coming destruction of his throne and the birth of the republic which arose from its ruins. As I say, however, not one syllable of complaint came floating back from Grove and Filtord. They took their loss, and were dumb.