All this went on for about a fortnight, until the whole town and a good deal of the surrounding country had made complete fools of themselves, and only the "naughty little boys" in the streets held out against the prevailing mania, probably because they were not admitted to the sport. Their salutations took the form of an inharmonious thoroughfare-ballad, the chorus of which terminated with: "Boo! hoo! hoo! And who's the Princess Cariboo?" yelled out at the top of their voices. At length one day, the luggage of her Highness was embarked upon a small vessel to be taken round by water to London, while she announced, through her "agent," her intention to reach the capital by post-coaching. Of course, the most superb traveling-carriages and teams were placed at her disposal; but, courteously declining all these offers, she set out in the night-time with a hired establishment, attended by her retinue. Days and weeks rolled on, and yet no announcement came of the arrival of her Highness at London or at any of the intervening cities after the first two or three towns eastward of Bristol. Inquiry began to be made, and, after long and patient but unavailing search, it became apparent to divers and sundry dignitaries in the old town that somebody had been very particularly "sold." The landlord at the "White Lion" who had accepted the agent's order for L1,000 on a Calcutta firm in London; poor Mr. Worrall, who had been Master of Ceremonies at the town hall affair, and had spent large sums of money; and the tradespeople and others who sent their finest goods, all felt that they had "heard something drop." The Princess Cariboo had disappeared as mysteriously as she came. For years, the people of Bristol were unmercifully ridiculed throughout the entire Kingdom on account of this affair, and burlesque songs and plays immortalized its incidents for successive seasons. One of these insisted that the Princess was no other than an actress of more notoriety than note, humbly born in the immediate vicinity of the old city, where she practiced this gigantic hoax, and that she had been assisted in it by a set of dissolute young noblemen and actors, who furnished the money she had spent, got up the oriental dresses, published the fibs, and fomented the excitement. At all events, the net profit to her and her confederates in the affair must have been some L10,000. Within a few months, and since the first publication of the above paragraphs, the English newspapers have recorded the death of the "Princess Cariboo," who it appears afterward married in her own rank in life and spent a considerable number of years of usefulness in the leech trade--an occupation not without a metaphorical likeness to her early and more ambitious exploit. CHAPTER XL. COUNT CAGLIOSTRO, ALIAS JOSEPH BALSAMO, KNOWN ALSO AS "CURSED JOE."