Ernest Thorn’s bankruptcy

Ernest Thorn’s bankruptcy is the collapse of a success built on illusion, and it carries consequences beyond the theatre: his debts and alleged financial fraud bring the authorities toward the Anger household, where Felix’s unusual abilities make him vulnerable to being taken away. The episode reverses Thorn’s rise from a commanding impresario into a financially ruined man whose attempted recovery places others at risk.

Rise and Overreach

After returning to Europe, Thorn enjoys renewed popularity in Vienna, where his performances fill the halls for 209 consecutive appearances and draw loud ovations. His programme alternates between An Hour in Wonderland and Six Sensational Illusions in Twenty Minutes, with a purported wonder associated with Madame Blavatsky as its featured attraction. The packed venues and inventive spectacle make success appear almost inseparable from Thorn himself.

In 1896, at the Millennium Exhibition in Budapest, Thorn attempts to multiply his earnings by taking control of every available entertainment venue, hall, and theatre. The narrator describes him as having become the “Grand Organizer,” but the scale of this ambition proves to be a mistake. The warning that Miss Tchornenko cannot be perfect in two houses gives the financial overreach a personal and practical edge: Thorn’s expansion competes with other obligations rather than securing his position.

The Colosseum and Financial Collapse

Thorn loses practically all the wealth he had earned through his art of misleading people. Still hoping to recoup his losses, he goes to Lemberg and invests what remains in a large theatre on Słoneczna Street, near the Himpel family’s Jewish theatre. He names the new venue the Colosseum. The investment does not save him; when the police commissioner later reports on Thorn’s affairs, he describes the Colosseum as wholly bankrupt.

The failure also reaches the Anger household through immediate financial pressure. Adèle explains that obligations, debts, interest, and the mortgage leave no remedy, and that even selling the Colosseum cannot save them. Her calm acceptance of the proposal contrasts with Petro’s exasperation at the decision, while the accumulating liabilities show that the theatre is no longer simply a failed venture: its debts have become a problem the household must confront.

Investigation and Alleged Fraud

The police commissioner visits the house, visibly nervous and sweating as he drinks coffee and eats a fiftieth liver varenyk. He says that representatives of the police and the court will soon come to see Mr. and Mrs. Skolyk, perhaps accompanied by the gendarmerie, and that someone will come from Vienna. An investigation into Thorn is already underway in Lviv.

The commissioner identifies one specific accusation: Thorn sold and resold the same bonds to different people. Alongside this alleged fraud, he mentions a long list of other offenses and asks whether the family has heard about the church thefts. The conversation places Thorn’s bankruptcy within a wider pattern of suspected wrongdoing, although the commissioner’s account does not establish the final outcome of the investigation or the truth of every accusation.

Felix and the Threat to the Household

The warning that Felix will be taken gives Thorn’s financial and criminal troubles their most direct personal consequence. Petro points out that the boy can slip into the smallest spaces and is not stopped by high walls or locked doors; he also suggests that Felix could enter churches where there are valuable objects. The commissioner’s warning that the boy will be seized thus connects the household’s fear to Felix’s unusual abilities and to the surrounding allegations of theft.

After the commissioner leaves, Petro grabs the narrator by the shoulders and orders her to make the child eat lard and dough without stopping, day or night. The instruction is a desperate response to the prospect of Felix being taken: the adults try to alter the boy’s body as a form of protection. Thorn’s collapse therefore extends beyond lost money and a shuttered theatre. It draws the household into a crisis in which debt, investigation, the threat of seizure, and Felix’s vulnerability converge.