Thanks Bingley. My disbelief is weakening a little. Evidently the tale has been around long enough for it to have earned some credibility even if it is apocryphal!

And Kai Lung finished his tale, smiled at the assemblage, and, while modestly drawing their attention to his empty hat, drew the moral thuswise: "So, if desirable results are believed over many generations of learned scholars to have been brought about by a shining ideal does that not become a greater truth than that the ugly greed present in so many low born persons might on occasion produce benefits to many?" ~ with apologies to Ernest Bramah