Gadfly Question: TypeError on __Init__

[David]

What on earth is going wrong with this?  I *HAD* it working, and then I
tried to make it a singleton class, and now I can't even get it back to
original form.   ARRRRGH, how frustrating!
 
Please tell why I keep getting a TypeError: __Init__ should return None!
 
And if you can do this as a singleton, or make it otherwise better (ie. I
don't think I should have to create/delete a table just to get the .GFD
file to appear -- the docs indicate that as soon as the .startup method is
called, files will be created ... but not that I noticed in practice.)

====
import gadfly, os, os.path


class DBase:
    def __init__(self, path, dbase):
        try:
            if not os.path.isdir(path):
                print "creating database directory: "+path
                os.mkdir(path)

            if not os.path.isfile(path+"/"+dbase+".gfd"):
                print "creating database file: "+dbase
                connection = gadfly.gadfly()
                connection.startup(dbase, path)

                cursor = connection.cursor()
                cursor.execute("CREATE TABLE deletemenow (i integer)")
                cursor.execute("DROP TABLE deletemenow")
				
                connection.commit()

            connection = gadfly.gadfly(dbase, path)

        except:
            return 0

        else:
            return connection


# stand-alone testing
if __name__ == "__main__":
    connection = DBase("test", "testdb")
    cursor = connection.cursor()
    cursor.execute("create table ph (nm varchar, ph varchar)")
    cursor.execute("insert into ph(nm, ph) values ('arw', '3367')")
    cursor.execute("select * from ph")
    for x in cursor.fetchall():
        print x
        print ("arw", "3367")
    connection.commit()