Which of these can the reader like? None of the above. And there are more. Paul Montague is a young man who has had to leave Oxford because of some unfortunate rows, and he has spent three years in California, losing his fortune in unsuccessful business ventures and becoming engaged to a woman who may or may not have shot her husband in Oregon. He thinks he can escape her by returning to England, but she pursues him. Like Pinocchio, he falls into bad company (the Beargarden Club in London). Hetta Carbury (to whom Sir Roger has unsuccessfully proposed marriage) falls in love with the young man, little more than a hobbledehoy who consistently gets in over his head, whatever the venture. Yet it is Paul who is the only one to attempt to ask questions at the board meetings of the South Central Pacific and Mexican Railway, and he is the first to discover that Melmotte had been diverting its funds to such personal uses as rebuilding the Longstaffe house in the country. Such is The Way We Live Now. The country is going to the dogs, led by a foreign Pied Piper with a strange accent. Here is his introductory description: Mr. Melmotte was a big man with large whiskers, rough hair, and with an expression of mental power on a harsh vulgar face. He was certainly a man to repel you by his presence unless attracted to him expenditure, powerful in his doings, successful in his business, and the world around him therefore was not repelled. It appears that had not Melmotte appeared, someone in London would have invented him. As it happened, his great project was actually invented by Hamilton K. Fisker, the young American who had met Paul Montague in California and made a partnership with him. It was Fisker who concocted the idea of the South Central Pacific and Mexican Railway and sold the idea to Melmotte. The presentation was brief. Melmotte and Fisker understood each other. The documents referred not at all to future profits to the railway or to its benefit to society; they emphasized rather the appeal of such stock to the "speculating world." Melmotte undertook the chairmanship of the Board of Directors in England, and he very quickly found willing buyers of shares, hopes, and dreams. Like Professor Harold Hill in _The Music Man_, "When he dances, the piper pays him." But when he makes his speech to his directors, it is one that would not do for BBC. In its production, David Suchet is Melmotte larger than life, full of vitality, projecting himself with a powerful personality. Trollope's text would not have been such good theater; in it we see a man who is not eloquent, mostly looking at his plate. His eager audience, however, cheers him "to the echo."