The way we live now is portrayed not as a society that is sold a bill of goods by a huckster, but as one that carried the huckster out over his head even further than he might have ventured on his own. "It can hardly be said of him that he had intended to play so high a game, but the game that he had intended to play had become thus high of its own accord. A man cannot always restrain his own doings and keep them within the limits which he had himself planned for them." Fisker is the little tugboat that nudges the mighty Melmotte out into the deep. "He had sprung out of some Californian gully, was perhaps ignorant of his own father and mother, and had tumbled up in the world on the strength of his own audacity. But, such as he was, he had sufficed to give the necessary impetus for rolling Augustus Melmotte onwards into almost unprecedented commercial greatness." What Melmotte does understand is "credit." In attempting to browbeat Paul Montague, Melmotte rages, "Gentlemen who don't know the nature of credit, how strong it is--as the air--to buoy you up; how slight it is--as a mere vapour--when roughly touched, can do an amount of mischief of which they themselves don't in the least understand the extent!" Melmotte does of course come to grief, from having forged the signature of Dolly Longstaffe, feckless son of Adolphus Longstaffe, authorizing transfer of the title deed for the house to Melmotte. He also forged his daughter's signature and his secretary Croll's signature to a document giving him access to his daughter Marie's money. Elected to Parliament at about this time, the rumors of the forgery cause his stock prices to collapse. Melmotte's final performance is to go drunk to the House, attempt a speech, fall to the floor, go home and commit suicide with prussic acid. Set against these affairs of such great pith and moment, the story of Winifred Hurtle is a welcome relief. She was the American woman (another foreigner in England) who pursued Paul Montague to England, where she asserts her rights as an engaged woman, threatening legal action if Paul should break their engagement, and presumably spending several nights with him, according to a narrative a bit skimpy in such details. The memorable climax of the story is the suicide of Melmotte; but Trollope lets the dark side die with the great financier. There are a few marriages. And the share prices of the South Central Pacific and Mexican Railway begin to rise again as Fisker gets back to work on selling shares in America. What went up came down; and it came back up a little.