Abstract
InTHE WAY WE LIVE NOW (1875),theMelmottes’ origins remain a mystery that becomes increasingly irrelevant. Few of Augustus Melmotte's business partners venture to inquire too closely into the specious public faith in his financial integrity even as they prepare to extract the promising output of his highly speculative enterprises. On the contrary, a suspicion that their seemingly stable investments are as unsafe as they are spurious, that they bear the marks of risky speculation, accompanies the rise of the commercial Melmotte Empire from its beginnings. Close inquiry is not so much guarded against as shirked by those who wish to believe in it. When aristocratic would-be investors scramble for a seat on the boards of this “New Man,” they are therefore guilty not simply of nourishing a fraudulent financier whose history as a swindler they are well aware of, for Melmotte's connections to continental scams are notorious. Rather, they are building on ambivalent attitudes to the seemingly successful speculator. Just as the instability associated with speculation is conveniently embodied by an international man of mystery in the worst sense, it can also be exorcised just as easily by his self-destruction.
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