ed all day but for
Bar's having taken the real state of the case into Court at half-past
nine. This led to its beginning to be currently whispered all over
London by about one, that Mr Merdle had killed himself. Pressure,
however, so far from being overthrown by the discovery, became a greater
favourite than ever. There was a general moralising upon Pressure, in
every street. All the people who had tried to make money and had not
been able to do it, said, There you were! You no sooner began to devote
yourself to the pursuit of wealth than you got Pressure. The idle people
improved the occasion in a similar manner. See, said they, what you
brought yourself to by work, work, work! You persisted in working, you
overdid it. Pressure came on, and you were done for! This consideration
was very potent in many quarters, but nowhere more so than among the
young clerks and partners who had never been in the slightest danger
of overdoing it. These, one and all, declared, quite piously, that they
hoped they would never forget the warning as long as they lived, and
that their conduct might be so regulated as to keep off Pressure, and
preserve them, a comfort to their friends, for many years.

But, at about the time of High 'Change, Pressure began to wane, and
appalling whispers to circulate, east, west, north, and south. At first
they were faint, and went no further than a doubt whether Mr Merdle's
wealth would be found to be as vast as had been supposed; whether there
might not be a temporary difficulty in 'realising' it; whether there
might not even be a temporary suspension (say a month or so), on the
part of the wonderful Bank. As the whispers became louder, which they
did from that time every minute, they became more threatening. He had
sprung from nothing, by no natural growth or process that any one could
account for; he had been, after all, a low, ignorant fellow; he had been
a down-looking man, and no one had ever been able to catch his eye;
he had been taken up by all sorts of people in quite an unaccountable
manner; he had never had any money of his own, his ventures had been
utterly reckless, and his expenditure had been most enormous. In steady
progression, as the day declined, the talk rose in sound and purpose.
He had left a letter at the Baths addressed to his physician, and his
physician had got the letter, and the letter would be produced at the
Inquest on the morrow, and it would fall like a thunderbolt upon the
m