re was an office just behind the Exchange, with
two or three clerks and a secretary, the latter position being held by
Miles Grendall, Esq. Paul, who had a conscience in the matter and was
keenly alive to the fact that he was not only a director but was also
one of the firm of Fisker, Montague, and Montague which was
responsible for the whole affair, was grievously anxious to be really
at work, and would attend most inopportunely at the Company's offices.
Fisker, who still lingered in London, did his best to put a stop to
this folly, and on more than one occasion somewhat snubbed his
partner. 'My dear fellow, what's the use of your flurrying yourself?
In a thing of this kind, when it has once been set agoing, there is
nothing else to do. You may have to work your fingers off before you
can make it move, and then fail. But all that has been done for you.
If you go there on the Thursdays that's quite as much as you need do.
You don't suppose that such a man as Melmotte would put up with any
real interference.' Paul endeavoured to assert himself, declaring that
as one of the managers he meant to take a part in the management;--that
his fortune, such as it was, had been embarked in the matter, and was
as important to him as was Mr Melmotte's fortune to Mr Melmotte. But
Fisker got the better of him and put him down. 'Fortune! what fortune
had either of us? a few beggarly thousands of dollars not worth
talking of, and barely sufficient to enable a man to look at an
enterprise. And now where are you? Look here, sir;--there's more to be
got out of the smashing-up of such an affair as this, if it should
smash up, than could be made by years of hard work out of such
fortunes as yours and mine in the regular way of trade.'

Paul Montague certainly did not love Mr Fisker personally, nor did he
relish his commercial doctrines; but he allowed himself to be carried
away by them. 'When and how was I to have helped myself?' he wrote to
Roger Carbury. 'The money had been raised and spent before this man
came here at all. It's all very well to say that he had no right to do
it; but he had done it. I couldn't even have gone to law with him
without going over to California, and then I should have got no
redress.' Through it all he disliked Fisker, and yet Fisker had one
great merit which certainly recommended itself warmly to Montague's
appreciation. Though he denied the propriety of Paul's interference in
the business, he quite acknowledge