Hidden Fraud in Trollope’s The Way We Live Now Hamilton K. Fisker supplies “the impetus for rolling Augustus Melmotte onwards into almost unprecedented commercial greatness” (Trollope 1.324). While his character occupies very little narrative space, Fisker functions as the catalyst which sets the novel’s financial ventures in motion; Melmotte rolls because Fisker has pushed. Not only does Fisker bring the Great South Central Pacific and Mexican Railway (or at least the prospectus) to England,