[Mr. Hepworth, asking for Roger Carbury’s thoughts on Augustus Melmotte]:

“‘You think Melmotte will turn out a failure.’

‘A failure! Of course he’s a failure, whether rich or poor;—a miserable imposition, a hollow vulgar fraud from beginning to end,—too insignificant for you and me to talk of, were it not that his position is a sign of the degeneracy of the age. What are we coming to when such as he is an honoured guest at our tables?'”

—from The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope