Lucretia; or, the Children of Night. By the author of 'Rienzi' [ie. Lord Lytton.] ... Second edition, to which is prefixed a word to the public

Front matter

price sixp^ Nni_. AJCRETIA BY LORD LYTTON ;<> RGE ROUTLEPGE AND SONS] 'THE STOMACH GOVERNS THE WORLD1 UDOIT. DEPARTED ERRORS — " Our past becomes the mightiest Teacher to our FUTURE ; looking back over the Tombs of DEPARTED ERRORS, we behold bv the aide of each the face of a ■WARHIITC ANGEL." Loud i After a Day's Pleasure use ENO'S "FRUIT SALT" and ENO'S "VEGETABLE MOTO." s-ilkoa rtriag rurt ninsr, through the pearl chain of all virtues." Bl8HO!" Hit.1,. rjKAWINGr AH ■*-' OVEEDBAFT OW THE BANK OF LIFE.— Late [i drink, feverish cold, Q( lionB, pi of appetite, ai (and ENO'S " i MOTO" as occofi They ai ■ he al th riving'agents. Yon cannot overstate the'r grea in keeping t b and free from disei ''Men laugh and n. st is o'er, -fckoateg, and. they laugh no more." HOW TO AVOID THK INJURIOUS EFFECTS OF STIMUI.AWT3.

THS present system o! living -parlairinE: lie drinks, aud an insufficient amoiml rr the liver. all bilious people, unless they ar.: keep the liver acting free dilate largely with water -reet champr. h, and brand ry apt to disagree and gin or whit ' diluted with soda-water, will be HIT 3AL'l" and UNO'S "VEGETABLE MOTO" are peculiarly ada|.'ed for • ess of the liver; they poll place the 1 ovalid on the right track avoided by those lO'S "FRUIT SAT TO"- therefore no family shonld ever be without them. — rv — ENO'S "FRUIT SALT' versus BRANDY. << 1TIIIEH.E were a ten tored dev -*- brandy, or une cause For the latter we used ro swer> 'FKTJ.T SALT,' whiah is simply invaluable."— S«e "Coa*t Lakds," Vol. I. HEADACHE. DISORDERED STOMACH, and ITEEVOU3 DISEASES, OR A GOUTY RHEUMATIC GGNDITIOil IF THE BLOOD. ?R0DUGIS0 LIVER DISTURBANCE, LIVER INOICESTION, B1LIA3Y DlSTU.,BAHOf, AHO PERSISTING INDIGESTION, USE ETSTO'3 " VEGETAEIiH MOTO."— A short ti > everyway .. emergency in hear I disordered stomaeh, kc, &c. WEST INDIES.— To Mr. J. me a fartli ' VE I e P.O. Ord ■ seived aim:1 ap folly to what is •* Caution. — 2» PoftU, and e . by a trortklex: PREPARED ONLY AT EHOS "FRUIT _ AIT " WO__3, P3_._R0Y ST., __y GROSS F.OAD, LQKpQ.j, S.E. LUCRETIA 01 THE CHILDREN OF NIGHT LORD LYTTON'S NOVELS, Demy St'O., Sixpence each.

Author's Copyright Revised Edition, in which are given the latest ns and corrections made by him, and the Prefaces h> the val :.s of his Novels published during his lifetime. No other td. Edition contains these ■ Revisions. EUGENE ARAM. GODOLPHIN. PELHAM. THE DISOWNED. DEVEREUX. THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. RIENZI. ALICE; or, Tho Mysteries. ERNEST MALTRAVERS. PAUL CLIFFORD. .:.:! to ' Ernest Maltravers.' NIGHT AND MORNING. LEILA, CALDERON THE COUR- TIER, and THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE, i vol. ZANONI. THE LAST OF THE BARONS. LUCRETIA. FALKLAND, and ZICCI. LUCRETIA OR THE CHILDREN OF NIGHT BY THE RIGHT HON. LORD LYTTON ' Dove il sol tace' Dante, Vlu/tmo^ Cant. i. i. Co AUTHOR'S COPYRIGHT EDITION LONDON GEORGE ROTJTLEDGE AND SONS BROADWAY, LUDGATE HILL GLASGOW AND NEW YORK

Preface

TO THE EDITION OF 1853. Lucretia, or the Children of Night, was begun simultaneously with The Caxtons, a Family Picture. The two fictions were intended as pendants ; both serving, amongst other collateral aims and objects, to show* the influence of home education, — of early circumstance and example upon after character and conduct. Lucretia was completed and published before The Caxtons. The moral design of the first was misunderstood and assailed ; that of the last was generally acknowledged and approved ; the moral design in both was nevertheless precisely the same. But in one it was sought through the darker side of human nature, in the other, through the more sunny and cheerful — one shows the evil, the other the salutary influences of early circumstance and training. Necessarily, therefore, the first resorts to the tragic elements of awe and distress — the second to the comic elements of humour and agreeable emotion.

These differences serve to explain the different reception that awaited the two, and may teach us how little the real conception of an author is known, aud how little it is cared for : we judge— not by the purpose he conceives, but according as the impressions he effects are pleasurable or painful. But while I cannot acquiesce in much of the hostile criticism this fiction produced at its first appearance, I readily allow that, as a mere question of art, the story might have been improved in itself, and rendered more acceptable to the reader, by diminishing the gloom of the catastrophe. In this edition I have endeavoured to do so ; and the victim whose fate in the former cast of the' work most revolted the reader, as a violation of the trite but amiable law of Poetical Justice, is saved from the hands of The Children of Nicht.

Perhaps— whatever the faults of this work — it equals most of its companions in the sustainment of interest, and in that coincidence between the gradual delent of motive or passion, and the sequences of external events constituting plot, which mainly distinguish the physical awe of tragedy from the coarse horrors of melodrama. I trust, at least, that I shall now find few readers, who will not readily acknowledge that the delinea tion of crime has only been employed for the grave and impressive purpose which brings ;t within the clue province of the poet, as an element of terror, and a warning to the heart. London, December ,th.

PREFACE.

TO THE FIRST EDITION. mewhere about sour years since I appeared before the public as the writer osa fiction, which I then i would probably be my last ; but bad habits are stronger than intentions. When Fabricio, in his hospital, resolved upon abjuring the vocation of the Poet, he was, in truth, re-commencing his desperate career by a FareweU to the Muses : I need not apply the allusion. I must own, however, that there had Jong been a desire in my mind to trace, in some work or other, the strange and ays through which that Arch-ruler of Civilization, familiarly called 'Money,' insinuates itself into out thoughts and motives, our hearts and actions; affecting those who undervalue as those who overestimate its importance ; ruining virtues in the spendthrift no less than engendering vices in the miser.

But when I half implied my farewell to the character osa novelist, I had imagined that this conception might worked out upon tho stage. After some unpublished and imperfect attempts t zing my design, I found either that the subject was too wide for the limits of the Drama, or that I wanted that faculty of ion, which alone enables the dramatist to compress multiform varieties into a ver* lire With this design, I desired to unite some exhibition of what seems to me a principal vice in the hut and emuloi happiness or fame, fortune or knowledge, which is almost synonymous with the cant phrase of ' the March of Intellect,' in that crisis of society to which we have arrived. The vice I o is Impatience. That eager desire to p 1, not so much to conquer obstacles as to elude them, that gambling with the solemn destinies of life, seeking ever to set success upon the chance of a die ; that hastening from the wish conceived to the end accomplished ; that thirst after quick returns to ingenious toil, and breathless spurrings along short cuts to the goal, where we see everywhere around us, from tlie Mechanics' Institute to the Market, — beginning in education with the primers of infancy — deluging us with ' Philosophies .on,' and 'Sciences made Easy;' characterizing the books of our writers, the es of our statesmen, no less than the dealings of our speculators, seem, I confess, to me to constitute a very diseased and very general symptom of the times.

I hold that the greatest to man is labour ; that knowledge without toil, if possible, were worthless ; that toil in pursuit of km Ige we can attain ; that the continuous effort for fame is nobler than fame itself; that it is not we lenly acquired which is deserving of homag. ut of wealth, — the abilities so called forth, Ihe self-denials so imposed ; in a worl, that Labour and Patience are the true schoolmasters on earth. While occupied with these ideas and this belies, whether right or wrong, and slowly convinced that it was only in that spec! • .sition with which I was that I began to contemplate, I became acquainted with the histories of two criminals, existing in our own age ; — so remark able, whether from the extern ss of the guilt committed — whether from the glittering accomplishments md lively semper of the one, fhe orofound knowledge and intellectual

PREFACE.

TO THE FIRST EDITION. VIII capacities ol the other — that the examination and analysis of characters so . a study full of intense, if gloomy, in In these persons there appear to have been as few redeemable points as can I Human Nature, so f.-.r as such points may be traced in. the kindly instincts and g. passions which do sometimes accompany the perpetration of great crimes, and witl the individual, vindicate the specie I the other hand, the:. was not the dull ferocity of brutes ; — it was accompanied with instru. i Iture : — nay, it seemed to me, on studying their lives, and pondering over their own letters, that 1 1 their cultivation itself we could arrive at the secret of the - in evil these Children of Night had attained— that here the monster vanished into the r and the phenomena that seemed aberrations from nature were explain I could not resist the temptation of reducing to a tale thc materials which had so engi my interest and tasked my inquiries.

And in this attempt, various incidental opportunities have occurred, if not of completely carrying out, still of incidentally illustrating, m design ; — of showing the influence of Mammon upon our most secret selves, of reproving thc impatience which is engendered by a civilization — that with much of the good brings all the evils of competition, and of tracing throughout all the influences of early household life upon our subsequent conduct and career. In such incidental bearings the moral may doubtless be more obvious than in the delineation of the darker and rarer crime which forms the st my narrative. For in extraordinary guilt, we are slow to recognise ordinary warnings — we say to the peaceful conscience, ' 1 his concerns thee nm !' — whereas at each instant fault and commonplace error we own s. direct and sensible admonition.

Yet in the portraiture of gigantic crime, poets have rightly found their sphere, and fulfilled their destiny of teachers. Those terrible truths, which appal us in the guilt of Macbeth, or thc villainy of Iago, have their moral uses not less than the popular infirmities of Tom Tones, or the everyday hy; of Blifil. Incredible as it may seem, the crimes herein related tcok pl..ce within .he last seventeen years. There has been no exaggeration as to their extent, no great departure froi details — the means employed, even that which seems most far-fetched (the instrument poisoned ring), have their foundation in literal facts. Nor have I much alter.. . positior. of the criminals, nor in the least overrated their.attainments and intelligent; those more salient essentials which will most, perhaps, provoke the Reader's mcr, I narrate a history, not invent a fiction.* All that romance which our own time affords is not more the romance than the philosophy of the time.

Tragedy never quils thc world — it surrounds us everywhere. We have but to look-, wakeful and vigilant, abroad,— and from the age of Pelops to that of Borgia, the same crimes, though under different garbs, will stalk on our paths. Each age comprehends in itself specimens of every virtue and every vice which has ever inspired our love or moved our horror. These criminals, were not, however, in actual life, as in the novel, intimates and accomplices. Their crimes were of similar character, effected by similar agencies, and committed at dates which embrace their several careers of guilt within the same period; but I ha.e no authority to i-auiw; that llw i Londok, November ist, iEj,6. LUCRETIA; OR, THE CHILDREN OF NIGHT. ■•0-+-O- ,

Prologue

TO PART

I. Anon, the stranger insect seemed suddenly to awake from its amaze ; it evinced alarm, and turned to fly ; the huge spider darted forward — the boy uttered a chuckle of delight. The man's pale lip curled into a sinister sneer, and he glided back to his seat. There, leaning his face on his hand, he continued to contemplate the child. That child might have furnished to an artist a fitting subject for fair and blooming in fancy. His light hair, tinged deeply, it is true, with red, hung in sleek and glittering abundance down his neck and shoulders. His features, seen in profile, were delicately and almost seminit.ely proportioned ; health glowed on his cheek, and his form, slight though it was, gave promise of singular activity and vigour. His dress was fantastic, and betrayed the taste of some fondly foolish mother ; but the fine linen, trimmed with lace, was rumpled and stained, the velvet jacket unbrushed, the shoes soiled with dust ; — slight tokens these of neglect, but serving to show that the foolish fond ness which had invented the dress, had not of late presided over the toilet. ' Child,' said the man, first in French ; and observing that the boy heeded him not — ' Child,' he repeated in English, which he spoke well, though with a foreign accent — 'child!' apartment at Paris, one morning during the Reign of Terror, a man, whose age might be somewhat under thirty, sat before a table covered with papers, arranged and labelled with .thodical precision of a mind fond of and habituated to business.

Behind him rose a tall bookcase, surmounted with a bust of Robespierre, and i i were filled chiefly with works of a scientific character ; amongst which the greater number were on chemistry and medicine. There were to be seen also many rare books on alchemy, the great Italian nglish philosophical treatises, and a few MSS. in Arabic. The absence from this collection of the stormy literature of the day seemed to denote that the owner was a quiet student, living apart from the strife and passions of the Revolution. This supposition was, however, disproved by certain papers on the table, which were formally ansl laconically labelled ' Reports on Lyons,' and by packets of letters in the handwritings of Robespierre and Couthon. At one of the windows a young boy rnestly engaged in some occupation which appeared to excite the curiosity of the person just described ; for this last, after examining the child's movements for a few moments with a silent scrutiny, that betrayed but little of the half-complacent, half-melancholy affection with which busy man is apt to regard idle childhood, rose noiselessly from his seat, approached the boy, and looked over his shoulder unobserved.

In a crevice of the wood by the window, a huge black spider had formed his web ; the child had just discovered another spider, and placed it in the meshes ; he was watching the result of his operations. The intrusive spider . the midst of the web, as if fascinated. The rightful possessor was also quiescent ; but a very fine ear might have caught a low humming sound, which probably augured no hospitable intentions to the invader. The boy turned quickly. ' Has the great spider devoured the small one?' ' No, sir,' said the boy, colouring, ' the small one has had the best of it.' The tone and heightened complexion of the child seemed to give meaning to his words — at least, so the man thought, for a slight frown passed over his high, thoughtful brow. ' Spiders, then.' he said, after a short pause, ' are different from men ; with us, the small do not get the better of the great.

Hum I do you still miss your mother ?' ' Oh, yes !' — and ths boy advanced eagerly to the table. LUCRETIA 10 round with a smile, and answered—' Nothing worse than a lover, I I al that lover proscrit. The ci-devant marqui ia her apartment. _ .or him a good easy friend of the who had long loved her, and revenge is - The man whom we have accompanied nertwitched up the collar of his clor.1 his compressed lips told that he felt thesn of the laugh that circled round him. ' They are coming ! There they are !' cried the boy in ecstatic excitement. 'That's the way to bring up citizen' the butcher, patting the child's shouldei opening a still bettc view for him at thi waggon. The crowd now abruptly gave way. The tumbril was in sight. A man, your handsome, standing erect and with folded arms in the fatal vehicle, loo' the mob with an eye of careless scorn.

Though he wore Ihe dress of a workman, tlie most u glance could detect, in his mien and bearing, one of the hated noblesse, whose ch. out even more forcibly at the hour of death. On the lip vas that smilf of gay and ir. levity, on the brow that gallant if reckless con tempt of physical danger, which had signalized in-coxcombs of the oki regime. the ns i with a certain air of foppery, and the bright hair was carefully ad justed as if for the holiday of the headsman. As the eyes of the young noble wandered over ce faces of that horrible assembly. Icous triumph answered the look, in which for the last time the gentilhomme spoke his scorn of the canaille, the child's father lowered the collar of his cloak, and slowly raised his hat from his brow. The eye of the marquis rested upon the countenance abruptly shown to him, and which suddenly. became individualized amongst the crowd, — that eye instantly lost its calm contem| shudder passed visibly over his frame, ;> cheek grew blanched with terror.

Th saw the change, but not the cause, an and louder rose their triumphant yell. The sound recalled the pride of the young noble; — he started — lifted his crest erect, and sought again to meet the look which had appalled h'm. But he could no longer single it out among the crowd. Hat and cloak once more hid the face ofthe foe, and crowds of eager heads intercepted the view. The young marquis's lips mis he bent down, and then the crowd caught sight of his companion, who was being lifted up from the bottom of the tumbril, where she had flung sin horror and despair. The crowd grew still in a moment, as the pale face of one, f to most of I • ! wildly from place to in the dreadful scene, vainly and madly through its silence imploring life ais. often had the sight of that face, not then pale and haggard, but wreathed with rosy smiles, sufficed to draw down the applause of the crowded theatre— how, then, ' Well, you will see her once again.' ' When ?' The man looked towards a clock on ihe mantelpiece — ' Before that clock strikes.

Now, go back to your spiders.' The child looked irresolute and disinclined to obey ; but a stern s.nd terrible expression gathered slowly over the man's face ; and the boy, growing pale as he remarked it, crept back to the window. The father— for such was the relation the owner of the room bore to the child — drew paper and ink towards him, and wrote for some minutes rapidly. Then starting up, he gl at the clock, took his hat and cloak, which lay on a chair beside, drew up the collar of the mantle till it almost concealed his countenance, and said, ' Now, boy, come with me ; I have promised to show you an execution. I am going to keep my promise. Come !' The boy clapped his hands with joy ; and you might see then, child as he was, that those tures were capable of a cruel and fero cious expression.

The character of the whole face changed. He caught up his gay cap and followed his faiher into the streets. Silently the two took their way towards the Barriere du Trdne. At a distance they saw the crowd growing thick and dense, as throng after throng hurried past them, and the dreadful guillotine rose high in the light blue air. As they came into the skirts of the mob, the father, for the first time, took his child's hand. ' I must get you a good place for the show,' he said, with a quiet smile. There was something in the grave, staid, courteous, yet haughty bearing of the man, that made the crowd give way as he passed. They got near the dismal scene, and obtained entrance into a waggon already crowded with eager spectators. And now they heard at a distance the harsh ambering roll of the tumbril that bore the victims, and the tramp of the horses which guarded the procession of death.

The boy's whole attention was absorbed in expectation of the spectacle, and his ear was, perhaps, less i imed to French, though born and reared in France, than to the language of his mother's lips — and she was English : thus he did not hear or heed certain observations of the by standers, which made his father's pale cheek grow paler. ' What is the batch to-day ?' quoth a butcher in the waggon. ' Scarce worth the baking — only two : — but one, they s.y, is an aristocrat — a ci-devant marquis,' answered a carpenter. ' Ah ! a marquis I— Bon .'—And the other?* 'Only a dancer ; but a pretty one, it is true : I could pity her, but she is English.' And as he pronounced the last word, with a tone of inexpressible contempt, the butcher spat in nausea. ' Mort diable ! a spy of Pitt's, no doubt. What did they discover ?' A man, better dressed than the rest, turned LUCRETIA. 11 now fevered by the thirst of blood, held hearts spell bound by the airy movement quisite form writhing now in no stage-mime I Plaything of the city — minion to the light amusement of the hour — frail child of Cytherea and the Grace5, what relentless fate 1 : '. of the summer, why should a nal break thee upon the wheel?

A sense of the ry of such an execution, of the horrible burlesque that would sacrifice to the nee of a mighty people so slight -n offering, made itself felt among the crowd. There was a low murmur of shame and indignation. Tl. gerous sympathy of the mob was perceived by the officer in attendance. Hastily he made the the headsman, and, as he did so, a child's cry was heard in the English tongue — ' Mother — mother !' The father's hand grasped the child's arm with an iron pressure ; the crowd swam before the boy's eyes ; thc air seei stifle him, and become i only through the hum, and the tramp, and the roll drums, he heard a low voice hiss in his ear — ' Learn how they perish who betray me !' As the father said these words, again his face was bare, and the woman whose ear, amidst the .sanity of fear, had caught the cry of her voice, saw that face, and fell back in sensible in the arms of the headsman. of later date than that which adorned the 1 by vases and statues, bordered the terrace, from which a ht of steps nded to a smooth lawn, intersected by Woad gravel walks, shadowed by vasl stately cedars, and . -dually mingling with the wilder sc. park, from which it was only divided by a ha-ha.

Upon the terrace, and under cover of a temporary awning, sat the owner, Sir Miles St. John, of Laughton, a comely old man, dressed with fail'; ■■-. to the costume h he had been taught to consider appropriate to his rank of gentleman, and which was not yet wholly obsolete and eccentric. Hi3 hair, still Ihick and luxuriant, was carefully and collected into a club behind. His nether man attired in gray breeches and coloured silk-stockings ; his vest of silk, opening wide at the breast, and showing a prosprinkled with the pulvilid of his favourite Martinique ; his three-cornered placed on a stool at his side, with a gold- ! crutch-cane, — hat made rather to be carried in the hand than worn on the head, 'he ind In his shirt-breast, the diamond on his the ruffles at his wrist, — all bespoke the gallant, who had chatted -1. ith Lord Chesterwith Mrs. Clive.

On him, were placed two or three decanters of wine, the fruits of the season, an enamelled snuffbox, in which was set the portrait of a female — perhaps the Chloe or Phillis of his early love-ditties ; a lighted -taper, a china jar containing tobacco, and three or four pipes of homely clay — for cherrysticks and meerschaums were not then in fashion, and Sir Miles St. John, once a gay and sparkling beau, now a popular country gentleman, great at county meetings and sheep-shea: il had taken to smoking, as in harmony with his bucolic transformation ; an old setter lay clozing at his feet ; a small spaniel — old too — was sauntering lazily in the immediate neighbour- . looking gravely out for such stray bits of biscuit as had been thrown forth to provoke him to exercise, and which hitherto had escaped his attention.

Half seated, half reclined on the jack;, apart from the Baronet, but within reach of his conversation, lolled a man in the prime of life, wish an air of unmistakabl. sovereign elegance and distinction. Mr. Vernon was a guest from London : and the London man, the man of clubs, and dinners and routs — of noon loungings through Bond -street, and spent with the Prince of Wales, seemed 1 not more upon the careful careless- ' his dress, and upon the worn expi of his delicate features, than upon the listless ennui, which, characterizing both his face and peared to take pity on himself for having been entrapped into the country. Yet we should convey an erroneous impres sion of Mr. Vernon, if we designed, by the words ' listle ' j depict the slumberous insipidity of more modern affectation— it was

Chapter I

a family group. 0.\'r. July evening, at the commencement of the present century, several persons somewhat picturesquely grouped along an old-fashioned terrace, which skirted the ga i a manor-house that had considerable pretensions to baronial dignity. The architecture was of the most enriched and elaborate style belonging to the reign ol First : the porch, opening on the terrace, with its' mullion window above, was encased with pilasters and reliefs, at once ornamental and massive ; and the large iver in which it was placed, was surmounted by a stone falcon, whose talons gripped fiercely a scutcheon blazoned with the five-pointed stars which heralds recognise as the arms of St. John. On either side i. « tended long wings, the dark brickwork of which was relieved with noble stone casements and carved pediments ; the high ro .tially concealed by a balustrade, perforated not inelegantly into arabesque designs ; and what architects call ' the sky-line ' was broken with im] by tall chimney-shafts, of various form and fashion.

These wings terminated in angular the centre, though kept duly nate to it ' decoration, and ctowned with stone cup'. LUCRE 1 1 A. 12 not the ennui os a man to whom ennui is habitual ; it was rather the indolent prostration that fills up the intervals of excitement. At that day, the word ' blase' was unknown ; men had not enough sentiment for satiety. There was a kind of Bacchanalian fury in the life led by those leaders of fashion, among whom Mr. Vernon was not the least distinguished ; it was a day of deep drinking, of high play, of jovial reckless dissipation— of strong appetite for fun and riot — of four-in-hand coachmanship — of prize-fighting — of a strange sort of barbarous manliness, that strained every nerve of the constitution ; a race of life, in which three fourths of the competitors died half-way in the hippodrome.

What is now the Dandy was then the Buck ; and something of the Buck, though subdued by a chaster taste than fell to the ordinary members of his class, was apparent in Mr. Vernon's costume as well as air. In tricate folds of muslin, arranged in prodigious bows and ends, formed the cravat, which Brummell had not yet arisen to reform ; his hat, of a very peculiar shape, low at the crown and broad at the brim, was worn with an air of devil-me-care defiance ; his watchchain, gar nished with a profusion of rings and seals, hung low from his white waistcoat ; and the adapta tion of his nankeen inexpressibles to his well shaped limbs, was a masterpiece of art. His whole dress and air was not what could pro perly be called foppish — it was rather what at that time was called ' rakish.' Few could so closely approach vulgarity without, being vulgar : oi that privileged few, Mr. 'Vernon was one of the elect.