LUCRETIA
by Edward Bulwer Lytton
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, and 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 Night. 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 development 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 delineation of crime has only been
employed for the grave and impressive purpose which brings it within the
due province of the poet,--as an element of terror and a warning to the
heart.
LONDON, December 7.
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.
It is somewhere about four years since I appeared before the public as
the writer of a fiction, which I then intimated would probably be my
last; but bad habits are stronger than good intentions. When Fabricio,
in his hospital, resolved upon abjuring the vocation of the Poet, he was,
in truth, recommencing his desperate career by a Farewell to the Muses,--
I need not apply the allusion.
I must own, however, that there had long been a desire in my mind to
trace, in some work or other, the strange and secret ways through which
that Arch-ruler of Civilization, familiarly called "Money," insinuates
itself into our 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 of a novelist, I had
imagined that this conception might be best worked out upon the stage.
After some unpublished and imperfect attempts towards so realizing my
design, I found either that the subject was too wide for the limits of
the Drama, or that I wanted that faculty of concentration which alone
enables the dramatist to compress multiform varieties into a very limited
compass. With this design, I desired to unite some exhibition of what
seems to me a principal vice in the hot and emulous chase for 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 allude to is Impatience. That eager desire to
press forward, 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, which we see
everywhere around us, from the Mechanics' Institute to the Stock Market,-
-beginning in education with the primers of infancy, deluging us with
"Philosophies for the Million" and "Sciences made Easy;" characterizing
the books of our writers, the speeches 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
friend to man is labour; that knowledge without toil, if possible, were
worthless; that toil in pursuit of knowledge is the best knowledge we can
attain; that the continuous effort for fame is nobler than fame itself;
that it is not wealth suddenly acquired which is deserving of homage, but
the virtues which a man exercises in the slow pursuit of wealth,--the
abilities so called forth, the self-denials so imposed; in a word, that
Labour and Patience are the true schoolmasters on earth. While occupied
with these ideas and this belief, whether right or wrong, and slowly
convinced that it was only in that species of composition with which I
was most familiar that I could work out some portion of the plan that I
began to contemplate, I became acquainted with the histories of two
criminals existing in our own age,--so remarkable, whether from the
extent and darkness of the guilt committed, whether from the glittering
accomplishments and lively temper of the one, the profound knowledge and
intellectual capacities of the other, that the examination and analysis
of characters so perverted became a study full of intense, if gloomy,
interest.
In these persons there appear to have been as few redeemable points as
can be found in Human Nature, so far as such points may be traced in the
kindly instincts and generous passions which do sometimes accompany the
perpetration of great crimes, and, without excusing the individual,
vindicate the species. Yet, on the other hand, their sanguinary
wickedness was not the dull ferocity of brutes; it was accompanied with
instruction and culture,--nay, it seemed to me, on studying their lives
and pondering over their own letters, that through their cultivation
itself we could arrive at the secret of the ruthless and atrocious pre-
eminence in evil these Children of Night had attained; that here the
monster vanished into the mortal, and the phenomena that seemed
aberrations from Nature were explained.
I could not resist the temptation of reducing to a tale the materials
which had so engrossed 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, my earlier
design,--of showing the influence of Mammon upon our most secret selves,
of reproving the 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 staple of my narrative. For in extraordinary guilt
we are slow to recognize ordinary warnings,--we say to the peaceful
conscience, "This concerns thee not!" whereas at each instance of
familiar fault and commonplace error we own a 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 appall us in the guilt of Macbeth or the villany of
Iago, have their moral uses not less than the popular infirmities of Tom
Jones, or the every-day hypocrisy of Blifil. Incredible as it may seem,
the crimes herein related took place within the last seventeen years.
There has been no exaggeration as to their extent, no great departure
from their details; the means employed, even that which seems most far-
fetched,--the instrument of the poisoned ring,--have their foundation in
literal facts. Nor have I much altered the social position of the
criminals, nor in the least overrated their attainments and intelligence.
In those more salient essentials which will most, perhaps, provoke the
Reader's incredulous wonder, I narrate a history, not invent a fiction
[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 have no authority
to suppose that the one was known to the other.]. All that Romance which
our own time affords is not more the romance than the philosophy of the
time. Tragedy never quits the 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 mowed our
horror.
LONDON, November 1, 1846.
LUCRETIA; OR, THE CHILDREN OF NIGHT.
PART THE FIRST.
PROLOGUE TO PART THE FIRST.
In an 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 the methodical precision of a mind
fond of order and habituated to business. Behind him rose a tall
bookcase surmounted with a bust of Robespierre, and the shelves 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 historians, some
English philosophical treatises, and a few manuscripts 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 and
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 was earnestly 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 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 stood motionless in 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. 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 infancy. 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
femininely 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 fondness 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!"
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! do you still
miss your mother?"
"Oh, yes!" and the boy advanced eagerly to the table.
"Well, you will see her once again."
"When?"
The man looked towards a clock on the mantelpiece,--"Before that clock
strikes. Now, go back to your spiders." The child looked irresolute and
disinclined to obey; but a stern and 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 glanced 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 fair features were capable of a cruel and ferocious
expression. The character of the whole face changed. He caught up his
gay cap and plume, and followed his father into the streets.
Silently the two took their way towards the Barriere du Trone. 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 wagon already crowded with
eager spectators.
And now they heard at a distance the harsh and lumbering 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 accustomed 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 bystanders, which made his father's pale cheek grow
paler.
"What is the batch to-day?" quoth a butcher in the wagon. "Scarce worth
the baking,--only two; but one, they say, is an aristocrat,--a ci-devant
marquis," answered a carpenter. "Ah, a marquis! 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, as if in nausea.
"Mort diable! a spy of Pitt's, no doubt. What did they discover?"
A man, better dressed than the rest, turned round with a smile, and
answered: "Nothing worse than a lover, I believe; but that lover was a
proscrit. The ci-devant marquis was caught disguised in her apartment.
She betrayed for him a good, easy friend of the people who had long loved
her, and revenge is sweet."
The man whom we have accompanied, nervously twitched up the collar of his
cloak, and his compressed lips told that he felt the anguish 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 citizens," said the butcher, patting the
child's shoulder, and opening a still better view for him at the edge of
the wagon.
The crowd now abruptly gave way. The tumbril was in sight. A man, young
and handsome, standing erect and with folded arms in the fatal vehicle,
looked along the mob with an eye of careless scorn. Though he wore the
dress of a workman, the most unpractised glance could detect, in his mien
and bearing, one of the hated noblesse, whose characteristics came out
even more forcibly at the hour of death. On the lip was that smile of
gay and insolent levity, on the brow that gallant if reckless contempt of
physical danger, which had signalized the hero-coxcombs of the old
regime. Even the rude dress was worn with a certain air of foppery, and
the bright hair was carefully adjusted, as if for the holiday of the
headsman. As the eyes of the young noble wandered over the fierce faces
of that horrible assembly, while a roar of hideous 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 thus abruptly shown to him, and which suddenly became
individualized amongst the crowd,--that eye instantly lost its calm
contempt. A shudder passed visibly over his frame, and his cheek grew
blanched with terror. The mob saw the change, but not the cause, and
loud 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 him. But he could no longer single
it out among the crowd. Hat and cloak once more hid the face of the foe,
and crowds of eager heads intercepted the view. The young marquis's lips
muttered; 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 herself in horror and despair. The crowd grew still in a moment as
the pale face of one, familiar to most of them, turned wildly from place
to place in the dreadful scene, vainly and madly through its silence
imploring life and pity. How 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, had those breasts, now
fevered by the thirst of blood, held hearts spellbound by the airy
movements of that exquisite form writhing now in no stage-mime agony!
Plaything of the city, minion to the light amusement of the hour, frail
child of Cytherea and the Graces, what relentless fate has conducted thee
to the shambles? Butterfly of the summer, why should a nation rise to
break thee upon the wheel? A sense of the mockery of such an execution,
of the horrible burlesque that would sacrifice to the necessities of a
mighty people so slight an offering, made itself felt among the crowd.
There was a low murmur of shame and indignation. The dangerous sympathy
of the mob was perceived by the officer in attendance. Hastily he made
the sign to 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;
the air seemed to stifle him, and become blood-red; only through the hum
and the tramp and the roll of the 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 dull insanity of fear had caught the cry of her
child's voice, saw that face, and fell back insensible in the arms of the
headsman.
