Lucretia — Complete

Lucretia — Complete
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Эдвард Бульвер-Литтон. Lucretia — Complete

PREFACE TO THE EDITION OF 1853

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION

PART THE FIRST

PROLOGUE TO PART THE FIRST

CHAPTER I. A FAMILY GROUP

CHAPTER II. LUCRETIA

CHAPTER III. CONFERENCES

CHAPTER IV. GUY’S OAK

CHAPTER V. HOUSEHOLD TREASON

CHAPTER VI. THE WILL

CHAPTER VII. THE ENGAGEMENT

CHAPTER VIII. THE DISCOVERY

CHAPTER IX. A SOUL WITHOUT HOPE

CHAPTER X. THE RECONCILIATION BETWEEN FATHER AND SON

EPILOGUE TO PART THE FIRST

PART THE SECOND

PROLOGUE TO PART THE SECOND

CHAPTER I. THE CORONATION

CHAPTER II. LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT

CHAPTER III. EARLY TRAINING FOR AN UPRIGHT GENTLEMAN

CHAPTER IV. JOHN ARDWORTH

CHAPTER V. THE WEAVERS AND THE WOOF

CHAPTER VI. THE LAWYER AND THE BODY-SNATCHER

CHAPTER VII. THE RAPE OF THE MATTRESS

CHAPTER VIII. PERCIVAL VISITS LUCRETIA

CHAPTER IX. THE ROSE BENEATH THE UPAS

CHAPTER X. THE RATTLE OF THE SNAKE

CHAPTER XI. LOVE AND INNOCENCE

CHAPTER XII. SUDDEN CELEBRITY AND PATIENT HOPE

CHAPTER XIII. THE LOSS OF THE CROSSING

CHAPTER XIV. NEWS FROM GRABMAN

CHAPTER XV. VARIETIES

CHAPTER XVI. THE INVITATION TO LAUGHTON

CHAPTER XVII. THE WAKING OF THE SERPENT

CHAPTER XVIII. RETROSPECT

CHAPTER XIX. MR. GRABMAN’S ADVENTURES

CHAPTER XX. MORE OF MRS. JOPLIN

CHAPTER XXI. BECK’S DISCOVERY

CHAPTER XXII. THE TAPESTRY CHAMBER

CHAPTER XXIII. THE SHADES ON THE DIAL

CHAPTER XXIV. MURDER, TOWARDS HIS DESIGN, MOVES LIKE A GHOST

CHAPTER XXV. THE MESSENGER SPEEDS

CHAPTER XXVI. THE SPY FLIES

CHAPTER XXVII. LUCRETIA REGAINS HER SON

CHAPTER XXVIII. THE LOTS VANISH WITHIN THE URN

EPILOGUE TO PART THE SECOND

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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.

.....

“Pardon me,” she repeated; “but these compliments, if such they are meant to be, meet a very ungrateful return. A woman’s empire over gauzes and ribbons, over tea-tables and drums, over fops and coquettes, is not worth a journey from Laughton to London.”

“You think you can despise admiration?”

.....

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