has already been put to bed by Mr Roughead in his inimitable
manner. What a nose the man has! What noses all these
rechauffeurs of crime possess! To use a figure perhaps something
unmannerly, the pigs of Perigord, which, one hears, are trained
to hunt truffles, have snouts no keener.

Suppose, again, that one proposes to deal with the peccancy of
women from the earliest times, it is hard to find a lady, even
one whose name has hitherto gleamed lurid in history, to whom
some modern writer has not contrived by chapter and verse to
apply a coat of whitewash.

Locusta, the poisoner whom Agrippina, wanting to kill the Emperor
Claudius by slow degrees, called into service, and whose
technique Nero admired so much that he was fain to put her on his
pension list, barely escapes the deodorant. Messalina comes up
in memory. And then one finds M. Paul Moinet, in his historical
essays En Marge de l'histoire, gracefully pleading for the lady
as Messaline la calomniee--yes, and making out a good case for
her. The Empress Theodora under the pen of a psychological
expert becomes nothing more dire than a clever little whore
disguised in imperial purple.

On the mention of poison Lucretia Borgia springs to mind. This
is the lady of whom Gibbon writes with the following ponderous
falsity:


In the next generation the house of Este was sullied by a
sanguinary and incestuous race in the nuptials of Alfonso I with