PAUL CLIFFORD, Volume 7.

By Edward Bulwer-Lytton




CHAPTER XXXIV.

O Fortuna, viris invida fortibus
Quam non aqua bonis praemia dividis.
SENECA.
. . . . . . . . . . . .
And as a hare, whom hounds and horns pursue,
Pants to the place from whence at first he flew.
. . . . . . . . . . . .
Here, to the houseless child of want,
My door is open still.
GOLDSMITH.

Slowly for Lucy waned the weeks of a winter which to her was the most
dreary portion of life she had ever passed. It became the time for the
judge to attend one of those periodical visitations so fraught with dread
and dismay to the miserable inmates of the dark abodes which the complex
laws of this country so bounteously supply,--those times of great
hilarity and eating to the legal gentry,--

"Who feed on crimes and fatten on distress,
And wring vile mirth from suffering's last excess."