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Updated: April 30, 2025
The careless and in many respects dissolute life he had been leading had more than begun to tell on a constitution by no means strong, but he had never become aware of his weakness nor had ever felt really ill until now. But that sting, although the first sharp one, was not his first warning of a waking conscience.
He had triumphed over a fond, confiding woman; but he had been trained among the dissolute spirits of the Regency too thoroughly to feel more than a passing regret for a woman whom, probably, he loved better than any other of the victims of his licentious life.
There had been strange workings of her nerves during her long years of chastity. A dissolute life would perhaps have wrecked her less than the slow hidden ravages of unsatisfied fever which had modified her organism.
Of all the pagan Mysteries instituted by the ancients none were more extensively diffused than those of the Grecian god Dionysus. They were established in Greece, Rome, Syria, and all Asia Minor. Among the Greeks, and still more among the Romans, the rites celebrated on the Dionysiac festival were, it must be confessed, of a dissolute and licentious character.
There was Navailles, the brisk, the dissolute, the witty, always ready to risk everything, including honor, for a cast of the dice, for a kiss, for a pleasure or a revenge. There was Nocé, pleasure-loving, pleasure-giving, always good-tempered, always good-humored, always serenely confident that the world as it existed was made chiefly for his amusement and the amusement of his friends.
But it can easily be imagined that a fierce, dissolute, hungry-looking woman, with half-dyed hair, who had drunk as much as was good for her, dressed in a hat made of shabby peacock feathers, dirty white shoes, an ulster with some buttons off, and a gorgeous but filthy pink silk tea-gown, presented a sufficiently curious appearance.
All then was confusion, and the habits of the Royal family so intermitted, whether at Windsor or Kew, that those attached to the household came and went as they pleased, although the strictest inquisition followed all that was allowed to pass outside the walls, lest reports adverse to His Majesty's health should reach the party of the Princes, his sons, who caught eagerly at any facts they might distort in a way to gain the Regency for the dissolute Prince of Wales, and cast the Queen completely into his power.
The pardon cannot touch the guilt; but when the guilt is remitted, there is still the penalty. I may ruin my health by a dissolute life; I may repent of my dissoluteness and be forgiven; but the bad health will remain. For bad health, substitute penance in this world and purgatory in the next; and in this sphere the indulgence takes effect.
The first public evidence of a positive leaning toward the Christian religion he gave in his contest with the pagan Maxentius, who had usurped the government of Italy and Africa, and is universally represented as a cruel, dissolute tyrant, hated by heathens and Christians alike.
The picture of the days and nights she had now spent for weeks with the old lady, presented in vivid characters a mixture of great and petty troubles, external and mental humiliations. Only too often the same drinking and carousing had gone on below as to-day-Henrica had always been compelled to join her aunt's guests, elderly dissolute men of French or Italian origin and easy morals.
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