ended kindness, and officiously offers to serve him at the
bath. Inducing him to put on a garment, of which she had adroitly sewed
up the sleeves and neck so as to hamper the use of his arms, she gives
the signal to a concealed band of assassins, who rush upon him and stab
him. Clytemnestra is represented by AEschylus as grimly triumphing in
her success, which leaves her free to marry an adulterous paramour.

'I did it, too, in such a cunning wise,
That he could neither 'scape nor ward off doom.
I staked around his steps an endless net,
As for the fishes.'

In the piece entitled 'Lines on hearing Lady Byron is ill,' Lord Byron
charges on his wife a similar treachery and cruelty. The whole poem is
in Murray's English edition, Vol. IV. p. 207. Of it we quote the
following. The reader will bear in mind that it is addressed to Lady
Byron on a sick-bed:--

'I am too well avenged, but 't was my right;
Whate'er my sins might be, _thou_ wert not sent
To be the Nemesis that should requite,
Nor did Heaven choose so near an instrument.
Mercy is for the merciful! If thou
Hast been of such, 't will be accorded now.
Thy nights are banished from the realms of sleep,
For thou art pillowed on a curse too deep;
Yes! they may flatter thee, but thou shalt feel
A hollow agony that will not heal.
Thou hast sown in my sorrow, and must reap
The bitter harvest in a woe as real.
_I have had many foes, but none like thee_;
For 'gainst the rest myself I could defend,
And be avenged, or turn them into friend;
But thou, in safe implacability,
Hast naught to dread,--in thy own weakness shielded,
And in my love, which hath but too much yielded,
And spared, for thy sake, some I should not spare.
And thus upon the world, trust in thy truth,
And the wild fame of my ungoverned youth,--
On things that were not and on things that are,--
Even upon such a basis thou halt built
A monument whose cement hath been guilt!
The moral Clytemnestra of thy lord,
And hewed down with an unsuspected sword
Fame, peace, and hope, and all that better life
Which, but for this cold treason of thy heart,
Might yet have risen from the grave of strife
And found a nobler duty than to part.
But of thy virtues thou didst make a vice,
Trafficking in them with a purpose cold,
And buying others' woes at any price,
For present anger and for future gold;