To one more experienced than Lucy, this involuntary attraction might not have been incompatible with suspicion, and could scarcely have been associated with esteem; and yet for all who knew him intimately, even for the penetrating and selfish Mauleverer, the attraction existed.
Unprincipled, crafty, hypocritical, even base when it suited his purpose; secretly sneering at the dupes he made, and knowing no code save that of interest and ambition; viewing men only as machines, and opinions only as ladders,--there was yet a tone of powerful feeling sometimes elicited from a heart that could at the same moment have sacrificed a whole people to the pettiest personal object: and sometimes with Lucy the eloquence or irony of his conversation deepened into a melancholy, a half-suppressed gentleness of sentiment, that accorded with the state of her own mind and interested her kind feelings powerfully in his.

It was these peculiarities in his converse which made Lucy love to hear him; and she gradually learned to anticipate with a gloomy pleasure the hour in which, after the occupations of the day, he was accustomed to join her.
"You look unwell, uncle, to-night," she said, when one evening he entered the room with looks more fatigued than usual; and rising, she leaned tenderly over him, and kissed his forehead.
"Ay!" said Brandon, utterly unwon by, and even unheeding, the caress, "our way of life soon passes into the sear and yellow leaf; and when Macbeth grieved that he might not look to have that which should accompany old age, he had grown doting, and grieved for what was worthless." "Nay, uncle, 'honour, love, obedience, troops of friends,' these surely were worth the sighing for ?" "Pooh! not worth a single sigh! The foolish wishes we form in youth have something noble and something bodily in them; but those of age are utter shadows, and the shadows of pygmies! Why, what is honour, after all?
What is this good name among men?
Only a sort of heathenish idol, set up to be adored by one set of fools and scorned by another.

Do you not observe, Lucy, that the man you hear most praised by the party you meet to-day is most abused by that which you meet to-morrow?
Public men are only praised by their party; and their party, sweet Lucy, are such base minions that it moves one's spleen to think one is so little as to be useful to them.

Thus a good name is only the good name of a sect, and the members of that sect are only marvellous proper knaves." "But posterity does justice to those who really deserve fame." "Posterity! Can you believe that a man who knows what life is cares for the penny whistles of grown children after his death?
Posterity, Lucy,--no! Posterity is but the same perpetuity of fools and rascals; and even were justice desirable at their hands, they could not deal it.
Do men agree whether Charles Stuart was a liar or a martyr?
For how many ages have we believed Nero a monster! A writer now asks, as if demonstrating a problem, what real historian could doubt that Nero was a paragon?
The patriarchs of Scripture have been declared by modern philosophy to be a series of astronomical hieroglyphs; and, with greater show of truth, we are assured that the patriot Tell never existed! Posterity! the word has gulled men enough without my adding to the number.

I, who loathe the living, can scarcely venerate the unborn.
Lucy, believe me that no man can mix largely with men in political life, and not despise everything that in youth he adored! Age leaves us only one feeling,--contempt!" "Are you belied, then ?" said Lucy, pointing to a newspaper, the organ of the party opposed to Brandon: "are you belied when you are here called 'ambitious'?
When they call you 'selfish' and 'grasping,' I know they wrong you; but I confess that I have thought you ambitious; yet can he who despises men desire their good opinion ?" "Their good opinion!" repeated Brandon, mockingly: "do we want the bray of the asses we ride?
No!" he resumed, after a pause.