Love’s Usuries

On a page in Lionel Bentham’s album, rose petals lie like tiny boats in a finger-glass—and each flower, he says, has a story of love, heroism, or lunacy. What did those petals witness when Paris was intoxicated by the actress Lalage?

After years apart, the narrator finds Bentham a celebrated painter, surrounded by trophies, portraits, and the souvenirs of a restless life. But the album he calls his “Flower Martyrs” holds more than pretty relics: each crushed bloom marks a human passion, and the price someone paid for it. As Bentham recalls an actress, a prince, and others caught in love’s dangerous orbit, his dry wit cannot quite disguise the ache beneath it. In Louis Creswicke’s tale, art preserves what the heart would rather forget. What else lies pressed between the pages?

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