“It is Ludovic Lesly, Sire, whom we call Le Balafre,” replied the old soldier.

“But is he noble?” said the Duke.  “Is he of gentle blood?  Otherwise our promise is void.”

“I will warrant him a branch of the tree of Rother, as noble as any house in France or Burgundy,” said Crawford.

“There is then no help for it,” said the Duke; “and the fairest and richest heiress in Burgundy must be the wife of a rude mercenary soldier.”

“May it please your Majesty, and your grace,” said Crawford.  “I must speak for my countryman and old comrade.  He hath acted by my advice and resigns his claim to him by whom the Wild Boar was actually brought to bay, who is his maternal nephew, and is of the House of Durward, descended from that Allan Durward who was High Steward of Scotland.”

“Nay, if it be young Durward,” said Crevecoeur; “there is nothing more to be said.  I have much reason to believe your Grace will find her more amenable to authority than on former occasions.  But why should I grudge this youth his preferment, since after all, it is sense, firmness, and gallantry, which have put him in possession of wealth, rank, and beauty!”

Rob Roy

The title of “Rob Roy” was suggested by Constable, the publisher, who one day informed the novelist that the name of the hero would be the best possible name for the book.  “Nay,” answered Scott, “never let me have to write up to a name.  You know well that I have generally adopted a title that told nothing.”  But the bookseller persevered and in the end Sir Walter’s scruples gave way.  “Rob Roy,” by the author of “Waverley,” was published on December 31, 1817, and although it is not among the greatest of Scott’s novels, it certainly figures among his next best.  It is crowded with incident and adventure, and the character of Rob Roy himself will last as long as English literature.  Diana Vernon, too, is perhaps the most attractive and surely-drawn in all Scott’s gallery of portraits of distinguished women.  “Rob Roy” was dramatised shortly after its appearance in book form; Scott himself first witnessed a performance of it at Edinburgh on February 15, 1819, the same company later appearing in it at Glasgow before George IV.

I.—­I Meet Diana Vernon

Early in the eighteenth century, when I, Frank Osbaldistone, was a youth of twenty, I was hastily summoned from Bordeaux, where, in a mercantile house, I was, as my father trusted, being initiated into the mysteries of commerce.  As a matter of fact, my principal attention had been dedicated to literature and manly exercises.

In an evil hour, my father had received my letter, containing my eloquent and detailed apology for declining a place in the firm, and I was summoned home in all haste, his chief ambition being that I should succeed, not merely to his fortune, but to the views and plans by which he imagined he could extend and perpetuate that wealthy inheritance.  I did not understand how deeply my father’s happiness was involved, and with something of his own pertinacity, had formed a determination precisely contrary, not conceiving that I should increase my own happiness by augmenting a fortune which I believed already sufficient.