The politic Chieftain of the race of Ivor knew his advantage in introducing Waverley to this personal interview with the royal adventurer.  Unaccustomed to the address and manners of a polished court, in which Charles was eminently skilful, his words and his kindness penetrated the heart of our hero, and easily outweighed all prudential motives.  To be thus personally solicited for assistance by a prince whose form and manners, as well as the spirit which he displayed in this singular enterprise, answered his ideas of a hero of romance; to be courted by him in the ancient halls of his paternal palace, recovered by the sword which he was already bending towards other conquests, gave Edward, in his own eyes, the dignity and importance which he had ceased to consider as his attributes.  Rejected, slandered, and threatened upon the one side, he was irresistibly attracted to the cause which the prejudices of education and the political principles of his family had already recommended as the most just.  These thoughts rushed through his mind like a torrent, sweeping before them every consideration of an opposite tendency,—­the time, besides, admitted of no deliberation,—­and Waverley, kneeling to Charles Edward, devoted his heart and sword to the vindication of his rights!

The Prince (for, although unfortunate in the faults and follies of his forefathers, we shall here and elsewhere give him the title due to his birth) raised Waverley from the ground and embraced him with an expression of thanks too warm not to be genuine.  He also thanked Fergus Mac-Ivor repeatedly for having brought him such an adherent, and presented Waverley to the various noblemen, chieftains, and officers who were about his person as a young gentleman of the highest hopes and prospects, in whose bold and enthusiastic avowal of his cause they might see an evidence of the sentiments of the English families of rank at this important crisis. [Footnote:  See Note 4.] Indeed, this was a point much doubted among the adherents of the house of Stuart; and as a well-founded disbelief in the cooperation of the English Jacobites kept many Scottish men of rank from his standard, and diminished the courage of those who had joined it, nothing could be more seasonable for the Chevalier than the open declaration in his favour of the representative of the house of Waverley-Honour, so long known as Cavaliers and Royalists.  This Fergus had foreseen from the beginning.  He really loved Waverley, because their feelings and projects never thwarted each other; he hoped to see him united with Flora, and he rejoiced that they were effectually engaged in the same cause.  But, as we before hinted, he also exulted as a politician in beholding secured to his party a partizan of such consequence; and he was far from being insensible to the personal importance which he himself gained with the Prince from having so materially assisted in making the acquisition.