Had Mlle. Ferrand survived, Condillac thinks that she would not have allowed him to acknowledge her influence on his work. ‘But how can I, to-day, deny myself the pleasure of this act of justice? Nothing but this remains to me, in our loss of a wise adviser, an enlightened critic, and a true friend. You, Madame, will share the pleasure with me, you who will not cease to regret her while you live.’ The philosopher speaks of ‘the intellect, the loyalty, the courage, which formed these ladies for each other.’ Loyalty, courage, wit, these women laid them at the feet of a Prince not their own, and solely recommended to their tenderness by his misfortunes.
‘Your friend, in dying, had this one consolation, Madame, that she was not to survive you. I have seen her happy in this reflection. “Speak sometimes of me with Madame de Vassé,” she said to me, “and let it be with a kind of pleasure.”’ Such was the girl, so brilliantly endowed, so brave, so affectionate, who did Prince Charles’s marketing, bought him novels and razors, directed his choice of books, was the channel through which his secret correspondence passed, was jealously regarded by his mistress, Madame de Talmond, and died before the end of all hope had come, before the Prince was renounced even by his own. To the angry Madame de Talmond she wrote, ‘I am strongly attached to your friend [the Prince] and for him would do and suffer anything short of stooping to an act of baseness.’
There must have been something in Charles, beyond his misfortunes, to win so much devotion from a woman of the highest intellect.
Mlle. Ferrand died, after a long illness, in October 1752. Her memory is preserved only by a note in Grimm’s correspondence, by the touching tribute of Condillac, and by the discovery of her kindness to a proscribed Prince. While she protected and advised him, she was inspiring a renowned philosopher, and keeping a secret which every diplomatist in Europe was eager to learn. We naturally desire to know whether Mlle. Ferrand was beautiful as well as talented and kind. But researches in France have not brought to light any portrait either of Mlle. Ferrand, or of Madame de Vassé, who long survived her friend, and was in correspondence, about 1760, with the Earl Marischal.[48]
V
THE ROMANCE OF BARISDALE
While the Lowlanders, for nearly fifteen hundred years, had cast on Highland robbers the eyes of hatred and contempt, Sir Walter Scott suddenly taught men to think a cateran a very fine fellow. The unanimity of a non-Highland testimony had previously been wonderful. ‘The Highlanders are great thieves,’ says Dio Cassius, speaking for civilisation as early as A.D. 200-230. Gildas, in the sixth century, calls the Highlanders (Picti) ‘a set of bloody free booters, with more hair on their thieves’ faces than clothes to cover their nakedness.’ Early mediæval writers talk of the bestiales Picts (‘the beastly Picts’), and later Lowland opinions to a similar effect are too familiar for quotation. To Scott was left the discovery of the virtues of the honest cateran, who looked on cattle-stealing as an ennobling occupation in the intervals of war.
Sir Walter’s opinion ran through Europe like the Fiery Cross. His grandson, Hugh Littlejohn, stirred up by the ‘Tales of a Grandfather,’ dirked his small brother slightly with a pair of scissors in a childish enthusiasm! Even the moral Wordsworth, moved by Scott, had a good word for Rob Roy. Yet about that hero Sir Walter cherished no illusions. He knew Rob’s Letter of Submission to General Wade, after 1715. Rob, of course, had been out for King James, but he coolly says to Wade: ‘I not only avoided acting offensively against his Majesty’s’ (King George’s) ‘forces, but, on the contrary, sent His Grace the Duke of Argyle all the intelligence I could from time to time of the strength and situation of the Rebels; which I hope his Grace will do me the justice to acknowledge.’
‘All the demerits ascribed to him by his enemies are less to his discredit than this one merit which he assumes to himself,’ says Jamieson.[49] The double-faced traitor, Rob’s son, James Mohr, one of the bravest of men, chassa de race. The truth is that a life of plunder, however romantic and however little regarded as immoral or degrading by Highland opinion, really did foster, in educated men, the most astonishing perfidy. This is the last vice we look for in the generous cateran; and, indeed, the outlaws of Glen Moriston were as loyal to their Prince as Lochiel. But the prevalent opinion that robbery, sanctioned by tradition, does not degrade the general character, can be proved to be an error. We read about Cluny that, in 1742-5, he held the usual belief. ‘He was certain it’ (the habit of robbery) ‘proceeded only from the remains of barbarism, for he had many convincing proofs that in other respects the dispositions of the people in these parts were generally as benevolent, humane, and even generous, as those of any country whatever.’[50]
Cluny was right about the untutored mass of the people, but he was wrong about a few educated chiefs, who encouraged and lived on an unfortunate tradition. Thus Sir Walter Scott writes about the thief whose history we are to narrate, Macdonnell of Barisdale: ‘He was a scholar and well-bred gentleman. He engraved on his broadswords the well-known lines: