[43] Lord Justice Clerk to Newcastle, July 10, 1746. Murray’s Memorials, p. 418.
[44] The Highlands in 1750. Blackwood, 1898.
[45] Leslie. Paris, May 27, 1752. Browne, iv. 101.
[46] See ‘Account of Charge’ in Chambers’s Rebellion, p. 522; and, later, ‘Cluny’s Treasure.’
[47] Stuart Papers. Browne, iv. 59. Mr. Fitzroy Bell does not remark on all this evidence.
[48] Unable, at first, to learn even the real name of Mlle. Luci, I appealed, in despair, to a lady who occasionally sees ‘visions’ in crystals. ‘What can you see of Mlle. Luci?’ I asked, by letter, giving no hint of any kind as to the lady’s date or connections. The seeress replied that, in an ink-bottle on her writing-desk, she saw a girl of about twenty-eight, dark, handsome, rather like Madame Patti in youth. Her dress was that of the middle of the eighteenth century. On her shoulder was laid another lady’s hand, a long, delicate, white hand, with a ‘marquise’ diamond ring. ‘La Grande Main,’ I exclaimed, ‘the hand of La Grande Main!’—whom we later discovered to be Madame de Vassé.
The coincidence was certainly pretty, but, unless a portrait of Mlle. Ferrand can be discovered, we must remain ignorant as to whether she was correctly represented in the ink-picture; whether a true refraction shone up from the dead past, the afterglow of a romance.
[49] Burt’s Letters, ii. p. 334.
[50] MSS. in the Cluny Charter Chest. Privately printed, 1879, p. 16.
[51] Waverley, i. p. 161 (1829).