d than theirs, and the restraint he imposed upon his sensual
appetites was as conspicuous a trait as his sternness and violence."]

Abbotsford, 1830.

Quentin Durward was published in June, 1823, and was Scott's first
venture on foreign ground. While well received at home, the sensation
it created in Paris was comparable to that caused by the appearance of
Waverley in Edinburgh and Ivanhoe in London. In Germany also, where the
author was already popular, the new novel had a specially enthusiastic
welcome. The scene of the romance was partly suggested by a journal
kept by Sir Walter's dear friend, Mr. James Skene of Rubislaw, during
a French tour, the diary being illustrated by a vast number of clever
drawings. The author, in telling this tale laid in unfamiliar scenes,
encountered difficulties of a kind quite new to him, as it necessitated
much study of maps, gazetteers, and books of travel. For the history,
he naturally found above all else the Memoirs of Philip de Comines "the
very key of the period," though it need not be said that the lesser
chroniclers received due attention. It is interesting to note that in
writing to his friend, Daniel Terry, the actor and manager, Scott says,
"I have no idea my present labours will be dramatic in situation; as to
character, that of Louis XI, the sagacious, perfidious, superstitious,
jocular, politic tyrant, would be, for a historical chronicle containing
his life and death, one of the most powerful ever brought on the stage."
So thought the poet, Casimir Delavigne--writing when Scott's influence
was marked upon French literature--whose powerful drama, Louis XI, was
a great Parisian success. Later Charles Kean and Henry Irving made an
English version of it well known in England and America.

CHAPTER I: THE CONTRAST

Look here upon this picture, and on this,
The counterfeit presentment of two brothers.

HAMLET

The latter part of the fifteenth century prepared a train of future
events that ended by raising France to that state of formidable power
which has ever since been from time to time the principal object of
jealousy to the other European nations. Before that period she had to
struggle for her very existence with the English already possessed of
her fairest provinces while the utmost exertions of her King, and the
gallantry of her people, could scarcely protect the remainder from a
foreign yoke. Nor was this her sole danger. The princes who pos