consider war as their only serious occupation, and that it
was the great duty of their lives stubbornly to endure, and fiercely to
retaliate, the attacks of their feudal enemies, by whom their race had
been at last almost annihilated. And yet there mixed with these feuds a
spirit of rude chivalry, and even courtesy, which softened their rigour;
so that revenge, their only justice, was still prosecuted with some
regard to humanity and generosity. The lessons of the worthy old monk,
better attended to, perhaps, during a long illness and adversity, than
they might have been in health and success, had given young Durward
still farther insight into the duties of humanity towards others;
and considering the ignorance of the period, the general prejudices
entertained in favour of a military life, and the manner in which he
himself had been bred, the youth was disposed to feel more accurately
the moral duties incumbent on his station than was usual at the time.

He reflected on his interview with his uncle with a sense of
embarrassment and disappointment. His hopes had been high; for although
intercourse by letters was out of the question, yet a pilgrim, or an
adventurous trafficker, or a crippled soldier sometimes brought Lesly's
name to Glen Houlakin, and all united in praising his undaunted courage,
and his success in many petty enterprises which his master had intrusted
to him. Quentin's imagination had filled up the sketch in his own way,
and assimilated his successful and adventurous uncle (whose exploits
probably lost nothing in the telling) to some of the champions and
knights errant of whom minstrels sung and who won crowns and kings'
daughters by dint of sword and lance. He was now compelled to rank his
kinsman greatly lower in the scale of chivalry; but, blinded by the high
respect paid to parents and those who approach that character--moved
by every early prejudice in his favour--inexperienced besides, and
passionately attached to his mother's memory, he saw not, in the only
brother of that dear relation, the character he truly held, which was
that of an ordinary mercenary soldier, neither much worse nor greatly
better than many of the same profession whose presence added to the
distracted state of France.

Without being wantonly cruel, Le Balafre was, from habit, indifferent
to human life and human suffering; he was profoundly ignorant, greedy of
booty, unscrupulous how he acquired it, and profuse in expending it o