tirely unknown in the particular dialect in which
it was written; and, moreover, that it multiplied complicated and
recondite patterns of tartans in a manner so remarkable that Sir Walter
Scott, to whom part of Mr. Sobieski Stuart's transcript of the ancient
MS. was submitted, was led to suspect "that information as to its origin
might be obtained even in a less romantic site than the cabin of a
Cowgate porter (or the Scots College at Douay), even behind the counter
of one of the great clan-tartan warehouses which used to illuminate the
principal thoroughfare of Edinburgh."

This important and well-nigh unique document was apparently never
submitted in its original MS. to anyone; the copy from the Scots College
at Douay, and the copy from the old sword-player of Cowgate, remained
equally unknown to everyone save their fortunate possessor. But
transcripts of some portions of the work were submitted, at the request
of the Antiquarian Society, to Sir Walter Scott, and as he dismissed the
deputation which had met to hear his opinion upon the _Vestiarium
Scoticum_, the author of _Waverley_ was pleased to remark by way of
summing up: "Well, I think the _March_ of the next rising" (alluding to
the part of the Highlanders in the '45) "must be not 'Hey tuttie tattie,'
but 'The Devil among the Tailors.'"

However, perhaps the _Vestiarium Scoticum_ may have come out of the
Scots College at Douay, and perhaps also the son of Charles Edward
Stuart and of Louise of Stolberg may have been born in the room hung
with red brocade, and have been handed over to a British Admiral one
moonlight night, in the presence of the venerable Dr. Beaton, whom
Providence permitted to attain the unusual age of a hundred years or
more, in order that, with unimpaired faculties and unclouded memory, he
might transmit to posterity this strange romance of history.

CHAPTER V.

FLORENCE.

It is quite impossible to tell the precise moment at which began what
Horace Mann, most light-hearted and chirpy of diplomatists, called the
Countess of Albany's martyrdom. As we have seen, Charles Edward had
momentarily given up all excessive drinking at the time of his marriage.
Bonstetten thought him a good-natured garrulous bore, and his wife a
merry, childish young woman, who laughed at her husband's oft-told
stories. This was the very decent exterior of the Pretender's domestic
life in the first year of his marriage. But who can tell what there may
have