y, from
a single mind. High above the crowd of offenders towered one offender,
preeminent in parts, knowledge, rank and power. In return for many
victims immolated by treachery, only one victim was demanded by justice;
and it must ever be considered as a blemish on the fame of William that
the demand was refused.

On the seventeenth of July the session of the Parliament of Scotland
closed. The Estates had liberally voted such a supply as the poor
country which they represented could afford. They had indeed been put
into high good humour by the notion that they had found out a way of
speedily making that poor country rich. Their attention had been divided
between the inquiry into the slaughter of Glencoe and some specious
commercial projects of which the nature will be explained and the fate
related in a future chapter.

Meanwhile all Europe was looking anxiously towards the Low Countries.
The great warrior who had been victorious at Fleurus, at Steinkirk and
at Landen had not left his equal behind him. But France still possessed
Marshals well qualified for high command. Already Catinat and Boufflers
had given proofs of skill, of resolution, and of zeal for the interests
of the state. Either of those distinguished officers would have been a
successor worthy of Luxemburg and an antagonist worthy of William; but
their master, unfortunately for himself, preferred to both the Duke of
Villeroy. The new general had been Lewis's playmate when they were both
children, had then become a favourite, and had never ceased to be so.
In those superficial graces for which the French aristocracy was then
renowned throughout Europe, Villeroy was preeminent among the French
aristocracy. His stature was tall, his countenance handsome, his manners
nobly and somewhat haughtily polite, his dress, his furniture, his
equipages, his table, magnificent. No man told a story with more
vivacity; no man sate his horse better in a hunting party; no man made
love with more success; no man staked and lost heaps of gold with more
agreeable unconcern; no man was more intimately acquainted with the
adventures, the attachments, the enmities of the lords and ladies
who daily filled the halls of Versailles. There were two characters
especially which this fine gentleman had studied during many years, and
of which he knew all the plaits and windings, the character of the King,
and the character of her who was Queen in every thing but name. But
there ended Vill