 

                                Sir Walter Scott

                                Quentin Durward

 La guerre est ma patrie,
 Mon harnois ma maison,
 Et en toute saison
 Combattre c'est ma vie.
 

                                  Introduction

The scene of this romance is laid in the fifteenth century, when the feudal
system, which had been the sinews and nerves of national defence, and the spirit
of chivalry, by which, as by a vivifying soul, that system was animated, began
to be innovated upon and abandoned by those grosser characters who centred their
sum of happiness in procuring the personal objects on which they had fixed their
own exclusive attachment. The same egotism had indeed displayed itself even in
more primitive ages; but it was now for the first time openly avowed as a
professed principle of action. The spirit of chivalry had in it this point of
excellence, that however overstrained and fantastic many of its doctrines may
appear to us, they were all founded on generosity and self-denial, of which if
the earth were deprived, it would be difficult to conceive the existence of
virtue among the human race.
    Among those who were the first to ridicule and abandon the self-denying
principles in which the young knight was instructed, and to which he was so
carefully trained up, Louis the XIth of France was the chief. That Sovereign was
of a character so purely selfish - so guiltless of entertaining any purpose
unconnected with his ambition, covetousness, and desire of selfish enjoyment,
that he almost seems an incarnation of the devil himself, permitted to do his
utmost to corrupt our ideas of honour in its very source. Nor is it to be
forgotten that Louis possessed to a great extent that caustic wit which can turn
into ridicule all that a man does for any other person's advantage but his own,
and was, therefore, peculiarly qualified to play the part of a cold-hearted and
sneering friend.
    In this point of view, Goethe's conception of the character and reasoning of
Mephistophiles, the tempting spirit in the singular play of Faust, appears to me
more happy than that which has been formed by Byron, and even than the Satan of
Milton. These last great authors have given to the Evil Principle something
which elevates and dignifies his wickedness; a sustained and unconquerable
resistance against Omnipotence itself - a lofty scorn of suffering compared with
submission, and all those points of attraction in the Author of Evil, which have
induced Burns and others to consider him as the Hero of the Paradise Lost. The
great German poet has, on the contrary, rendered his seducing spirit a being
who, otherwise totally unimpassioned, seems only to have existed for the purpose
of increasing
