There are such
traps and snap-haunches as may cost you a limb, which you will sorely miss. You
shall see the King, and learn to judge him for yourself - farewell.«
    So saying, Balafré hastily departed, forgetting, in his hurry, to pay for
the wine he had called for, a shortness of memory incidental to persons of his
description, and which his host, overawed, perhaps, by the nodding bonnet and
ponderous two-handed sword, did not presume to use any efforts for correcting.
It might have been expected that, when left alone, Durward would have again
betaken himself to his turret, in order to watch for the repetition of those
delicious sounds which had soothed his morning reverie. But that was a chapter
of romance, and his uncle's conversation had opened to him a page of the real
history of life. It was no pleasing one, and for the present the recollections
and reflections which it excited were qualified to overpower other thoughts, and
especially all of a light and soothing nature.
    Quentin resorted to a solitary walk along the banks of the rapid Cher,
having previously inquired of his landlord for one which he might traverse
without fear of disagreeable interruption from snares and pitfalls, and there
endeavoured to compose his turmoiled and scattered thoughts, and consider his
future motions, upon which his meeting with his uncle had thrown some dubiety.
 

                                 Chapter Sixth

                                 The Bohemians.

 Sae rantingly, sae wantonly,
 Sae dantingly gaed he,
 He play'd a spring and danced a round
 Beneath the gallows tree!
                                                                       Old Song.
 
The manner in which Quentin Durward had been educated was not of a kind to
soften the heart, or perhaps to improve the moral feeling. He, with the rest of
his family, had been trained to the chase as an amusement, and taught to
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