Have you ever thought about what fiction is? Probably, such a question may seem surprising: and so everything is clear. Every person throughout his life has to repeatedly create the works he needs for specific purposes - statements, autobiographies, dictations - using not gypsum or clay, not musical notes, not paints, but just a word. At the same time, almost every person will be very surprised if he is told that he thereby created a work of fiction, which is very different from visual art, music and sculpture making. However, everyone understands that a student's essay or dictation is fundamentally different from novels, short stories, news that are created by professional writers. In the works of professionals there is the most important difference - excogitation. But, oddly enough, in a school literature course, you donât realize the full power of fiction. So using our website in your free time discover fiction for yourself. Redgauntlet: A Tale of the Eighteenth Century by Walter Scott (books for students to read .txt) đ
- Author: Walter Scott
Book online «Redgauntlet: A Tale of the Eighteenth Century by Walter Scott (books for students to read .txt) đ». Author Walter Scott
âI wish, then,â said Charles, âonly another companion. Redgauntlet, the air of this country is as hostile to you as it is to me. These gentlemen have made their peace, or rather they have done nothing to break it. But youâcome you and share my home where chance shall cast it. We shall never see these shores again; but we will talk of them, and of our disconcerted bull-fight.â
âI follow you, sire, through life,â said Redgauntlet, âas I would have followed you to death. Permit me one moment.â
The prince then looked round, and seeing the abashed countenances of his other adherents bent upon the ground, he hastened to say, âDo not think that you, gentlemen, have obliged me less because your zeal was mingled with prudence, entertained, I am sure, more on my own account and on that of your country, than from selfish apprehensions.â
He stepped from one to another, and, amid sobs and bursting tears, received the adieus of the last remnant which had hitherto supported his lofty pretensions, and addressed them individually with accents of tenderness and affection.
The general drew a little aloof, and signed to Redgauntlet to speak with him while this scene proceeded. âIt is now all over,â he said, âand Jacobite will be henceforward no longer a party name. When you tire of foreign parts, and wish to make your peace, let me know. Your restless zeal alone has impeded your pardon hitherto.â
âAnd now I shall not need it,â said Redgauntlet. âI leave England for ever; but I am not displeased that you should hear my family adieus.âNephew, come hither. In presence of General Campbell, I tell you, that though to breed you up in my own political opinions has been for many years my anxious wish, I am now glad that it could not be accomplished. You pass under the service of the reigning monarch without the necessity of changing your allegianceâa change, however,â he added, looking around him, which sits more easy on honourable men than I could have anticipated; but some wear the badge of their loyalty on their sleeve, and others in the heart. You will, from henceforth, be uncontrolled master of all the property of which forfeiture could not deprive your fatherâof all that belonged to himâexcepting this, his good swordâ (laying his hand on the weapon he wore), âwhich shall never fight for the House of Hanover; and as my hand will never draw weapon more, I shall sink it forty fathoms deep in the wide ocean. Bless you, young man! If I have dealt harshly with you, forgive me. I had set my whole desires on one point,âGod knows, with no selfish purpose; and I am justly punished by this final termination of my views, for having been too little scrupulous in the means by which I pursued them.âNiece, farewell, and may God bless you also!â
âNo, sir,â said Lilias, seizing his hand eagerly. âYou have been hitherto my protector,âyou are now in sorrow, let me be your attendant and your comforter in exile.â
âI thank you, my girl, for your unmerited affection; but it cannot and must not be. The curtain here falls between us. I go to the house of another. If I leave it before I quit the earth, it shall be only for the House of God. Once more, farewell both! The fatal doom,â he said, with a melancholy smile, âwill, I trust, now depart from the House of Redgauntlet, since its present representative has adhered to the winning side. I am convinced he will not change it, should it in turn become the losing one.â
The unfortunate Charles Edward had now given his last adieus to his downcast adherents. He made a sign with his hand to Redgauntlet, who came to assist him into the skiff. General Campbell also offered his assistance, the rest appearing too much affected by the scene which had taken place to prevent him.
âYou are not sorry, general, to do me this last act of courtesy,â said the Chevalier; âand, on my part, I thank you for it. You have taught me the principle on which men on the scaffold feel forgiveness and kindness even for their executioner. Farewell!â
They were seated in the boat, which presently pulled off from the land. The Oxford divine broke out into a loud benediction, in terms which General Campbell was too generous to criticize at the time, or to remember afterwards;ânay, it is said, that, Whig and Campbell as he was, he could not help joining in the universal Amen! which resounded from the shore.
CONCLUSION, BY DR. DRYASDUST IN A LETTER TO THE AUTHOR OF WAVERLEY
I am truly sorry, my worthy and much-respected sir, that my anxious researches have neither, in the form of letters, nor of diaries or other memoranda, been able to discover more than I have hitherto transmitted, of the history of the Redgauntlet family. But I observe in an old newspaper called the WHITEHALL GAZETTE, of which I fortunately possess a file for several years, that Sir Arthur Darsie Redgauntlet was presented to his late Majesty at the drawing-room, by Lieut.-General Campbellâupon which the editor observes, in the way of comment, that we were going, REMIS ATQUE VELIS, into the interests of the Pretender, since a Scot had presented a Jacobite at Court. I am sorry I have not room (the frank being only uncial) for his further observations, tending to show the apprehensions entertained by many well-instructed persons of the period, that the young king might himself be induced to become one of the Stuartsâ faction,âa catastrophe from which it has pleased Heaven to preserve these kingdoms.
I perceive also, by a marriage-contract in the family repositories, that Miss Lilias Redgauntlet of Redgauntlet, about eighteen months after the transactions you have commemorated, intermarried with Alan Fairford, Esq., Advocate, of Clinkdollar, who, I think, we may not unreasonably conclude to be the same person whose name occurs so frequently in the pages of your narration. In my last excursion to Edinburgh, I was fortunate enough to discover an old caddie, from whom, at the expense of a bottle of whisky and half a pound of tobacco, I extracted the important information, that he knew Peter Peebles very well, and had drunk many a mutchkin with him in Caddie Fraserâs time. He said âthat he lived ten years after King Georgeâs accession, in the momentary expectation of winning his cause every day in the session time, and every hour in the day, and at last fell down dead, in what my informer called a âperplexity fit,â upon a proposal for a composition being made to him in the Outer House. I have chosen to retain my informerâs phrase, not being able justly to determine whether it is a corruption of the word apoplexy, as my friend Mr. Oldbuck supposes, or the name of some peculiar disorder incidental to those who have concern in the courts of law, as many callings and conditions of men have diseases appropriate to themselves. The same caddie also remembered Blind Willie Stevenson, who was called Wandering Willie, and who ended his days âunco beinly, in Sir Arthur Redgauntletâs haâ neuk.â âHe had done the family some good turn,â he said, âspecially when ane of the Argyle gentlemen was coming down on a wheen of them that had the âauld leavenâ about them, and wad hae taen every man of them, and nae less nor headed and hanged them. But Willie, and a friend they had, called Robin the Rambler, gae them warning, by playing tunes such as
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