The fact is that it has been found necessary to exert a great deal of ingenuity in order to meet the popular demand for cold-blooded cruelty where Louis the Eleventh is concerned. He is an historic bugbear, a hobgoblin, at whose grim ghost we grown-up children like to shudder apprehensively. Scott, with a tolerance as wide as Shakespeare's own, has dared to give a finer colour to the picture, has dared to engage our sympathy for this implacable old man who knew how to "hate and wait," how to lie in ambush, and how to drive relentlessly to his goal. But even Scott has been unable to subdue our cherished antipathy, or to modify the deep prejudices instilled early into our minds. Mr. Robert Louis Stevenson, who of all writers has least patience with schoolbook verdicts, hits hard at our narrow fidelity to censorship. "It is probably more instructive," he says, "to entertain a sneaking kindness for any unpopular person than to give way to perfect raptures of moral indignation against his abstract vices."
Now a more unpopular, a more comprehensively unlovable person than Louis it would be
