Famous Affinities of History: The Romance of Devotion. Volume 1Orr, Lyndon
History
Famous Affinities of History: The Romance of Devotion. Volume 1
Orr, Lyndon
Biography; Love; Women -- Biography
There for a time it was impossible to follow him; and there the two
lived almost alone together. Such a proximity could not fail to stir
the romantic feeling of one who was both a youth and a prince. On the
other hand, no thought of love-making seems to have entered Flora's
mind. If, however, we read Campbell's narrative very closely we can see
that Prince Charles made every advance consistent with a delicate
remembrance of her sex and services.
It seems to have been his thought that if she cared for him, then the
two might well love; and he gave her every chance to show him favor.
The youth of twenty-five and the girl of twenty-four roamed together in
the long, tufted grass or lay in the sunshine and looked out over the
sea. The prince would rest his head in her lap, and she would tumble
his golden hair with her slender fingers and sometimes clip off tresses
which she preserved to give to friends of hers as love-locks. But to
the last he was either too high or too low for her, according to her
own modest thought. He was a royal prince, the heir to a throne, or
else he was a boy with whom she might play quite fancy-free. A lover he
could not be--so pure and beautiful was her thought of him.
These were perhaps the most delightful days of all his life, as they
were a beautiful memory in hers. In time he returned to France and
resumed his place amid the intrigues that surrounded that other Stuart
prince who styled himself James III., and still kept up the appearance
of a king in exile. As he watched the artifice and the plotting of
these make-believe courtiers he may well have thought of his innocent
companion of the Highland wilds.
As for Flora, she was arrested and imprisoned for five months on
English vessels of war. After her release she was married, in 1750; and
she and her husband sailed for the American colonies just before the
Revolution. In that war Macdonald became a British officer and served
against his adopted countrymen. Perhaps because of this reason Flora
returned alone to Scotland, where she died at the age of sixty-eight.
The royal prince who would have given her his easy love lived a life of
far less dignity in the years that followed his return to France. There
was no more hope of recovering the English throne. For him there were
left only the idle and licentious diversions of such a court as that in
which his father lived.
At the death of James III., even this court was disintegrated, and
Prince Charles led a roving life under the title of Earl of Albany. In
his wanderings he met Louise Marie, the daughter of a German prince,
Gustavus Adolphus of Stolberg. She was only nineteen years of age when
she first felt the fascination that he still possessed; but it was an
unhappy marriage for the girl when she discovered that her husband was
a confirmed drunkard.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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