Mlle. Ferrand died, after a long illness, in October 1752. Her memory is preserved only by a note in Grimm’s correspondence, by the touching tribute of Condillac, and by the discovery of her kindness to a proscribed Prince. While she protected and advised him, she was inspiring a renowned philosopher, and keeping a secret which every diplomatist in Europe was eager to learn. We naturally desire to know whether Mlle. Ferrand was beautiful as well as talented and kind. But researches in France have not brought to light any portrait either of Mlle. Ferrand, or of Madame de Vassé, who long survived her friend, and was in correspondence, about 1760, with the Earl Marischal.[48] V THE ROMANCE OF BARISDALE While the Lowlanders, for nearly fifteen hundred years, had cast on Highland robbers the eyes of hatred and contempt, Sir Walter Scott suddenly taught men to think a cateran a very fine fellow. The unanimity of a non-Highland testimony had previously been wonderful. ‘The Highlanders are great thieves,’ says Dio Cassius, speaking for civilisation as early as A.D. 200-230. Gildas, in the sixth century, calls the Highlanders (Picti) ‘a set of bloody free booters, with more hair on their thieves’ faces than clothes to cover their nakedness.’ Early mediæval writers talk of the _bestiales Picts_ (‘the beastly Picts’), and later Lowland opinions to a similar effect are too familiar for quotation. To Scott was left the discovery of the virtues of the honest cateran, who looked on cattle-stealing as an ennobling occupation in the intervals of war. Sir Walter’s opinion ran through Europe like the Fiery Cross. His grandson, Hugh Littlejohn, stirred up by the ‘Tales of a Grandfather,’ dirked his small brother slightly with a pair of scissors in a childish enthusiasm! Even the moral Wordsworth, moved by Scott, had a good word for Rob Roy. Yet about that hero Sir Walter cherished no illusions. He knew Rob’s Letter of Submission to General Wade, after 1715. Rob, of course, had been out for King James, but he coolly says to Wade: ‘I not only avoided acting offensively against his Majesty’s’ (King George’s) ‘forces, but, on the contrary, sent His Grace the Duke of Argyle all the intelligence I could from time to time of the strength and situation of the Rebels; which I hope his Grace will do me the justice to acknowledge.’