Brosses; Gray; Charles's courage--The siege of Gaeta--Story of Lord
Elcho--The real facts--The Prince's horse shot at Culloden--Foolish
fables of David Hume confuted--Charles's literary tastes--His
clemency--His honourable conduct--Contrast with Cumberland--His
graciousness--His faults--Charge of avarice--Love of wine--Religious
levity--James on Charles's faults--An unpleasant discovery--Influence
of Murray of Broughton--Rapid decline of character after 1746--
Temper, wine, and women--Deep distrust of James's Court--Rupture with
James--Divisions among Jacobites--King's men and Prince's men--
Marischal, Kelly, Lismore, Clancarty--Anecdote of Clancarty and
Braddock--Clancarty and d'Argenson--Balhaldie--Lally Tollendal--The
Duke of York--His secret flight from Paris--'Insigne Fourberie'--
Anxiety of Charles--The fatal cardinal's hat--Madame de Pompadour--
Charles rejects her advances--His love affairs--Madame de Talmond--
Voltaire's verses on her--Her scepticism in religion--Her husband--
Correspondence with Montesquieu--The Duchesse d'Aiguillon--Peace of
Aix-la-Chapelle--Charles refuses to retire to Fribourg--The gold
plate--Scenes with Madame de Talmond--Bulkeley's interference--Arrest
of Charles--The compasses--Charles goes to Avignon--His desperate
condition--His policy--Based on a scheme of d'Argenson--He leaves
Avignon--He is lost to sight and hearing.

'Charles Edward Stuart,' says Lord Stanhope, 'is one of those
characters that cannot be portrayed at a single sketch, but have so
greatly altered as to require a new delineation at different
periods.' {12a} Now he 'glitters all over like the star which they
tell you appeared at his nativity,' and which still shines beside
him, Micat inter omnes, on a medal struck in his boyhood. {12b} Anon
he is sunk in besotted vice, a cruel lover, a solitary tippler, a
broken man. We study the period of transition.