hero.

_Friday._--Anyway, the first prologuial episode is done, and Fanny likes
it. There are only four characters: Francis Blair of Balmile (Jacobite
Lord Gladsmuir) my hero; the Master of Ballantrae; Paradou, a
wine-seller of Avignon; Marie-Madeleine his wife. These two last I am
now done with, and I think they are successful, and I hope I have
Balmile on his feet; and the style seems to be found. It is a little
charged and violent; sins on the side of violence; but I think will
carry the tale. I think it is a good idea so to introduce my hero, being
made love to by an episodic woman. This queer tale--I mean queer for
me--has taken a great hold upon me. Where the devil shall I go next?
This is simply the tale of a _coup de tete_ of a young man and a young
woman; with a nearly, perhaps a wholly, tragic sequel, which I desire to
make thinkable right through, and sensible; to make the reader, as far
as I shall be able, eat and drink and breathe it. Marie-Salome des
Saintes-Maries is, I think, the heroine's name; she has got to _be_ yet:
_sursum corda_! So has the young Chevalier, whom I have not yet touched,
and who comes next in order. Characters: Balmile, or Lord Gladsmuir,
_comme vous voulez_; Prince Charlie; Earl Marischal; Master of
Ballantrae; and a spy, and Dr. Archie Campbell, and a few nondescripts;
then, of women, Marie-Salome and Flora Blair; seven at the outside;
really four full lengths, and I suppose a half-dozen episodic profiles.
How I must bore you with these ineptitudes! Have patience. I am going to
bed; it is (of all hours) eleven. I have been forced in (since I began
to write to you) to blatter to Fanny on the subject of my heroine, there
being two _cruces_ as to her life and history: how came she alone? and
how far did she go with the Chevalier? The second must answer itself
when I get near enough to see. The first is a back-breaker. Yet I know
there are many reasons why a _fille de famille_, romantic, adventurous,
ambitious, innocent of the world, might run from her home in these days;
might she not have been threatened with a convent? might there not be
some Huguenot business mixed in? Here am I, far from books; if you can
help me with a suggestion, I shall say God bless you. She has to be new
run away from a strict family, well-justified in her own wild but honest
eyes, and meeting these three men, Charles Edward, Marischal, and
Balmile, through the accident of a fire at an inn. She must not run