He took part in their theatricals, but otherwise
eschewed social functions in Edinburgh. An old friend of his
father's asked him to come to fill a gap at his table, though his
own son had informed him Louis never went to prearranged feasts.
Louis himself replied to this invitation: "C. is textually correct,
only there are exceptions everywhere to prove the rule. I do not
hate dining at your house. At seven, on Wednesday, his temples
wreathed with some appropriate garland, you will behold the victim
come smiling to the altar." The last words are characteristic of his
attitude when he was lured into society,--he went a willing victim,
with no affectation of martyrdom. The few who met him in Edinburgh
drawing-rooms found him prodigal of tongue, somewhat puzzling with
his wholesale enthusiasms, absurd flights of fancy, theories he had
to propound, and ever ready to change like a chameleon to tone with
his surroundings. The spritish, fantastic youth impressed those he
encountered, even when he was one of the unfledged eaglets hatched
in the ancient eyrie of his precipitous city, whom Browning tells us
are not counted "till there is a rush of wings, and lo! they are
flown," "What was so taking in him, and how is one to analyse that
dazzling surface of pleasantry, that changeful, shining humour, wit,
wisdom, recklessness, beneath which beat the most kind and tolerant
of hearts?" asks Andrew Lang.
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