Waverley by Walter Scott — Read

Waverley had, indeed, as he looked closer into the state of the Chevalier's court, less reason to be satisfied with it. It contained, as they say an acorn includes all the ramifications of the future oak, as many seeds of tracasserie and intrigue as might have done honour to the court of a large empire. Every person of consequence had some separate object, which he pursued with a fury that Waverley considered as altogether disproportioned to its importance. Almost all had their reasons for discontent, although the most legitimate was that of the worthy old Baron, who was only distressed on account of the common cause.

"We shall hardly," said he one morning to Waverley when they had been viewing the Castle -- "we shall hardly gain the obsidional crown, which you wot well was made of the roots or grain which takes root within the place besieged, or it may be of the herb woodbind, Parietaria, or pellitory; we shall not, I say, gain it by this same blockade or leaguer of Edinburgh Castle. " For this opinion he gave most learned and satisfactory reasons, that the reader may not care to hear repeated.