or white,
shaven or bearded;" for the Austrian officer was habited quite in the
military manner, and had as warlike a mustachio as any Pandour.

He laughed--we were on the church steps by this time, passing through
the crowd of beggars that usually is there holding up little trinkets
for sale and whining for alms. "You speak Latin," says he, "in the
English way, Harry Esmond; you have forsaken the old true Roman tongue
you once knew." His tone was very frank, and friendly quite; the kind
voice of fifteen years back; he gave Esmond his hand as he spoke.

"Others have changed their coats too, my Father," says Esmond, glancing
at his friend's military decoration.

"Hush! I am Mr. or Captain von Holtz, in the Bavarian Elector's service,
and on a mission to his Highness the Prince of Savoy. You can keep a
secret I know from old times."

"Captain von Holtz," says Esmond, "I am your very humble servant."

"And you, too, have changed your coat," continues the other in his
laughing way; "I have heard of you at Cambridge and afterwards: we have
friends everywhere; and I am told that Mr. Esmond at Cambridge was as
good a fencer as he was a bad theologian." (So, thinks Esmond, my old
maitre d'armes was a Jesuit, as they said.)

"Perhaps you are right," says the other, reading his thoughts quite as
he used to do in old days; "you were all but killed at Hochstedt of a
wound in the left side. You were before that at Vigo, aide-de-camp to
the Duke of Ormonde. You got your company the other day after Ramillies;
your general and the Prince-Duke are not friends; he is of the Webbs of
Lydiard Tregoze, in the county of York, a relation of my Lord St. John.
Your cousin, M. de Castlewood, served his first campaign this year in
the Guard; yes, I do know a few things, as you see."

Captain Esmond laughed in his turn. "You have indeed a curious
knowledge," he says. A foible of Mr. Holt's, who did know more about
books and men than, perhaps, almost any person Esmond had ever met,
was omniscience; thus in every point he here professed to know, he was
nearly right, but not quite. Esmond's wound was in the right side, not
the left; his first general was General Lumley; Mr. Webb came out of
Wiltshire, not out of Yorkshire; and so forth. Esmond did not think fit
to correct his old master in these trifling blunders, but they served
to give him a knowledge of the other's character, and he smiled to think
that this was his oracle of early days; on