e's a friend
of yours, gentlemen, yonder; he bids me to say that he saw some of your
faces on the 11th of September last year."

As the gentleman spoke, the other two officers rode up, and came quite
close. We knew at once who it was. It was the King, then two-and-twenty
years old, tall and slim, with deep brown eyes, that looked melancholy,
though his lips wore a smile. We took off our hats and saluted him. No
man, sure, could see for the first time, without emotion, the youthful
inheritor of so much fame and misfortune. It seemed to Mr. Esmond that
the Prince was not unlike young Castlewood, whose age and figure he
resembled. The Chevalier de St. George acknowledged the salute, and
looked at us hard. Even the idlers on our side of the river set up a
hurrah. As for the Royal Cravat, he ran to the Prince's stirrup, knelt
down and kissed his boot, and bawled and looked a hundred ejaculations
and blessings. The prince bade the aide-de-camp give him a piece of
money; and when the party saluting us had ridden away, Cravat spat upon
the piece of gold by way of benediction, and swaggered away, pouching
his coin and twirling his honest carroty moustache.

The officer in whose company Esmond was, the same little captain of
Handyside's regiment, Mr. Sterne, who had proposed the garden at Lille,
when my Lord Mohun and Esmond had their affair, was an Irishman too, and
as brave a little soul as ever wore a sword. "Bedad," says Roger Sterne,
"that long fellow spoke French so beautiful that I shouldn't have known
he wasn't a foreigner, till he broke out with his hulla-ballooing, and
only an Irish calf can bellow like that." And Roger made another remark
in his wild way, in which there was sense as well as absurdity--"If that
young gentleman," says he, "would but ride over to our camp, instead of
Villars's, toss up his hat and say, 'Here am I, the King, who'll follow
me?' by the Lord, Esmond, the whole army would rise and carry him home
again, and beat Villars, and take Paris by the way."

The news of the Prince's visit was all through the camp quickly, and
scores of ours went down in hopes to see him. Major Hamilton, whom
we had talked with, sent back by a trumpet several silver pieces for
officers with us. Mr. Esmond received one of these; and that medal, and
a recompense not uncommon amongst Princes, were the only rewards he
ever had from a Royal person, whom he endeavored not very long after to
serve.

Esmond quitted the army