O
darts and raptures, how beautiful were they!

And as, before the blazing sun of morning, the moon fades away in the sky
almost invisible; Esmond thought, with a blush perhaps, of another sweet
pale face, sad and faint, and fading out of sight, with its sweet fond
gaze of affection; such a last look it seemed to cast as Eurydice might
have given, yearning after her lover, when Fate and Pluto summoned her,
and she passed away into the shades.

Chapter X. An Old Story About A Fool And A Woman

Any taste for pleasure which Esmond had (and he liked to _desipere in
loco_, neither more nor less than most young men of his age) he could now
gratify to the utmost extent, and in the best company which the town
afforded. When the army went into winter quarters abroad, those of the
officers who had interest or money easily got leave of absence, and found
it much pleasanter to spend their time in Pall Mall and Hyde Park, than to
pass the winter away behind the fortifications of the dreary old Flanders
towns, where the English troops were gathered. Yatches and packets passed
daily between the Dutch and Flemish ports and Harwich; the roads thence to
London and the great inns were crowded with army gentlemen; the taverns
and ordinaries of the town swarmed with red-coats; and our great duke's
levees at St. James's were as thronged as they had been at Ghent and
Brussels, where we treated him, and he us, with the grandeur and ceremony
of a sovereign. Though Esmond had been appointed to a lieutenancy in the
Fusilier regiment, of which that celebrated officer, Brigadier John
Richmond Webb, was colonel, he had never joined the regiment, nor been
introduced to its excellent commander, though they had made the same
campaign together, and been engaged in the same battle. But being aide de
camp to General Lumley, who commanded the division of horse, and the army
marching to its point of destination on the Danube by different routes,
Esmond had not fallen in, as yet, with his commander and future comrades
of the fort; and it was in London, in Golden Square, where Major-General
Webb lodged, that Captain Esmond had the honour of first paying his
respects to his friend, patron, and commander of after-days.

Those who remember this brilliant and accomplished gentleman may recollect
his character, upon which he prided himself, I think, not a little, of
being the handsomest man in the army; a poet who writ a dull copy of
verses upon the batt