no not if her eyes were twice as big. I'll take my fun. I'll enjoy for the
next three years every possible pleasure. I'll sow my wild oats then, and
marry some quiet, steady, modest, sensible viscountess; hunt my harriers;
and settle down at Castlewood. Perhaps I'll represent the county--no,
damme, _you_ shall represent the county. You have the brains of the
family. By the Lord, my dear old Harry, you have the best head and the
kindest heart in all the army; and every man says so--and when the queen
dies, and the king comes back, why shouldn't you go to the House of
Commons and be a minister, and be made a peer, and that sort of thing?
_You_ be shot in the next action! I wager a dozen of burgundy you are not
touched. Mohun is well of his wound. He is always with Corporal John now.
As soon as ever I see his ugly face I'll spit in it. I took lessons of
Father--of Captain Holtz at Bruxelles. What a man that is! He knows
everything." Esmond bade Frank have a care; that Father Holt's knowledge
was rather dangerous; not, indeed, knowing as yet how far the father had
pushed his instructions with his young pupil.

The gazetteers and writers, both of the French and English side, have
given accounts sufficient of that bloody battle of Blarignies or
Malplaquet, which was the last and the hardest-earned of the victories of
the great Duke of Marlborough. In that tremendous combat, near upon two
hundred and fifty thousand men were engaged, more than thirty thousand of
whom were slain or wounded (the Allies lost twice as many men as they
killed of the French, whom they conquered): and this dreadful slaughter
very likely took place because a great general's credit was shaken at
home, and he thought to restore it by a victory. If such were the motives
which induced the Duke of Marlborough to venture that prodigious stake,
and desperately sacrifice thirty thousand brave lives, so that he might
figure once more in a _Gazette_, and hold his places and pensions a little
longer, the event defeated the dreadful and selfish design, for the
victory was purchased at a cost which no nation, greedy of glory as it may
be, would willingly pay for any triumph. The gallantry of the French was
as remarkable as the furious bravery of their assailants. We took a few
score of their flags, and a few pieces of their artillery; but we left
twenty thousand of the bravest soldiers of the world round about the
entrenched lines, from which the enemy was driven. H