not hostilely disposed, he added, with a smile, "There'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-balloing, 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 endeavoured not v