Harry was very glad when a gentleman dressed in black, on horseback, with a mounted servant behind him, came to fetch him away from Ealing.  The noverca, or unjust stepmother, who had neglected him for her own two children, gave him supper enough the night before he went away, and plenty in the morning.  She did not beat him once, and told the children to keep their hands off him.  One was a girl, and Harry never could bear to strike a girl; and the other was a boy, whom he could easily have beat, but he always cried out, when Mrs. Pastoureau came sailing to the rescue with arms like a flail.  She only washed Harry’s face the day he went away; nor ever so much as once boxed his ears.  She whimpered rather when the gentleman in black came for the boy; and old Mr. Pastoureau, as he gave the child his blessing, scowled over his shoulder at the strange gentleman, and grumbled out something about Babylon and the scarlet lady.  He was grown quite old, like a child almost.  Mrs. Pastoureau used to wipe his nose as she did to the children.  She was a great, big, handsome young woman; but, though she pretended to cry, Harry thought ’twas only a sham, and sprung quite delighted upon the horse upon which the lackey helped him.

He was a Frenchman; his name was Blaise.  The child could talk to him in his own language perfectly well:  he knew it better than English indeed, having lived hitherto chiefly among French people:  and being called the Little Frenchman by other boys on Ealing Green.  He soon learnt to speak English perfectly, and to forget some of his French:  children forget easily.  Some earlier and fainter recollections the child had of a different country; and a town with tall white houses:  and a ship.  But these were quite indistinct in the boy’s mind, as indeed the memory of Ealing soon became, at least of much that he suffered there.

The lackey before whom he rode was very lively and voluble, and informed the boy that the gentleman riding before him was my lord’s chaplain, Father Holt—­that he was now to be called Master Harry Esmond—­that my Lord Viscount Castlewood was his parrain—­that he was to live at the great house of Castlewood, in the province of ——­shire, where he would see Madame the Viscountess, who was a grand lady.  And so, seated on a cloth before Blaise’s saddle, Harry Esmond was brought to London, and to a fine square called Covent Garden, near to which his patron lodged.

Mr. Holt, the priest, took the child by the hand, and brought him to this nobleman, a grand languid nobleman in a great cap and flowered morning-gown, sucking oranges.  He patted Harry on the head and gave him an orange.

“C’est bien ca,” he said to the priest after eying the child, and the gentleman in black shrugged his shoulders.

“Let Blaise take him out for a holiday,” and out for a holiday the boy and the valet went.  Harry went jumping along; he was glad enough to go.