The guests had not been three days in the house when poor Jack Lockwood came with a rueful countenance to his master, and said:  “My Lord—­that is the gentleman—­has been tampering with Mrs. Lucy (Jack’s sweetheart), and given her guineas and a kiss.”  I fear that Colonel Esmond’s mind was rather relieved than otherwise when he found that the ancillary beauty was the one whom the Prince had selected.  His royal tastes were known to lie that way, and continued so in after life.  The heir of one of the greatest names, of the greatest kingdoms, and of the greatest misfortunes in Europe, was often content to lay the dignity of his birth and grief at the wooden shoes of a French chambermaid, and to repent afterwards (for he was very devout) in ashes taken from the dust-pan.  ’Tis for mortals such as these that nations suffer, that parties struggle, that warriors fight and bleed.  A year afterwards gallant heads were falling, and Nithsdale in escape, and Derwentwater on the scaffold; whilst the heedless ingrate, for whom they risked and lost all, was tippling with his seraglio of mistresses in his petite maison of Chaillot.

Blushing to be forced to bear such an errand, Esmond had to go to the Prince and warn him that the girl whom his Highness was bribing was John Lockwood’s sweetheart, an honest resolute man, who had served in six campaigns, and feared nothing, and who knew that the person calling himself Lord Castlewood was not his young master:  and the Colonel besought the Prince to consider what the effect of a single man’s jealousy might be, and to think of other designs he had in hand, more important than the seduction of a waiting-maid, and the humiliation of a brave man.

Ten times, perhaps, in the course of as many days, Mr. Esmond had to warn the royal young adventurer of some imprudence or some freedom.  He received these remonstrances very testily, save perhaps in this affair of poor Lockwood’s, when he deigned to burst out a-laughing, and said, “What! the soubrette has peached to the amoureux, and Crispin is angry, and Crispin has served, and Crispin has been a corporal, has he?  Tell him we will reward his valor with a pair of colors, and recompense his fidelity.”

Colonel Esmond ventured to utter some other words of entreaty, but the Prince, stamping imperiously, cried out, “Assez, milord:  je m’ennuye a la preche; I am not come to London to go to the sermon.”  And he complained afterwards to Castlewood, that “le petit jaune, le noir Colonel, le Marquis Misanthrope” (by which facetious names his Royal Highness was pleased to designate Colonel Esmond), “fatigued him with his grand airs and virtuous homilies.”