placed themselves in the midst of our square, and his lordship's chaplain
read the service, to which Lord Wellington always appeared to listen
with great attention.

The mayor of the town, thinking to please "the great English lord,"
gave a ball at the Hotel de Ville: our Commander-in-Chief did not go
but was represented by Waters. I was there, and expected to see some
of the young ladies of the country so famed for their beauty; they were,
however, far too patriotic to appear, and the only lady present was
Lady Waldegrave, then living with her husband at head-quarters. What
was one partner among so many? The ball was a dead failure, in spite
of the efforts of the mayor, who danced, to our intense amusement, an
English hornpipe, which he had learnt in not a very agreeable manner,
viz. when a prisoner of war in the hulks at Plymouth.

There were two packs of hounds at St Jean de Luz; one kept by Lord Wellington,
the other by Marsden, of the Commissariat: our officers went uncommonly
straight. Perhaps our best man across country (though sometimes somewhat
against his will) was the late Colonel Lascelles of my regiment, then,
like myself, a mere lad. He rode a horse seventeen hands high, called
Bucephalus, which invariably ran away with him, and more than once had
nearly capsized Lord Wellington. The good living at St Jean de Luz
agreed so well with my friend that he waxed fat, and from that period
to his death was known to the world by the jovial appellation of Bacchus
Lascelles.

Shortly before we left St Jean de Luz, we took our turn of outposts
in the neighbourhood of Bidart, a large village, about ten miles from
Bayonne. Early one frosty morning in December, an order came, that if
we saw the enemy advancing, we were not to fire or give the alarm.