Captain Latrobe, the future General of Division, was then a young, gay officer of about five-and-twenty, very good looking, and full of life and spirits, a buoyancy which the terrible uncertainties of the siege could not repress. "Our general talks nobly, Tiernay," said he, as he gave me his arm to assist me; "but you'll stare when I tell you that 'wanting for nothing' means, having four ounces of black bread, and ditto of blue cheese per diem; and as to a horse, if I possessed such an animal, I'd have given a dinner-party yesterday and eaten him. You look surprised, but when you see a little more of us here, you'll begin to think that prison rations in the fleet yonder were luxuries compared to what _we_ have. No matter: you shall take share of my superabundance, and if I have little else to offer, I'll show you a view from my window, finer than any thing you ever looked on in your life, and with a sea-breeze that would be glorious if it didn't make one hungry." While he thus rattled on, we reached the street, and there calling a couple of soldiers forward, he directed them to carry me along to his quarters, which lay in the upper town, on an elevated plateau that overlooked the city and the bay together. From the narrow lanes, flanked with tall, gloomy houses, and steep, ill-paved streets, exhibiting poverty and privation of every kind, we suddenly emerged into an open space of grass, at one side of which a handsome iron-railing stood, with a richly ornamented gate, gorgeously gilded. Within this was a garden and a fish-pond, surrounded with statues, and further on, a long, low villa, whose windows reached to the ground, and were shaded by a deep awning of striped blue and white canvas. Camelias, orange-trees, cactuses, and magnolias, abounded every where; tulips and hyacinths seemed to grow wild; and there was in the half-neglected look of the spot something of savage luxuriance that heightened the effect immensely.