“I have been to the Hotel de la Terrasse, where Becky used to live, and shall pass by Captain Osborne’s lodgings,” he wrote from Paris to Mrs. Brookfield. “I believe perfectly in all these people, and feel quite an interest in the inn in which they lived.” It was at Brussels, in the Church of St. Gudule, the church in which he was christened, that Esmond met the inveterate intriguer, Father Holt, masquerading in a green uniform as a captain in the Bavarian Elector’s service; and in the convent cemetery knelt before the cross which marked the grave of Sœur Mary Madeleine, the unhappy Lady Castlewood, who was his mother. In that same city many years later the author of “Vanity Fair,” not claiming to rank among the military novelists, took his place with the non-combatants while the armies marched to the field of Waterloo, and portrayed many folk with anxious hearts awaiting news that must bring them happiness or misery. “No more firing was heard at Brussels--the pursuit rolled miles away. The darkness came down on the field and city; and Amelia was praying for George, who was lying on his face, dead, with a bullet through his heart.” [Illustration: THACKERAY’S GRAVE IN KENSAL GREEN CEMETERY] Thackeray was pre-eminently the novelist of the upper classes, and as a natural result the majority of his characters lived in the West End of London, chiefly in the area enclosed by Park Lane, Oxford Street, Bond Street, and Piccadilly, known as Mayfair. But no part of the metropolis escaped him. The Sedleys lived in Russell Square before they removed to St. Adelaide’s Villas, Anna Maria Road, West, “where the houses look like baby-houses; where the people looking out of the first floor windows must infallibly, as you think, sit with their feet in the parlours; where the shrubs in the little gardens in front bloom with a perennial display of little children’s pinafores, little red socks, caps, etc. (polyandria polygyria); whence you hear the sound of jingling spirits and women singing; whither of evenings you see city clerks plodding wearily....” Dr. Firmin practised in Old Parr Street; and Colonel Newcome and James Binnie, on their return from India, rented a house in Fitzroy Square. Bungay and Bacon carried on their business in Paternoster Row, and lived over their shops. It was to the sponging house in Cursitor Street that Rawdon [Illustration: _From the statuette by Sir Edgar Boehm, R.A._ W. M. THACKERAY]