It was the camp of pleasure, to which all rallied who loved to fight beneath that banner. And there they were, a mingled host of princes, ministers, and generals. The spoiled children of fashion, the reckless adventurer, the bankrupt speculator, the nattered beauty in all the pride of her loveliness, the tarnished virtue in all the effrontery of conquest! Strange and incongruous elements of good and evil,--of all that is honored in heroism, and all that men shrink from with shame,--there they were met as equals. As if by some conventional relaxation of all the habits which rule society, men admitted to their intimacy here those they would have strenuously avoided elsewhere. Vice, like poverty, seemed to have annihilated all the distinctions of rank, and the “decorated” noble and the branded felon sat down to the same board like brethren. Amid all the gay company of the Cursaal none appeared to have a greater relish for the glittering pleasures of the scene than a large elderly man, who, in a coat of jockey cut and a showy waistcoat, sat at the end of one of the tables,--a post which the obsequious attention of the waiters proclaimed to be his own distinctively. Within a kind of ring-fence of bottles and decanters of every shape and size, he looked the genius of hospitality and dissipation; and it was only necessary to mark how many a smile was turned on him, how many a soft glance was directed towards him, to see that he was the centre of all designing flattery. There was a reckless, unsuspecting jollity in his look that could not be mistaken; and his loud, hearty laugh bespoke the easy self-satisfaction of his nature. Like “special envoys,” _his_ champagne bottles were sent hither and thither down the table, and at each instant a friendly nod or a courteous bow acknowledged his hospitable attention. At either side of him were seated a knot of his peculiar parasites, and neither was wit nor beauty wanting to make their society agreeable. There is a species of mock affection, a false air of attachment in the homage rendered to such a man as this, that makes the flattery infinitely more seductive than all the respectful devotion that ever surrounded a monarch. And so our old friend Peter Dalton--need we to name him?--felt it. “Barring the glorious burst of a fox-hunting chorus, or the wild 'hip, hip' of a favorite toast, it was almost as good as Ireland.” Indeed, in some respects, it had rather the advantage over the dear island.