Sir John had no difficulty in explaining what he meant. Had he been an Ensign, he said, he could hardly have been treated with less ceremony. He had not even been told, till the last moment, how he was to be employed. Coming as he did from a chief command, if he were now to be placed in an inferior post, some explanation certainly was his due. Lord Castlereagh had told him that his conduct in the Swedish affair was approved of, but this did not look like approval. “His Majesty’s Ministers have a right to employ what officers they please,” Sir John went on, working off his warmth. “And had they on this occasion given the command to the youngest general in the Army, I should neither have felt nor expressed that the least injury was done to me. But I have a right, in common with all officers who have served zealously, to expect to be treated with attention, and when employment is offered, that some regard should be paid to my former services.” “I am not aware, Sir John, of having given you just cause for complaint,” Castlereagh replied gravely; and he made few further remarks. Who would have imagined, looking on, that this cold-mannered Secretary would, not many months later, fight a duel in defence of the fair fame of the gallant General now before him?[1] Moore had said his say, and no doubt felt relieved. Without delay he started post-haste for Portsmouth, pausing on the road for one night at his mother’s country home. Though he told her and his sister of the apparent slight which had been put upon him, as indeed he could not avoid doing, since all the world would know of it, he does not seem to have been depressed, but talked cheerily, and kept up their spirits all the evening. The parting next day was, however, sadder than usual. Did any of them guess it to be the last? Some forebodings may well have suggested themselves to the mother’s heart, as she watched that manly figure pass away into the distance. He had been to her the most tender of sons; but on earth she would see him never again. From Portsmouth he wrote to her— “The treatment I have received gives me no longer uneasiness. The actions of others I am not responsible for; it is only my own, if they are unworthy, that can mortify me. I am going on the service of my country, and shall hope to acquit myself as becomes me of whatever part is allotted to me. God bless you, my dear mother! I shall write to you whilst I continue here, and hope for the time when I shall be allowed to pass the rest of my days quietly with you, my brothers, and Jane.” Four or five days later, while still in Portsmouth, where he had pushed forward preparations, he resigned to Sir Harry Burrard the chief command of those troops which for so long had been in his own hands. He then wrote again to his mother—