Brussels, where I was then living, was adorned at the period by a most agreeable English society.
Some leaders of the fashionable world of London had come there to refit and recruit, both in body and estate.

There were several pleasant and a great number of pretty people among them; and so far as I could judge, the fashionable dramas of Belgrave Square and its vicinity were being performed in the Rue Royale and the Boulevard de Waterloo with very considerable success.

There were dinners, balls, dejeuners, and picnics in the Bois de Cambre, excursions to Waterloo, and select little parties to Bois-fort,--a charming little resort in the forest whose intense cockneyism became perfectly inoffensive as being in a foreign land, and remote from the invasion of home-bred vulgarity.

I mention all these things to show the adjuncts by which I was aided, and the rattle of gayety by which I was, as it were, "accompanied," when I next tried my voice.
The soldier element tinctured strongly our society, and I will say most agreeably.

Among those whom I remember best were several old Peninsulars.
Lord Combermere was of this number, and another of our set was an officer who accompanied, if indeed he did not command, the first boat party who crossed the Douro.