“Everything François says—is right,” he told them. “I have the greatest confidence in him.”
Some grateful words were addressed to the surgeons, thanking them for their efforts to give him ease. He spoke kindly to two more of his Aides-de-camp who came in. One of these was Captain James Stanhope, brother to Charles Stanhope, killed that day, and to Lady Hester Stanhope, Moore’s friend. Stanhope’s eyes met those of the dying soldier, and Moore said distinctly—
“Stanhope—remember me to your sister.”
This was his last utterance. He sank into silence, pressing the hand of Anderson closely to his side. A few minutes later, calmly and without a struggle, the grand spirit triumphed over death, and passed away.
And in that still chamber might be heard the sound of smothered convulsive sobbing. The younger officers present broke utterly down, while the elder men looked on with bowed heads, scarcely better able to restrain their anguish. Colonel Anderson still knelt, supporting the lifeless head, gazing, with blanched and parted lips, into the quiet face, which for twenty-one years had been the centre and the illumination of his being, his look of woe being beyond the power of words to describe. On the other side of the mattress, one in sorrow with all these mourning Englishmen, was the faithful and devoted François. French by birth, he cared for little in the world besides this idolised master, over whom he despairingly hung, his hands wrung together, his face matching in pallor those placid features.
For one of the noblest of men was gone from their midst that hour; and a heavy shadow fell upon the victorious British Army.
Upon this sad scene came another Aide-de-camp, George Napier, too late for any of those last words which would have been to him a lifelong treasure. Twenty years afterwards, when describing what he had seen as he entered, he wrote in still unconquered pain—
“That eye which was wont to penetrate the inmost soul was glazed in death. That manly graceful form, the admiration of the Army, lay stretched, a lifeless corpse. The great spirit had quitted its earthly habitation. All around was sad and gloomy. Moore was dead!”
“Dark lay the field of slain; the battle’s strife was o’er,
That shook Coruña’s hills, and rent the Iberian shore;