Explore "The Young Duke" by Benjamin Disraeli on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
MORNING came, and the great majority of the gentlemen rose early as Aurora. The chase is the favourite pastime of man and boy; yet some preferred plundering their host's preserves, by which means their slumbers were not so brief and their breakfast less disturbed. The "battue", however, in time, called forth its band, and then one by one, or two by two, or sometimes even three, leaning on each other's arms and smiling in each other's faces, the ladies dropped into the breakfast-room at Castle Dacre. There, until two o'clock, a lounging meal might always be obtained, but generally by twelve the coast was clear; for our party were a natural race of beings, and would have blushed if flaming noon had caught them napping in their easy couches. Our bright bird, May Dacre, too, rose from her bower, full of the memory of the sweetest dreams, and fresh as lilies ere they kiss the sun.
She bends before her ivory crucifix, and gazes on her blessed mother's face, where the sweet Florentine had tinged with light a countenance