id laconically, "To hold this spot
to the last man." The day was evidently turning out ill. Wellington
shouted to his old companions of Talavera, of Vittoria, of Salamanca:
"Boys, can retreat be thought of? Think of old England!"

Towards four o'clock, the English line drew back. Suddenly nothing
was visible on the crest of the plateau except the artillery and the
sharpshooters; the rest had disappeared: the regiments, dislodged by
the shells and the French bullets, retreated into the bottom, now
intersected by the back road of the farm of Mont-Saint-Jean; a
retrograde movement took place, the English front hid itself, Wellington
drew back. "The beginning of retreat!" cried Napoleon.

CHAPTER VII--NAPOLEON IN A GOOD HUMOR

The Emperor, though ill and discommoded on horseback by a local trouble,
had never been in a better humor than on that day. His impenetrability
had been smiling ever since the morning. On the 18th of June, that
profound soul masked by marble beamed blindly. The man who had been
gloomy at Austerlitz was gay at Waterloo. The greatest favorites of
destiny make mistakes. Our joys are composed of shadow. The supreme
smile is God's alone.

Ridet Caesar, Pompeius flebit, said the legionaries of the Fulminatrix
Legion. Pompey was not destined to weep on that occasion, but it is
certain that Caesar laughed. While exploring on horseback at one o'clock
on the preceding night, in storm and rain, in company with Bertrand, the
communes in the neighborhood of Rossomme, satisfied at the sight of the
long line of the English camp-fires illuminating the whole horizon from
Frischemont to Braine-l'Alleud, it had seemed to him that fate, to
whom he had assigned a day on the field of Waterloo, was exact to
the appointment; he stopped his horse, and remained for some time
motionless, gazing at the lightning and listening to the thunder;
and this fatalist was heard to cast into the darkness this mysterious
saying, "We are in accord." Napoleon was mistaken. They were no longer
in accord.

He took not a moment for sleep; every instant of that night was marked
by a joy for him. He traversed the line of the principal outposts,
halting here and there to talk to the sentinels. At half-past two, near
the wood of Hougomont, he heard the tread of a column on the march; he
thought at the moment that it was a retreat on the part of Wellington.
He said: "It is the rear-guard of the English getting under way for the
purpose o