were buried in the hollow road
of Ohain. This figure probably comprises all the other corpses which
were flung into this ravine the day after the combat.

Let us note in passing that it was Dubois's sorely tried brigade which,
an hour previously, making a charge to one side, had captured the flag
of the Lunenburg battalion.

Napoleon, before giving the order for this charge of Milhaud's
cuirassiers, had scrutinized the ground, but had not been able to see
that hollow road, which did not even form a wrinkle on the surface of
the plateau. Warned, nevertheless, and put on the alert by the little
white chapel which marks its angle of junction with the Nivelles
highway, he had probably put a question as to the possibility of an
obstacle, to the guide Lacoste. The guide had answered No. We might
almost affirm that Napoleon's catastrophe originated in that sign of a
peasant's head.

Other fatalities were destined to arise.

Was it possible that Napoleon should have won that battle? We answer No.
Why? Because of Wellington? Because of Blucher? No. Because of God.

Bonaparte victor at Waterloo; that does not come within the law of the
nineteenth century. Another series of facts was in preparation, in which
there was no longer any room for Napoleon. The ill will of events had
declared itself long before.

It was time that this vast man should fall.

The excessive weight of this man in human destiny disturbed the balance.
This individual alone counted for more than a universal group. These
plethoras of all human vitality concentrated in a single head; the world
mounting to the brain of one man,--this would be mortal to civilization
were it to last. The moment had arrived for the incorruptible and
supreme equity to alter its plan. Probably the principles and the
elements, on which the regular gravitations of the moral, as of the
material, world depend, had complained. Smoking blood, over-filled
cemeteries, mothers in tears,--these are formidable pleaders. When
the earth is suffering from too heavy a burden, there are mysterious
groanings of the shades, to which the abyss lends an ear.

Napoleon had been denounced in the infinite and his fall had been
decided on.

He embarrassed God.

Waterloo is not a battle; it is a change of front on the part of the
Universe.

CHAPTER X--THE PLATEAU OF MONT-SAINT-JEAN

The battery was unmasked at the same moment with the ravine.

Sixty cannons and the thirteen squares dart