CHAPTER I--WHAT IS MET WITH ON THE WAY FROM NIVELLES

  Last year (1861), on a beautiful May morning, a traveller, the personwho is telling this story, was coming from Nivelles, and directing hiscourse towards La Hulpe. He was on foot. He was pursuing a broad pavedroad, which undulated between two rows of trees, over the hills whichsucceed each other, raise the road and let it fall again, and producesomething in the nature of enormous waves.

  He had passed Lillois and Bois-Seigneur-Isaac. In the west he perceivedthe slate-roofed tower of Braine-l'Alleud, which has the form of areversed vase. He had just left behind a wood upon an eminence; andat the angle of the cross-road, by the side of a sort of mouldy gibbetbearing the inscription _Ancient Barrier No. 4_, a public house,bearing on its front this sign: _At the Four Winds_ (Aux Quatre Vents)._Échabeau, Private Café_.

  A quarter of a league further on, he arrived at the bottom of a littlevalley, where there is water which passes beneath an arch made throughthe embankment of the road. The clump of sparsely planted but very greentrees, which fills the valley on one side of the road, is dispersed overthe meadows on the other, and disappears gracefully and as in order inthe direction of Braine-l'Alleud.

  On the right, close to the road, was an inn, with a four-wheeled cartat the door, a large bundle of hop-poles, a plough, a heap of driedbrushwood near a flourishing hedge, lime smoking in a square hole, anda ladder suspended along an old penthouse with straw partitions. A younggirl was weeding in a field, where a huge yellow poster, probably ofsome outside spectacle, such as a parish festival, was fluttering inthe wind. At one corner of the inn, beside a pool in which a flotillaof ducks was navigating, a badly paved path plunged into the bushes. Thewayfarer struck into this.

  After traversing a hundred paces, skirting a wall of the fifteenthcentury, surmounted by a pointed gable, with bricks set in contrast, hefound himself before a large door of arched stone, with a rectilinearimpost, in the sombre style of Louis XIV., flanked by two flatmedallions. A severe façade rose above this door; a wall, perpendicularto the façade, almost touched the door, and flanked it with an abruptright angle. In the meadow before the door lay three harrows, throughwhich, in disorder, grew all the flowers of May. The door was closed.The two decrepit leaves which barred it were ornamented with an oldrusty knocker.

  The sun was charming; the branches had that soft shivering of May,which seems to proceed rather from the nests than from the wind. A bravelittle bird, probably a lover, was carolling in a distracted manner in alarge tree.

  The wayfarer bent over and examined a rather large circular excavation,resembling the hollow of a sphere, in the stone on the left, at the footof the pier of the door.

  At this moment the leaves of the door parted, and a peasant womanemerged.

  She saw the wayfarer, and perceived what he was looking at.

  "It was a French cannon-ball which made that," she said to him. And sheadded:--

  "That which you see there, higher up in the door, near a nail, is thehole of a big iron bullet as large as an egg. The bullet did not piercethe wood."

  "What is the name of this place?" inquired the wayfarer.

  "Hougomont," said the peasant woman.

  The traveller straightened himself up. He walked on a few paces, andwent off to look over the tops of the hedges. On the horizon through thetrees, he perceived a sort of little elevation, and on this elevationsomething which at that distance resembled a lion.

  He was on the battle-field of Waterloo.