mound, it bas been answered pithily, if not satisfactorily, that it is appropriate, "since it serves at once for a memorial, a trophy, and a tomb."[1]
Hougoumont remains as it was after the day of the battle. It is an old Flemish chateau, with farm-offices and a walled garden. The house is shattered, and the walls look as if they had been through the wars. There were twenty-seven Englishmen in the chapel, a structure not more than thirteen feet square, when it took fire. A wooden image of our Saviour is suspended over the door; and our guide averred (and, though a guide, with a moistened eye) that when the flames reached the image they stopped. "Cest Vrai," he repeated. "Aux pieds du bon Dieu! Un miracle, n'est ce pas, madame?"[2] I almost envied the faith that believed the miracle, and had the miracle to believe. The English, in their passion for such relics, had begun chipping off the foot, and our good Martin said, shuddering, that if the proper authority had not interfered, "on auroit mis le bon Dieu toutes en
- ↑ It was interesting to read, on the very spot, Byron's testimony to this as a position for a battle-field. "As a plain," he says, "Waterloo seems marked out for the scene of some great action, though this may be mere imagination. I have viewed with attention those of Plataæ, Troy, Mantinea, Leuctra, Cheronea, and Marathon; and the field around Mont St. Jean and Hougoumont appears to want little but a better cause, and that undefinable but impressive halo which the lapse of ages throws around a celebrated spot, to vie interest with any or all of them, except, perhaps, the last mentioned."
- ↑ "It is indeed true. At the feet of the good God. A miracle, was it not, madam?"
