On surveying the extensive plain, our guide pointed out a mound, distant from the windmill about two miles. Here it was, he said, that the French army made their last desperate effort. A small chapel is built on the site, called “La Chapelle des Trois Cents Corps Nobles,” to commemorate the fact that where the chapel stands three hundred nobles of the contending armies fighting fell. On returning to our billets I signified to the man of the house my wish to visit the hallowed spot next morning, as it was then too late in the day. Upon this our good host entertained us with many legendary tales of the chapel, and said amongst other things that the door could never be kept shut. My evident incredulity rather displeasing him, he protested most solemnly that bolts and locks had been repeatedly put on the door to endeavour to keep it shut, but to no purpose: it was always found wide open in the morning; and as to watching it, none could be found sufficiently daring to make the attempt. Notwithstanding the solemn assertions of our good host, I told him that I was determined to proceed to the chapel next morning and shut myself within its mysterious walls. When he had used many arguments to dissuade me from my purpose but found me still determined, he remarked that there was one difficulty in my shutting myself up there, since, in consequence of the fact that the chapel could never be kept closed, it had been without a door for more than a century. Much disappointed, but still perceiving by the solemn manner of my host that his account of the chapel was not intended as a jest, I told him that I should certainly go there next morning and nail a blanket against the doorway, to witness the consequence of closing the chapel; and this foolish act I was determined to carry into execution, but as we received orders that night to continue our march at daybreak next morning, my quixotic enterprise was frustrated. The impossibility of closing the chapel was religiously believed by every inhabitant of the place, not excluding the parish priest. We embarked at Calais and descended at Ramsgate and Dover, and thence proceeded overland to Portsmouth, which we garrisoned until the year 1817, when we embarked for the Island of Malta. CHAPTER XXX. AT BRUSSELS WITH DUKE D’ARENBERG.