We left the house after breakfast, and passed through the wide, delightful avenues of the Forêt de Soignes,--the Bois de Boulogne of Brussels,--then across the peaceful country which seemed never to have known anything so disturbing as war. Beyond the park lies the village which gave its name to the battle-field though the thickest of the fight was not there. In an old brick church, surmounted by a dome, lie intombed many minor heroes of the conflict. But heroes soon pall upon the taste, and nothing less than Wellington or Napoleon himself could have awakened a spark of interest in us by this time. Then, too, the vivid present blinded us to the past. The air was sweet with summer scents. Mowers were busy in the hayfields. A swarm of little barefooted beggars importuned us, turning dizzy somersaults until we could see only a maze of flying, dusty feet on either side. One troop, satisfied or despairing, gave way to another, and the guides were almost as annoying as the beggars. They walk for miles out of their villages to forestall each other, and meet the carriages that are sure to come from Brussels on pleasant days. They drive sharp bargains. As you near the centre of interest, competition is greater, and their demands proportionately less. We refused the extortionate overtures of two or three, and finally picked up a shrewd-faced young fellow in a blue blouse, who hung upon the step of the carriage, or ran beside it for the last mile or two of the distance. The village of Mont St. Jean follows that of Waterloo. It is only a scant collection of whitewashed farm buildings of brick. We rolled through it without stopping, and out again between the quiet, smiling fields, our minds utterly refusing to grasp the idea that they had swarmed once with an army; that in this little village we had just left--dull, half asleep in the sunshine--dreadful slaughter had held high carnival one July day, not many years before. Even when the guide, clinging to the door of the carriage, rattled over the story of the struggle in a _patois_ all his own, hardly a shadow of the scene was presented to us.