* * * * * Napoleon was unwell. At two in the morning he had been reconnoitring, and his horses were ordered for seven; at ten he still sat in an upper room in an attitude of bodily and mental suffering. A little later he came down the steep ladder, and as his page, Gudin, was helping him into the saddle he lifted the Imperial elbow too suddenly, and Napoleon pitched over on the offside, nearly coming to the ground. “_Allez_” he hissed, “_à tous les diables!_” and away he started in a great rage. The page stood watching the _cortège_ with tearful eyes, but when it had gone some hundred yards the ranks of the Staff opened, and Napoleon came riding back alone. With one hand placed tenderly on the lad’s shoulder he said, very softly, “My child, when you assist a man of my girth to mount, it is necessary to proceed more carefully.” Yet it was of this man that Wellington could say, in after years, “The fellow was no gentleman”! The page became a general, and fell in a sortie from Paris during the Franco-Prussian war. * * * * * There was a lull before the storm, and the duke went to have a final look at Hougoumont, where, in addition to the Guards, he had posted, in the woods and grounds, some Nassauers, Hanoverians, and Luneberg riflemen. These foreigners were dissatisfied at their position, and as Wellington rode away _several bullets came whistling after him_! “How can they expect me to win a battle with troops like those?” was his only comment. About half-past eleven came the FIRST ATTACK! One booming cannon echoed dully in the misty Sabbath morning, and a cloud of dark-blue skirmishers ran forward against Hougoumont, firing briskly into the wood. Puffs of white smoke issued from the trees; here and there a blue-coat turned a somersault and lay still; but the cloud increased, and a loud rattle of musketry was kept up on both sides, which lasted, with short intervals, the whole day. Our men fell back upon the buildings through the open beech-trees, and in twenty minutes the French supporting columns were pouring up the hill towards the château grounds. Cleeve’s German battery opened on them, and his first shot killed _seventeen_ men, the guns checking the advance and sending the column, broken and bleeding, down the ridge again. Our batteries on the right now began; the French artillery replied; Kellermann’s horse batteries joined in, and the infernal concert was in full blast. [Illustration: SIR THOMAS PICTON. (_From the Painting by Sir M. A. Shee, P.R.A._)] The green Lunebergers and the yellow knapsacks of the Hanoverians came helter-skelter back across the orchard, but the Foot Guards went forward at a run and drove the enemy off.