And one stout, serious leader of the local Civil Guard, who spends each night beside the lion on the mound. Not alone; for three blue-bloused peasants with muskets wait at the other corners: a curious recall of the Great Duke's statue at Hyde Park Corner! The last time I was here the three, aided by four girls, with their hair still down, from the farm, plotted against the braggart's peace. He dare not climb the 100-foot mound alone in the dark. But he wanted straw, for a warmer seat. In his short absence the three others were hidden in a barn by the girls. The door shut. In the dark, alone, the leader set out to climb the mound, thinking they had gone on. He talked loudly to himself. Then he began to call their names, "Pierre! Jean! Georges!--GEORGES!" He reached the top to find himself alone with the lion and the stars. A wild yell: the two barrels discharged in panic: a head over heels descent: and a huge roar of laughter from the men and girls who had crept out into the road, prolonged till it became the hysteria of overtried nerves. Then, the growl of cannon in the far distance, and all suddenly were silent. Unwilling to precipitate, by my night attack, the arrangements of the peasants for escaping by their windows if the wandering Uhlans arrive, I have come down the battlefield to sleep, in a coat, under the stars. The night is extraordinarily still. Twice the cannon have droned for a short time far off. A nearer shot, that roused a momentary shouting and movement in the sleeping village behind me, must have come from some nervous or sleepy Civil Guard. Earlier in the night there were lights winking far away, towards Genappe; probably French contingents signalling. And the meteors have been falling, criss and cross, in the summer warm darkness, over the darker cloud above the waiting armies to the east. 1815; and what were the men then thinking who lay rolled up in their cloaks to sleep their last night on the fields about me? Ninety-nine years; and what are the still greater hosts of young and old men thinking, as they lie in their coats watching those same stars, only a few miles away from me, just behind that darker band of trees? A century! And the only difference, that the one great army, that then faced up these slopes against us, now lies protecting us; in its turn ringing off a hostile army that then slept and stood with us as friends. A century of progress! And what to show for it? The armies of four nations slightly shifted in their relation to these great plains, like spokes on a turning wheel. Firing has recommenced, very faintly, in the distance. Not more disturbing than the harsh cry of a night-jar in the wood beside me. For these few hours the terrible, unreal atmosphere of war, when every inch of earth threatens a surprise, and no moment seems real till it is past, has been absent. Night, and the stars, and quiet, have seemed like old friends, renewing a quiet of thought, restoring proportions.