Let us note in passing that it was Dubois’s sorely tried brigade which, an hour previously, making a charge to one side, had captured the flag of the Lunenburg battalion. Napoleon, before giving the order for this charge of Milhaud’s cuirassiers, had scrutinized the ground, but had not been able to see that hollow road, which did not even form a wrinkle on the surface of the plateau. Warned, nevertheless, and put on the alert by the little white chapel which marks its angle of junction with the Nivelles highway, he had probably put a question as to the possibility of an obstacle, to the guide Lacoste. The guide had answered No. We might almost affirm that Napoleon’s catastrophe originated in that sign of a peasant’s head. Other fatalities were destined to arise. Was it possible that Napoleon should have won that battle? We answer No. Why? Because of Wellington? Because of Blücher? No. Because of God. Bonaparte victor at Waterloo; that does not come within the law of the nineteenth century. Another series of facts was in preparation, in which there was no longer any room for Napoleon. The ill will of events had declared itself long before. It was time that this vast man should fall. The excessive weight of this man in human destiny disturbed the balance. This individual alone counted for more than a universal group. These plethoras of all human vitality concentrated in a single head; the world mounting to the brain of one man,—this would be mortal to civilization were it to last. The moment had arrived for the incorruptible and supreme equity to alter its plan. Probably the principles and the elements, on which the regular gravitations of the moral, as of the material, world depend, had complained. Smoking blood, over-filled cemeteries, mothers in tears,—these are formidable pleaders. When the earth is suffering from too heavy a burden, there are mysterious groanings of the shades, to which the abyss lends an ear. Napoleon had been denounced in the infinite and his fall had been decided on. He embarrassed God. Waterloo is not a battle; it is a change of front on the part of the Universe. CHAPTER X—THE PLATEAU OF MONT-SAINT-JEAN The battery was unmasked at the same moment with the ravine. Sixty cannons and the thirteen squares darted lightning point-blank on the cuirassiers. The intrepid General Delort made the military salute to the English battery. The whole of the flying artillery of the English had re-entered the squares at a gallop. The cuirassiers had not had even the time for a halt. The disaster of the hollow road had decimated, but not discouraged them. They belonged to that class of men who, when diminished in number, increase in courage. Wathier’s column alone had suffered in the disaster; Delort’s column, which Ney had deflected to the left, as though he had a presentiment of an ambush, had arrived whole. The cuirassiers hurled themselves on the English squares.