The grey day has yielded at last to the kiss of the sun. Far away at Braine l'Alleud a vivid streak of gold has rent the bank of heavy clouds. It is now close on seven o'clock--there are two more hours to nightfall and Blücher is not yet here. Some of the Prussians have certainly debouched on Plancenoit, but Napoleon's Old Guard have turned them out again, and from Limale now comes the sound of heavy cannonade as if Grouchy had come upon Blücher after all and all hopes of reinforcements for the British troops were finally at an end. Napoleon--Emperor still and still flushed with victory--looks through his glasses on the British lines: to him it seems that these are shaken, that Wellington is fighting with the last of his men. This is the hour then when victory waits--attentive, ready to bestow her crown on him who can hold out and fight the longest--on him who at the last can deliver the irresistible attack. And Napoleon gives the order for the final attack, which must be more formidable, more overpowering than any that have gone before. The plateau of Mont Saint Jean, he commands, must be carried at all costs! Cuirassiers, lancers and grenadiers, then, once more to the charge! strew once more the plains of Waterloo with your dying and your dead! Up, Milhaud, with your guards! Poret with your grenadiers! Michel with your chasseurs! Up, ye heroes of a dozen campaigns, of a hundred victories! Up, ye old growlers with the fur bonnets--Napoleon's invincible Old Guard! With Ney himself to lead you! a hero among heroes! the bravest where all are brave! Have you ever seen a tidal wave of steel rising and surging under the lash of the gale? So they come now, those cuirassiers and lancers and chasseurs, their helmets, their swords, their lances gleaming in the golden light of the sinking sun; in closed ranks, stirrup to stirrup they swoop down into the valley, and rise again scaling the muddy heights. Superb as on parade, with their finest generals at their head: Milhaud, Hanrion, Michel, Mallet! and Ney between them all. Splendid they are and certain of victory: they gallop past as if at a revue on the Place du Carrousel opposite the windows of the Tuileries; all to the repeated cry of "Vive l'Empereur!" And as they gallop past the wounded and the dying lift themselves up from the blood-stained earth, and raise their feeble voices to join in that triumphant call: "Vive l'Empereur!" There's an old veteran there, who fought at Austerlitz and at Jena; he has three stripes upon his sleeve, but both his legs are shattered and he lies on the roadside propped up against a hedge, and as the superb cavalry ride proudly by he shouts lustily: "Forward, comrades! a last victorious charge! Long live the Emperor!"