On the 18th of June 1815, I left Ghent at noon by the Brussels gate; I was going to finish my walk alone on the high-road. I had taken Cæsar's _Commentaries_ with me, and I strolled slowly along, immersed in my reading. I was more than a league from the town, when I thought I heard a dull rumbling: I stopped, looked up at the sky, which was fairly laden with clouds, taking counsel with myself whether I should continue to walk on, or go back towards Ghent for fear of a storm. I listened; I heard nothing more save the cry of a moor-hen in the rushes and the sound of a village-clock. I pursued my way: I had not taken thirty steps before the rumbling began again, now short, now long and at irregular intervals; sometimes it was perceptible only through a trembling of the air, which communicated itself to the ground over those immense plains, so distant was it. Those detonations, less extensive, less undulating, less connected than those of thunder, gave rise in my mind to the idea of a battle. I found myself in front of a poplar planted at the corner of a hop-field. I crossed the road and leant erect against the trunk of the tree, my face turned in the direction of Brussels. A southerly wind springing up carried to me more distinctly the sound of artillery. That great battle, nameless as yet, of which I listened to the echoes at the foot of a poplar, and of which a village clock had just rung out the unknown funerals, was the Battle of Waterloo! A silent and solitary hearer of the formidable judgment of the destinies, I should have been less moved if I had found myself in the fray: the peril, the fire, the press of Death would have left me no time for meditation; but, alone under a tree, in the fields of Ghent, like the shepherd of the flocks which passed around me, I was overwhelmed by the weight of my reflexions: what was that battle? Was it decisive? Was Napoleon there in person? Were lots being cast upon the world, as upon Christ's vesture? In the event of success or reverse for one side or the other, what would be the consequence for the nations: liberty or slavery? But what blood was flowing! Was not each sound that reached my ear the last sigh of a Frenchman? Was it a new Crécy, a new Poitiers, a new Agincourt, in which France's most implacable enemies were about to revel? If they triumphed, was not our glory lost? If Napoleon won the day, what became of our liberty? Although a success on Napoleon's side opened up to me an eternal exile, the mother-land at that moment gained the mastery in my heart; my prayers were for the oppressor of France, if, while saving our honour, he was to snatch us from foreign domination.