In the evening, council at His Majesty's: we heard Monsieur's reports over again, as well as the _on dits_ picked up at the military commandant's or at the Baron d'Eckstein's[322]. The waggon to contain the Crown diamonds was put to: I had no need of a waggon to remove my treasure. I put the black-silk handkerchief in which I wrap my head at night into my flaccid minister-of-the-interior's portfolio, and placed myself at the Sovereign's disposal, with that important document of the affairs of the Legitimacy. I was richer in my first emigration, when my knapsack did duty as my pillow and served as a swaddling-band for _Atala_: but, in 1815, _Atala_ was a big gawky little girl of thirteen or fourteen, who was going about alone in the world and who, to her father's honour, had got herself too much talked about. On the 19th of June, at one o'clock in the morning, a letter from M. Pozzo, brought to the King by express, reestablished the truth of the facts. Bonaparte had never entered Brussels; he had decidedly lost the Battle of Waterloo. Leaving Paris on the 12th of June, he joined his army on the 14th. On the 15th, he forced the enemy's lines on the Sambre. On the 16th, he beat the Prussians in those plains of Fleurus[323] where victory seems to be always faithful to the French. The villages of Ligny and Saint-Amand were carried. At Quatre-Bras, a further success: the Duke of Brunswick[324] remained among the dead. Blücher[325], in full retreat, fell back upon a reserve of thirty thousand men under the orders of General Bülow[326]; the Duke of Wellington, with the English and Dutch, set his back against Brussels. On the morning of the 18th, before the first gun had been fired, the Duke of Wellington declared that he would be able to hold out until three o'clock; but that, at that time, if the Prussians did not come into sight, he would necessarily be destroyed: driven back upon Planchenois and Brussels, he was shut out from all retreat. He had been surprised by Napoleon, his strategic position was detestable; he had accepted it and had not chosen it.