Did ye not hear it! No; ’twas but the wind, Or the car rattling o’er the stony street; On with the dance! Let joy be unconfined: No sleep till morn, when Youth and Pleasure meet To chase the glowing hours with flying feet-- But hark! That heavy sound breaks in once more, As if the clouds its echo would repeat; And nearer, clearer, deadlier than before! Arm! Arm! It is--it is the cannon’s opening roar.” After the ball, the Prince of Orange, anxious for orders, was told by the duke, it is said, to “go to bed”; but he started instead for Quatre Bras, which his chief did not reach until eleven o’clock. Then the duke rode to Ligny and conferred with Blucher. At this conference he agreed, against apparently his own and Müffling’s opinion, to move to the right rear of the Prussians and act as a reserve, _provided he were not attacked himself_. To do so he must have moved by the Namur Chaussée, which passes through Quatre Bras. To do so at all, therefore, that point must first be securely held. To have made a flank march in the very presence of the enemy, and to have left his own line of advance, towards which his troops were converging, exposed to danger, would but have been to court disaster. To lend any aid whatever to Blucher, Quatre Bras was his first case. But Herr Delbruck, in his _Life of Gneisenau_, makes the assertion that the battle of Ligny was only fought on the assumption that 60,000 men would form on their right to strengthen, and if necessary prolong, their line on this side, while Müffling, on the other hand, clearly points out that the promise to come to Ligny was quite conditional--“provided,” to use the duke’s own words, “I am not attacked myself.”