Having at length got his army off, the admirable Grouchy rode as far as Walhain, where he entered the house of a notary to write a dispatch to the Emperor. Having done this,--it was now about ten o’clock,--Marshal Grouchy coolly sat down to his breakfast. At this hour the Prussian advance guard had reached St. Lambert, and Wellington knew it. And here was Napoleon’s lieutenant, placidly working his way to those historic strawberries, blissfully ignorant of the fact that his stupendous folly had wrecked Napoleon’s last campaign. Upon this breakfast enter the excited officers who have heard the opening guns at Waterloo. “A rearguard affair, no doubt,” thinks the admirable Grouchy. But soon the distant thunder and the cloud of smoke tell of a battle, a great battle--a battle of which men will talk as long as there are human tongues to wag, as long as there are human hearts to feel. “The battle is at Mont-Saint-Jean,” says a guide. And that is where the Emperor thought the fight would be. “We must march to the cannon,” says Gérard. So says General Valezé. But Grouchy pleads his orders. “If you will not go, allow me to go with my corps and General Vallin’s cavalry,” pleads Gérard. “No,” said Grouchy; “it would be an unpardonable mistake to divide my troops.” And he galloped away to amuse himself with Thielman, as Blücher had meant that he should do. So, all day long, while the Emperor strained his eyes to the right, looking, looking, oh how longingly! for his own legions, his own eagles, Grouchy was in a mere rearguard engagement with Thielman. When Bülow appeared like a sudden cloud in the horizon, the Emperor hoped it was Grouchy. When the cannonade at Wavre reached La Belle Alliance, the Emperor fancied that the sound drew nearer--that Grouchy was coming, at last. The agony of suspense which drew from Wellington the famous “Blücher, or night,” could only have been equalled by the storm which raged within the Emperor’s breast--the storm of impotent rage, and of regret that he had leaned so heavy upon so frail a reed as Grouchy. The positive order which the Emperor sent to Grouchy, after the appearance of the Prussians at Chapelle-Saint-Lambert, were delivered in time for a diversion in Bülow’s rear which would have released Napoleon’s right. But Grouchy decided that he would obey this order _after_ he had taken Wavre. As he did not take Wavre until nightfall, he might just as well have been openly a traitor to his flag. During the whole of two days he had been repeating “my orders, my orders,” and his apologists are forever prating about those orders; but what about this last order, hot and direct, from the field where all was at stake? How could a victory over Thielman be anything but a trivial affair in comparison with the tremendous conflict going on over there at Mont-Saint-Jean?