"As he crossed again the fatal field, on which the silence of death had now succeeded to the storm of battle, the moon, breaking from dark clouds, shed an uncertain light upon this wide scene of carnage, covered with mangled thousands of that gallant army whose heroic valour had won for him the brightest wreath of victory, and left to future times an imperishable monument of their country's fame. He saw himself surrounded by the bloody corpses of his veteran soldiers, who had followed him through distant lands, of his friends, his associates in arms, his companions through many an eventful year of danger and of glory: in that awful pause, which follows the mortal conflict of man with man, emotions, unknown or stifled in the heat of battle, forced their way--the feelings of the man triumphed over those of the general, and in the very hour of victory Lord Wellington burst into tears."[35] The state of the wounded during this dreadful night may be conceived. Not even a drop of water was to be had on the field to relieve their thirst, and none was to be procured nearer than Waterloo. Late as it was, and exhausted as our officers must have been with the fatigue of such unremitting exertions, many of them mounted their horses, slung over their shoulders as many canteens as they could carry, galloped to Waterloo, a distance of more than two miles from almost every part of the field, filled them with water, and returned with it for the relief of the wounded men. I did not leave a corner of La Belle Alliance unrummaged, but I cannot say that I saw anything particularly worthy of notice: I ate a bit of intolerably bad rye-cake, as sour as vinegar, and as black as the bread of Sparta, which nothing but the consideration of its having been in La Belle Alliance during the battle (which the woman assured me was the case) could have induced me to swallow:--but I need not stop to relate my own follies. I bought from the people of the house the feather of a French officer, and a cuirass which had belonged to a French Cuirassier, who, they said, had died here the day after the battle. Loaded with my spoils, I traversed the whole extent of the field, thinking, as I toiled along beneath the burning sun, under the weight of the heavy cuirass, that the poor man to whom it had belonged, when he brought it into the field, in all the pride of martial ardour, and all the confidence of victory, little dreamed who would carry it off. If he had known that it was to be an English lady, he would have been more surprised than pleased. I did not stop till I got to the old tree now known by the name of Lord Wellington's tree,[36] near which he stood for a length of time during the battle, and beneath which I now sat myself down to rest. Its massy trunk and broken branches were pierced with a number of cannon-balls, but its foliage still afforded me a grateful shade from the rays of the sun.