It was our fate to be the bearers of this intelligence almost the whole way through Belgium. So slowly does news travel in this country, that although it had arrived in Brussels at five o'clock in the afternoon, and we did not set off till eight the following morning, no rumours of it had been received in any of the towns or villages through which we passed; and we even found the good people of Ghent in profound ignorance of it. But the Belgians were slow of belief, and the transport and the vociferous joy with which it was uniformly received at first, were generally followed by doubts and fears, and fervent wishes for its truth. At the inn at Alost we found a party comfortably sitting down to dinner at twelve o'clock, at the well-spread Table d'Hôte. No sooner had I mentioned this news than knives and forks were thrown down, plates and dishes abandoned. An old fat Belgic gentleman, overturning his soup plate, literally jumped for joy; another, more nimble, began to caper up and down the room. A corpulent lady, in attempting to articulate her transport, was nearly choked, like little Hunchback, with a fish-bone; and the demonstrations of joy shown by the rest of the party were not less extravagant. One old man, however, shook his head in sign of incredulity, and said with fervour, when I assured him that Buonaparte was really a prisoner to the English, "that he should have lived long enough if he ever lived to see that day." Nothing amused me more, however, than the squall set up by an old country-woman, who shook my hand till she nearly wrung it off, and then, shocked at what she had done, burst forth into apologies to me, exclamations of joy, and abuse of Buonaparte, all in a breath.