1.C.1.1. WHAT IS MET WITH ON THE WAY FROM NIVELLES
LAST year (1861), on a beautiful May morning, a traveller,
the person who is telling this story, was coming from Nivelles,
and directing his course towards La Hulpe. He was on foot.
He was pursuing a broad paved road, which undulated between
two rows of trees, over the hills which succeed each other, raise
the road and let it fall again, and produce something in the
nature of enormous waves.
He had passed Lillois and Bois-Seigneur-Isaac. In the west
he perceived the slate-roofed tower of Braine-l'Alleud, which
has the form of a reversed vase. He had just left behind a
wood upon an eminence; and at the angle of the cross-road,
by the side of a sort of mouldy gibbet bearing the inscription
Ancient Barrier No. 4, a public house, bearing on its front this
sign: At the Four Winds (Aux Quatre Vents). Echabeau,
Private Cafe.
A quarter of a league further on, he arrived at the bottom of
a little valley, where there is water which passes beneath an
arch made through the embankment of the road. The clump
of sparsely planted but very green trees, which fills the valley
on one side of the road, is dispersed over the meadows on the
other, and disappears gracefully and as in order in the direction
of Braine-l'Alleud.
On the right, close to the road, was an inn, with a four-wheeled
cart at the door, a large bundle of hop-poles, a plough,
a heap of dried brushwood near a flourishing hedge, lime smoking
in a square hole, and a ladder suspended along an old penthouse
with straw partitions. A young girl was weeding in a
field, where a huge yellow poster, probably of some outside
spectacle, such as a parish festival, was fluttering in the wind.
At one corner of the inn, beside a pool in which a flotilla of
ducks was navigating, a badly paved path plunged into the
bushes. The wayfarer struck into this.
After traversing a hundred paces, skirting a wall of the
fifteenth century, surmounted by a pointed gable, with bricks
set in contrast, he found himself before a large door of arched
stone, with a rectilinear impost, in the sombre style of Louis
XIV., flanked by two flat medallions. A severe facade rose
above this door; a wall, perpendicular to the facade, almost
touched the door, and flanked it with an abrupt right angle.
In the meadow before the door lay three harrows, through
which, in disorder, grew all the flowers of May. The door was
closed. The two decrepit leaves which barred it were ornamented
with an old rusty knocker.
The sun was charming; the branches had that soft shivering
of May, which seems to proceed rather from the nests than
from the wind. A brave little bird, probably a lover, was
carolling in a distracted manner in a large tree.
The wayfarer bent over and examined a rather large circular
excavation, resembling the hollow of a sphere, in the stone on
the left, at the foot of the pier of the door.
At this moment the leaves of the door parted, and a peasant
woman emerged.
She saw the wayfarer, and perceived what he was looking
at.
"It was a French cannon-ball which made that," she said to
him. And she added:—
"That which you see there, higher up in the door, near a
nail, is the hole of a big iron bullet as large as an egg. The
bullet did not pierce the wood."
"What is the name of this place?" inquired the wayfarer.
"Hougomont," said the peasant woman.
The traveller straightened himself up. He walked on a few
paces, and went off to look over the tops of the hedges. On the
horizon through the trees, he perceived a sort of little elevation,
and on this elevation something which at that distance
resembled a lion.
He was on the battle-field of Waterloo.