wo highways,--two large abatis of trees, that on the road to Genappe above La Haie-Sainte, armed with two cannon, the only ones out of all the English artillery which commanded the extremity of the field of battle, and that on the road to Nivelles where gleamed the Dutch bayonets of Chasse''s brigade.
Near this barricade he observed the old chapel of Saint Nicholas, painted white, which stands at the angle of the cross-road near Braine-l''Alleud; he bent down and spoke in a low voice to the guide Lacoste.
The guide made a negative sign with his head, which was probably perfidious.
The Emperor straightened himself up and fell to thinking.
Wellington had drawn back.
All that remained to do was to complete this retreat by crushing him.
Napoleon turning round abruptly, despatched an express at full speed to Paris to announce that the battle was won.
Napoleon was one of those geniuses from whom thunder darts.
He had just found his clap of thunder.
He gave orders to Milhaud''s cuirassiers to carry the table-land of Mont-Saint-Jean.
BOOK FIRST.-WATERLOO
CHAPTER IX
THE UNEXPECTED
There were three thousand five hundred of them.
They formed a front a quarter of a league in extent.
They were giant men, on colossal horses.
There were six and twenty squadrons of them; and they had behind them to support them Lefebvre-Desnouettes''s division,--the one hundred and six picked gendarmes, the light cavalry of the Guard, eleven hundred and ninety-seven men, and the lancers of the guard of eight hundred and eighty lances. They wore casques without horse-tails, and cuirasses of beaten iron, with horse-pistols in their holsters, and long sabre-swords. That morning the whole army had admired them, when, at nine o''clock, with braying of trumpets and all the music playing "Let us watch o''er the Safety of the Empire," they had come in a solid column, with one of their batteries on their flank, another in their centre, and deployed in two ranks between the roads to Genappe and Frischemont, and taken up their position for battle in that powerful second line, so cleverly arranged by Napoleon, which, having on its extreme left Kellermann''s cuirassiers and on its extreme right Milhaud''s cuirassiers, had, so to speak, two wings of iron.