f the great man was necessary to the advent of the great century.
Some one, a person to whom one replies not, took the responsibility on himself.
The panic of heroes can be explained. In the battle of Waterloo there is something more than a cloud, there is something of the meteor.
God has passed by.
At nightfall, in a meadow near Genappe, Bernard and Bertrand seized by the skirt of his coat and detained a man, haggard, pensive, sinister, gloomy, who, dragged to that point by the current of the rout, had just dismounted, had passed the bridle of his horse over his arm, and with wild eye was returning alone to Waterloo.
It was Napoleon, the immense somnambulist of this dream which had crumbled, essaying once more to advance.
BOOK FIRST.-WATERLOO
CHAPTER XIV
THE LAST SQUARE
Several squares of the Guard, motionless amid this stream of the defeat, as rocks in running water, held their own until night. Night came, death also; they awaited that double shadow, and, invincible, allowed themselves to be enveloped therein. Each regiment, isolated from the rest, and having no bond with the army, now shattered in every part, died alone.
They had taken up position for this final action, some on the heights of Rossomme, others on the plain of Mont-Saint-Jean. There, abandoned, vanquished, terrible, those gloomy squares endured their death-throes in formidable fashion.