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The Lion of Waterloo, standing on its lofty green pyramid, was miles
behind us before realization came that fighting had started that day to
the southward of us. We halted at a taverne to water the horses, and
out came its Flemish proprietor, all gesticulations and exclamations, to
tell us that since morning he had heard firing on ahead.
"Ah, sirs," he said, "it was inconceivable--that sound of the guns. It
went on for hours. The whole world must be at war down the road!"
The day before he had seen, flitting across the cabbage patches and
dodging among the elm trees, a skirmish party, mounted, which he took to
be English; and for two days, so he said, the Germans had been passing
the tavern in numbers uncountable.
We hurried on then, but as we met many peasants, all coming the other
way afoot and all with excited stories of a supposed battle ahead, and
as we ourselves now began to catch the faint reverberations of cannon
fire, our drivers manifested a strange reluctance about proceeding
farther.


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