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 didnot 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 horizonthrough the trees, he perceived a sort of little elevation,and on this elevation something which at that distance resembleda lion.
He was on the battle-field of Waterloo.
BOOK FIRST.-WATERLOO
CHAPTER II
HOUGOMONT
Hougomont,--this was a funereal spot, the beginning of the obstacle, the first resistance, which that great wood-cutter of Europe, called Napoleon, encountered at Waterloo, the first knot under the blows of his axe.
It was a chateau; it is no longer anything but a farm.
For the antiquary, Hougomont is Hugomons.
This manor was built by Hugo, Sire of Somerel, the same who endowed the sixth chaplaincy of the Abbey of Villiers.
The traveller pushed open the door, elbowed an ancient calash under the porch, and entered the courtyard.
The first thing which struck him in this paddock was a door of the sixteenth century, which here simulates an arcade, everything else having fallen prostrate around it.
A monumental aspect often has its birth in ruin.
In a wall near the arcade opens another arched door, of the time of Henry IV., permitting a glimpse of the trees of an orchard; beside this door, a manure-hole, some pickaxes, some shovels, some carts, an old well, with its flagstone and its iron reel, a chicken jumping, and a turkey spreading its tail, a chapel surmounted by a small bell-tower, a blossoming pear-tree trained in espalier against the wall of the chapel--behold the court, the conquest of which was one of Napoleon's dreams.