Rostand's memory. If
such were the case, it does not necessarily detract from the integrity
of the conception or the playwright's presentment of it.
(1) The field of Waterloo has to-day the peacefulness which
belongs to earth, the impassive support of man, and is like
all other plains. At night, however, a kind of visionary
mist is exhaled, and if any traveler walks there, and
watches and listens, and dreams like Virgil on the sorrowful
plains of Philippi, the hallucination of the catastrophe
takes possession of him. The terrible June 18 relives; the
artificial commemorative mound effaces itself, the lion
disappears, the field of battle assumes its reality; lines
of infantry waver on the plain, the horizon is broken by
furious charges of cavalry; the alarmed dreamer sees the
gleam of sabres, the glimmer of bayonets, the lurid glare of
bursting shells, the clashing of mighty thunderbolts; the
muffled clamor of the phantom conflict comes to him like
dying moans from the tomb; these shadows are grenadiers,
these lights are cuirassiers .
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