. . all this does not really
exist, yet the combat goes on; the ravines are stained with
purple, the trees tremble, there is fury even in the clouds,
and in the obscurity the sombre heights--Mont Saint-Jean,
Hougomont, Frischemont, Papelotte, and Plancenoit--ap-pear
dimly crowned with throngs of apparitions annihilating one
another.
The idea of repeopling old battlefields with the shades of vanished
hosts is not novel. In such tragic spots the twilight always lays a dark
hand on the imagination, and prompts one to invoke the unappeased spirit
of the past that haunts the place. One summer evening long ago, as I was
standing alone by the ruined walls of Hougomont, with that sense of not
being alone which is sometimes so strangely stirred by solitude, I had
a sudden vision of that desperate last charge of Napoleon's Old Guard.
Marshal Ney rose from the grave and again shouted those heroic words
to Drouet d'Erlon: "Are you not going to get yourself killed?" For an
instant a thousand sabres flashed in the air.
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