We enter the court-yard. Only a roughly plastered room or two remain, where the greed that gloats even over the field of blood offers _souvenirs_ of the place importunately. In the centre of this court-yard may still be seen the well that was filled with corpses. It must have given out blood for many a day. Upon one side are the remains of the building used for a hospital in the beginning of the fight, but where the wounded and dying perished in torment, when the French succeeded in firing the chateau; for this is _Hougomont_.
We came out at the gateway where we had entered; crossed the slope under the shadow of the branches from the apple trees, and followed the road winding through wheat-fields to The Mound. Breast-high on either side rose the nodding crests; and among them wild flowers, purple, scarlet, and blue, fairly dazzled our eyes, as they waved with the golden grain in the sunshine. "O, smiling harvest-fields," we said, "you have been sown with heroes; you have been enriched with blood!"
It was a long, dizzy climb up the face of The Mound to the narrow foothold beside the platform where rests that grim, gigantic lion. Once there, we held to every possible support in the hurricane of wind that seized us, while the guide gave a name to each historic farm and village spread out before our eyes. Only a couple of miles cover all the battle-field--the smallest where grand armies ever met; but the slaughter was the more terrible.
Connected with an inn at the foot of The Mound is a museum of curiosities. Here are queer old helmets worn by the cuirassiers, hacked and rust-stained; broken swords, and old-fashioned muskets; buttons, and bullets even--everything that could be garnered after such a sowing of the earth.
In unquestioning faith we bought buttons stained with mildew, and bearing upon them, in raised letters, the number of a regiment. Alas! reason told us, later, that the buttons disposed of annually here would supply an ordinary army. And rumor added, that they are buried now in quantities, to be exhumed as often as the supply fails.
I remembered Victor Hugo to have said in _Les Misérables_ something in regard to a sunken road here, which proved a pitfall to the French, and helped, in his judgment, to turn the fortunes of the day. But we had seen no sunken road. I mentioned it to the guide, who said that Victor Hugo spent a fortnight examining the ground before writing that description of the battle. "He lodged at our house," he added. "My father was his guide. What he wrote was all quite true. There is now no road such as he described; that was all changed when the earth was scraped together to form The Mound."