PART V. 1815. NARRATIVE-continued. I FOUND upon again going my rounds for information, that though news was arriving incessantly from the scene of action, and with details always varying, Bonaparte was always advancing. All the people of Brussels lived in the streets. Doors seemed of : no use, for they were never shut. The individuals, when they re-entered their houses, only resided at the windows so that the whole population of the city seemed constantly in public view. Not only business as well as society was annihilated, but even every species of occupation. All of which we seemed capable was, to inquire or to relate, to speak or to hear. Yet no clamour, no wrangling, nor even debate was intermixed with either question or answer; curiosity, though incessant, was serene; the faces were all monotony, though the tidings were all variety. I could attribute this only to the length of time during which the inhabitants had been habituated to change both of masters and measures, and to their finding that, upon an average, they neither lost nor gained by such successive revolutions. And to this must be joined their necessity of submitting, be it what it might, to the result. This mental consciousness probably kept their passions in order, and crushed all the impulses by which hope or fear is excited. No love of liberty buoyed up resistance; no views of independence brightened their imagination; and they bore even suspense with the calm of apparent philosophy, and an exterior of placid indifference. The first intelligence Madame d'Henin now gave me was, that the Austrian Minister Extraordinary, M. le Comte de Vincent, had been wounded close by the side of the Duke of Wellington; and that he was just brought back in a litter to her hotel. As she was much acquainted with him, she desired me to accompany her in making her personal inquiries. No one now sent servants, cards, or messages, where there was any serious interest in a research. There was too much eagerness to bear delay, and ceremony and etiquette always fly from distress and from business. Le Comte de Vincent, we had the pleasure to hear, had been hurt only in the hand; but this wound afterwards proved more serious than at first was apprehended, threatening for many weeks either gangrene or amputation. News, however, far more fatal struck our ears soon after the gallant Duke of Brunswick was killed! and by a shot close also to the Duke of Wellington! The report now throughout Brussels was that the two mighty chiefs, Bonaparte and Wellington, were almost constantly in view of each other. But what a day was the next-June 18th-the great est, perhaps, in its result, in the annals of Great Britain! My slumbers having been tranquillized by the close of the 17th, I was calmly reposing, when I was awakened by the sound of feet abruptly entering my drawing-room. I started, and had but just time to see by my watch that it was only six o'clock, when a rapping at my bed-room door so quick as to announce as much trepidation as it excited, made me slip on a long kind of domino always, in those times, at hand, to keep me ready for encountering surprise, and demand what was the matter? "Open your door! there is not a moment to lose!" was the answer, in the voice of Miss Ann Boyd. I obeyed, in great alarm, and saw that pretty and pleasing young woman, with her mother, Mrs. Boyd, who remembered having known and played with me when we were both children, and whom I had met with at Passy, after a lapse of more than forty years. They both eagerly told me that all their new hopes had been overthrown by better authenticated news, and that I must be with them by eight o'clock, to proceed to the wharf, and set sail for Antwerp, whence we must sail on for England, should the taking of Brussels by Bonaparte endanger Antwerp also. To send off a few lines to the post, with my direction at Antwerp, to pack and to pay, was all that I could attempt, or even desire; for I had not less time than appetite for thinking of breakfast. My host and my maid carried my small package, and I arrived before eight in the Rue d'Assault. We set off for the wharf on foot, not a fiacre or chaise being procurable. Mr. and Mrs. Boyd, five or six of their family, a governess, and I believe some servants, with bearers of our baggage, made our party. Though the distance was short, the because rugged, dirty, and melancholy. we heard a growling noise, like distant far more dreadful. walk was long, Now and then thunder, but When we had got about a third part of the way, a heavy rumbling sound made us stop to listen. It was approaching nearer and nearer, and we soon found that we were followed by innumerable carriages, and a multitude of persons. All was evidently military, but of so gloomy, taci turn, and forbidding a description, that when we were overtaken we had not courage to offer a question to any passer by. Had we been as certain that they belonged to the enemy as we felt convinced that, thus circumstanced, they must belong to our own interests, we could not have been awed more effectually into silent passiveness, so decisively repelling to inquiry was every aspect. In truth, at that period, when every other hour changed the current of expectation, no one could be inquisitive without the risk of passing for a spy, nor communicative without the hazard of being suspected as a traitor. Arrived at the wharf, Mr. Boyd pointed out to us our barge, which seemed fully ready for departure; but the crowd already come and still coming so incommoded us, that Mr. Boyd desired we would enter a large inn, and wait till he could speak with the master, and arrange our luggage and places. We went, there fore, into a spacious room and ordered breakfast, when the room was entered by a body of military men of all sorts; but we were suffered to keep our ground till Mr. Boyd came to inform us that we must all decamp! Confounded, but without any interrogatory, we vacated the apartment, and Mr. Boyd conducted us not to the barge, not to the wharf, but to the road back to Brussels; telling us, in an accent of depression, that he feared all was lost-that Bonaparte was advancing that his point was decidedly Brussels-and that the Duke of Wellington had sent orders that all the magazines, the artillery, and the warlike stores of every description, and all the wounded, the maimed, and the sick, should be immediately removed to Antwerp. For this purpose he had issued directions that every barge, every boat should be seized for the use of the army, and that everything of value should be conveyed away, the hospitals emptied, and Brussels evacuated. If this intelligence filled us with the most fearful alarm, how much more affrighting still was the sound of cannon which next assailed our ears! The dread reverberation became louder and louder as we proceeded. Every shot tolled to our imaginations the death of myriads; and the conviction that the destruction and devastation were so near us, with the probability that if all attempt at escape should prove abortive, we might be personally involved in the carnage, gave us sensations too awful for verbal expression; we could only gaze and tremble, listen and shudder. Yet, strange to relate! on re-entering the city, all VOL. VII. M |