They say it was Napoleon.
"After him there trailed for days the shadows of the soldiery,
vague mists bearing faintly the forms of companies of men. It was
as though the cannon smoke at Waterloo, borne on the light west
wind of that June day, had received the spirits of twenty years
of combat, and had drifted farther and farther during the fall of
the year over the endless plains.
"But there was no voice and no order. The terrible tramp of the
Guard, and the sound that Heine loved, the dance of the French
drums, was extinguished; there was no echo of their songs, for the
army was of ghosts and was defeated. They passed in the silence
which we can never pierce, and somewhere remote from men they
sleep in bivouac round the most splendid of human swords."
Time and circumstances have changed our ancient enemies into our
honoured friends, and the race that fought against us at Waterloo has
cemented its friendship towards us with its blood; and as we look back
over the century that divides us from Waterloo we can now with Mr.
Belloc salute the sombre figure of the defeated conqueror.
Your loving old
G.P.
34
MY DEAR ANTONY,
I will now quote to you one other master of splendid English.
Not every temporal sovereign of these realms has deserved a throne
among the kings of literature.
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