"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 Miserables_ 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."

We lunched at the inn, surrounded by mementos and trophies, and served
by an elderly woman, whose father had been a sergeant in the Belgian
army, then late in the afternoon drove back to town.

The pleasant days at Brussels soon slipped by, and then we were off to
Antwerp--only an hour's ride. I will tell you nothing about the former
wealth and commercial activity of the city--that in the sixteenth
century it was the wealthiest city in Europe, &c, &c. For all these
interesting particulars, see Murray's Handbook of Northern Germany. As
soon as we had secured rooms at the hotel, dropped our satchels and
umbrellas, we followed the chimes to the cathedral. The houses of the
people h