l'eclair des sabres, l'etincelle des bayonnettes, le flamboiement des
bombes, l'entre-croisement monstrueux des tonnerres; il entend, comme un
rale au fond d'une tombe, la clameur vague de la bataille-fantome; ces
ombres, ce sont les grenadiers; ces lueurs, ce sont les cuirassiers;
. . . tout cela n'est plus et se heurte et combat encore; et les ravins
s'empourprent, et les arbres frissonnent, et il y a de la furie jusque
dans les nuees, et, dans les tenebres, toutes ces hauteurs farouches,
Mont-Saint Jean, Hougomont, Frischemont, Papelotte, Plancenoit,
apparaissent confusement couronnees de tourbillons de spectres
s'exterminant. (1)

Here is the whole battle scene in "L'Aiglon," with scarcely a gruesome
detail omitted. The vast plain glimmering in phantasmal light; the
ghostly squadrons hurling themselves against one another (seen only
through the eyes of the poor little Duke of Reichstadt); the mangled
shapes lying motionless in various postures of death upon the
blood-stained sward; the moans of the wounded rising up and sweeping by
like vague wailings of the wind--all this might be taken for an artful
appropriation of Victor Hugo's text; but I do not think it was, though
it is possible that a faint reflection of a brilliant page, read in
early youth, still lingered on the retina of M. Rostand's memory. If
such were the case, it does not necessarily detract from the integrity
of the conception or the playwright's presentment of it.

(1) The field of Waterloo has to-day the peacefulness which
belongs to earth, the impassive support of man, and is like
all other plains. At night, however, a kind of visionary
mist is exhaled, and if any traveler walks there, and
watches and listens, and dreams like Virgil on the sorrowful
plains of Philippi, the hallucination of the catastrophe