The station-master of Sedan came to my carriage, and explained to me what I had before my eyes.  I seemed to see, through his words, the pale lightnings of the battle.  All these distant cottages, scattered about and charming in the sun, had been burnt; they were rebuilt; Nature, so quickly diverted, had repaired everything, had cleaned everything, had swept everything, had replaced everything.  The ferocious convulsion of men had vanished, eternal order had resumed its sway.  But, as I have said, the sun was there in vain, all this valley was smoke and darkness.  In the distance, upon an eminence to my left, I saw a huge castle; it was Vandresse.  There lodged the King of Prussia.  Halfway up this height, along the road, I distinguished above the trees three pointed gables; it was another castle, Bellevue; there Louis Bonaparte surrendered to William; there he had given and delivered up our army; it was there that, not being immediately admitted, and requested to exercise a little patience, he had remained for nearly an hour silent and wan before the door, bringing his disgrace, and waiting until it should please William to open the door to him; it was there that before receiving it the King of Prussia had made the sword of France dangle about in an ante-chamber.  Lower down, nearer, in the valley, at the beginning of a road leading to Vandresse, they pointed out to me a species of hovel.  There they told me, while waiting for the King of Prussia, the Emperor Napoleon III. had got down, livid; he had gone into a little courtyard, which they pointed out to me, and where a dog growled on the chain; he had seated himself on a stone close by a dunghill, and he had said, “I am thirsty.”  A Prussian soldier had brought him a glass of water.

Terrible end of the coup d’etat!  Blood when it is drunk does not quench the thirst.  An hour was to come when the unhappy one should utter the cry of fever and of agony.  Disgrace reserved for him this thirst, and Prussia this glass of water.

Fearful dregs of Destiny.

Beyond the road, at a few steps from me, five trembling and pale poplars sheltered the front of the house, the single story of which was surmounted by a sign.  On this sign was written in great letters this name:  DROUET.  I became haggard. Drouet I read Varennes.  Tragical Chance, which mingled Varennes with Sedan, seemed to wish to bring the two catastrophes face to face, and to couple in a manner with the same chain the Emperor a prisoner of the foreigner, to the King a prisoner of his people.

The mist of reverie veiled this plain from me.  The Meuse appeared to me to wear a ruddy reflection, the neighboring isle, whose verdure I had admired, had for its subsoil a tomb:  Fifteen hundred horses, and as many men, were buried there:  thence the thick grass.  Here and there, as far as could be seen, mounds, covered with ill-favored vegetation, dotted the valley; each of these patches of vegetation