Page 546 - les-miserables

incredible as it may appear, had taken up its position and
ranged itself in six lines, forming, to repeat the Emperor’s
expression, ‘the figure of six V’s.’ A few moments after the
formation of the battle-array, in the midst of that profound
silence, like that which heralds the beginning of a storm,
which precedes engagements, the Emperor tapped Haxo
on the shoulder, as he beheld the three batteries of twelve-
pounders, detached by his orders from the corps of Erlon,
Reille, and Lobau, and destined to begin the action by tak-
ing Mont-Saint-Jean, which was situated at the intersection
of the Nivelles and the Genappe roads, and said to him,
‘There are four and twenty handsome maids, General.’
Sure of the issue, he encouraged with a smile, as they
passed before him, the company of sappers of the first corps,
which he had appointed to barricade Mont-Saint-Jean as
soon as the village should be carried. All this serenity had
been traversed by but a single word of haughty pity; per-
ceiving on his left, at a spot where there now stands a large
tomb, those admirable Scotch Grays, with their superb
horses, massing themselves, he said, ‘It is a pity.’
Then he mounted his horse, advanced beyond Rossom-
me, and selected for his post of observation a contracted
elevation of turf to the right of the road from Genappe to
Brussels, which was his second station during the battle.
The third station, the one adopted at seven o’clock in the
evening, between La Belle-Alliance and La Haie-Sainte,
is formidable; it is a rather elevated knoll, which still ex-
ists, and behind which the guard was massed on a slope of
the plain. Around this knoll the balls rebounded from the

546 Les Miserables