584 Les Miserables
dispersed, there was no longer anything there. That formi-
dable remnant had been annihilated; the Guard was dead.
The four walls of the living redoubt lay prone, and hardly
was there discernible, here and there, even a quiver in the
bodies; it was thus that the French legions, greater than the
Roman legions, expired on Mont-Saint-Jean, on the soil wa-
tered with rain and blood, amid the gloomy grain, on the
spot where nowadays Joseph, who drives the post-wagon
from Nivelles, passes whistling, and cheerfully whipping
up his horse at four o’clock in the morning.