The Woodville Republican

THE REPUBLICAN.

WOODVILLE, SEPT. 16, 1851.

Waterloo Thirty-four years after the Battle

"Monsieur," said my coachman, suddenly awakening me from a reverie. "Monsieur, you will pardon me if I disturb you, but before arriving at Waterloo, I ought to caution you against a certain kind of trade which you have probably never seen in Paris."

"A business unknown in Paris; that is strange--what is it?"

"You may easily conceive," replied the coachman, "that after the battle of Waterloo there were left on the ground a great number of musket balls, buttons, little copper eagles, pieces of swords, bayonets, etc."

"Undoubtedly," I replied.

"Well, for thirty-four years the inhabitants have been selling to strangers these dirty rust-eaten relics."

"I should think," said I, "that there could be but a very few left at present."

"Certainly not, and on this account has sprung up the business I was speaking of. Those who made a living by selling these relics, sow every year at the common expense, over a large extent of ground, many bushels of imperial eagles, thousands of copper buttons, and cart-loads of musket balls. This seed is left in the ground during the winter, for but very few strangers visit Waterloo at that season. In the spring they dig up all these relics, to which eight months in a moist soil have given an appearance of antiquity sufficient to deceive the most wary, and excite the admiration of the friends of Napoleon."

"But this is base deception," said I.

"Perhaps so," said the coachman, "but, sir, the country is poor, and, besides, no harm is done to any one by it."

The tolerant coachman added, that the harvest of the relics had been much better than usual this year.

"But, do you really think," said I, "that there are people rascally enough to speculate thus on the curiosity of strangers visiting Waterloo?"

"Ah! Monsieur," replied he. "I have not told you all the tricks they play on the credulous travelers; it would be difficult to tell all; but if you will permit, I will relate one anecdote, of which I was a witness, as I was driving from Waterloo a French artist and a Prussian:"

"The Prussian was carrying carefully on his knee something covered with a handkerchief. As we were on the road, he said to the Frenchman:"

"Did you bring away any souvenir of your pilgrimage to Waterloo?"

"Faith, no!" replied the Frenchman: "I was on the point of making a really valuable acquisition, but they asked too much, one hundred francs; besides the trouble of bringing away such a strange relic."

"That is curious," said the Prussian, "what was it?"

"You will not be offended if I tell you," said the Frenchman: "but it was the skull of a Prussian colonel, a magnificent skull, and the more curious as it was pierced by three holes made by musket balls--the balls of Waterloo!--one in the forehead and one in each temple. I should not have been sorry, I confess, to have possessed the skull of a Prussian colonel killed by the French, but I must dispense with that luxury. But what relic did you obtain?"

"Me," replied the Prussian, with a troubled countenance, and raising the packet from his knees, "me! But I am very much astonished at the resemblance between your experience and mine."

"Ah! indeed! What is it?"

"It is really strange, but I bought this morning the skull of a French colonel killed in the same way at Waterloo."

"Yes indeed!"

"Yes," stammered the Prussian, "and I was intending to have a cup made of it, in which to drink the health of Blucher at each anniversary of the battle."

"And is this skull pierced with three holes?" asked the Frenchman.

"I do not exactly recollect, but it seems to me."

"Let us see! Let us see!" exclaimed the Frenchman, and thinking that the packet the Prussian had on his knee was this same skull, he took it and began to examine it.

"The skull had indeed three holes made by musket balls or by something else.

"The confusion of the Prussian was great, and the gayety of the Frenchman yet less so.

"It was the same head they had wished him to buy--the same skull which was French when they wished to sell it to an Englishman or to a Prussian, and Prussian or English when they offered it to a Frenchman.

This trading in the skulls of false colonels killed at Waterloo, you will confess, is a little worse than selling false buttons and musket balls."

[Providence Journal.]