Those who, straight from the contested field, wandered sobbing
through the rooms of the ladies' house, saw what it were well could
the outraged earth have straightway hidden. The inner apartment was
ankle-deep in blood. The plaster was scored with sword-cuts; not
high up as where men have fought, but low down, and about the
corners, as if a creature had crouched to avoid the blow. Strips of
dresses, vainly tied around the handles of the doors, signified the
contrivance to which feminine despair had resorted as a means of
keeping out the murderers. Broken combs were there, and the frills
of children's trousers, and torn cuffs and pinafores, and little
round hats, and one or two shoes with burst latchets, and one or two
daguerreotype cases with cracked glasses. An officer picked up a
few curls, preserved in a bit of cardboard, and marked 'Ned's hair,
with love'; but around were strewn locks, some near a yard in
length, dissevered, not as a keepsake, by quite other scissors."
The battle of Waterloo was fought on the 18th of June, 1815.
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