My experience was as follows: First, application was made and description given; next, I was sent to officer number two, who copied it all into a big book, kept me ten minutes, and charged me eight cents; then I was sent to another clerk, who made out a fresh paper, kept the first, and consumed ten or fifteen minutes more; then I was sent back, up stairs, to an official, for his signature—eight cents more—cheap autographs; then to another, who commenced to interrogate me as to name, where I was staying, my nationality, &c.; when, in the very midst of his interrogations, the hour of twelve struck, and he pushed back the paper, with "Après déjeûner, monsieur," shut his window-sash with a bang, and the whole custom-house was closed for one hour, in the very middle of the day, for the officials to go to lunch, or "déjeûner à la fourchette."
Misery loves company. An irate Englishman, whose progress was as suddenly checked as mine had been, paced up and down the corridor, swearing, in good round terms, that a man should have to wait a good hour for a change of linen, so that a parcel of cursed Dutchmen could fill themselves with beer and sausage. But remedy there was none till the lunch hour was passed, when the offices were reopened, and the wheels of business once more began their slow revolutions, and our luggage was, with many formalities, withdrawn from government custody.
"When you are on the continent don't quote Byron," said a friend at parting, who had been 'over the ground;' "that is, if possible to refrain;" and, indeed, as all young ladies and gentlemen at some period of their lives have read the poet's magnificent romaunt of Childe Harold, the qualification which closed the injunction was significant. Can anybody that has any spark of imagination or romance in his composition refrain, as scene after scene, which the poet's glorious numbers have made familiar in his mind, presents itself in reality to his sight? We visit Brussels chiefly to see the field of Waterloo; and as we stand in the great square of Belgium's capital, we remember "the sound of revelry by night," and wonder how the streets looked when "then and there was hurrying to and fro," and we pictured to ourselves, as the moon poured down her silver light as we stood there, and flashed her beams upon the windows in the great Gothic structures, the sudden alarm when "bright the lamps shone o'er fair women and brave men," and how
"the steed,
The mustering squadron, and the clattering car,
Went pouring forward with impetuous speed,
And swiftly forming in the ranks of war;"
and it all came back to me how I had sing-songed through extracts from Byron in my school readers when a boy, spouted the words of the Battle of Waterloo at school exhibitions, and sometimes wondered if I should ever visit that field where Bonaparte made his last grand struggle for the empire. Yes, we should feel now the words of the poet as we approached it—"Stop! for thy tread is on an empire's dust." And so I stood musing, and repeating the poet's lines, sotto voce, when an individual approached, and, touching his hat, interrupted my musings.
"Waterloo to-morrow, sir?"
"Sir?"