A REMINISCENCE OF WATERLOO.

Lyttelton Times, Volume II, Issue 99, 27 November 1852, Page 4

A REMINISCENCE OF WATERLOO.

The instructions of the Messrs. Rothschild j to their agent were somewhat different. He was told to keep away from the field, from the army, and from its operations ; to send no courier except with tidings of a fact already past question ; and the fact deemed already past doubting in his mind, he was to come home himself and give his reasons for crediting or being assured of it. The Rothschilds' agent was not only forbidden to station himself in the field, but he was advised not to remain in Brussels either, which was soon to be the head-quar-ters of either exultation or panic, the one perhaps as little well founded as the other. He was told to betake himself to Ghent. In Ghent, too, Louis the Eighteenth had stopped ; and he, no doubt, would be sure to hear the first intelligence of import addressed to him. If it-were good intelligence, his Majesty or ex-Majesty would soon divulge it; if bad, it would soon become apparent in the preparation of the King and his suite to move farther off, and embark once more for Old England. Guided by these instructions, Mr. Rothschild's agent, whose name I forget, but who was a solid old gentleman, very unlike the young go-a-head newsmongers of our day, stationed himself at Ghent, and kept his eye upon the hotel in which the Eighteenth was lodged, with the keenness of a man whose bread and butter is implicated in the success of his procuring intelligence. Now it so happened, that Louis the 18th, who liked to play the king, had consented to do so publicly, in order to gratify the worthy inhabitants of Ghent. In order to do this, he had consented to eat his breakfast in public on the ] following morning, just as it was the custom at the Tuileries for the Royal family to dine in public on" certain days. Their majesties or their princedoms eaf their meal whilst the public marched along a kind of corridor to behold them. "Well, our newsagent of course attended this breakfast, as the sight of the day. He walked in and upstairs with the crowd of Ghentois, entered the room where Louis the corpulent -was eating with good appetite.. There \sas scarcely a partition between his Majesty's breakfast table and the public; and our agent paused, with anxious and lingering respect, to observe the royal jaws in the very simple, but not snblime operation of masticating food. Louis had just devoured his last chop, and our friend has just devoured the monarch in turn with his eyes, when a clatter was heard in the court below. A horseman had entered at full speed, and with equal speed, it would appear, made his way up the staircase, determined to deliver his message into the royal hand. The messenger was neither more nor less than a courier, with short sword by his side, such as foreign couriers wear; and he handed to his Majesty a krge envelope, which when opened, contained a paper with a very few words. The Duke of Wellington had won a great battle on the fields of Waterloo. Bonaparte had fled, his army was destroyed, routed, and dispersed. The old king handed the paper to be read aloud, and by none were its contents more greedily swallowed than by the agent of the Rothschilds. And then the old king, starting to his not very firm legs, still contrived to walk upon them over to the courier, who stood waiting for his guerdon, and bestowed upon the poor man a guerdon that he very little expected, viz., an embrace and a kiss upon both his cheeks. Our jolly Englishman, however elated before, was now ashamed, quite ashamed, not that royalty, but that manhood should inflict upon man such a thing as a kiss. He uttered an exclamation, went out, put on his hat, rushed to Ostend, put to sea in a fishing boat, and got to the English coast and to London long before a packet, post, or ordinary messenger. His first care was to inform his patrons, the Rothschilds, who paid him munificently, and entertained no doubt of his correctness. They then told him that after a certain hour of that day, he might make what use he pleased of the information. Accordingly, my gentleman from Flanders paced up and down'before the Horse Guards until the clock struck (I know not whether eleven or twelve), when he walked into Downing-street, and demanded to speak with Lord Liverpool. His passport, signed at Ghent on such a day, soon got through all the shyness of official reserve, and he was now ushered into the presence of the Premier. He told his story, as I have told it, from the first matter of his

instructions, to what he had heard at the royal breakfast. But he never mentioned the tiss,he would have blushed to do it.

Never was a man in such a pucker as Lord Liverpool. He had "been in the lowest spirits, oppressed by previous accounts, and he did not believe a word of his informant's story. It was a stock-jobbing business. The Duke would have sent a messenger from the field to Down-ing-street, much sooner than to Ghent. Had the agent been a breathless soldier from the iield, he might have believed him ; but a mere clerk, with a tale gleaned sixty miles from the field, and no corroboration. Besides, the news was too good to be true. la his perplexity, however, Lord Liverpool sent round to all the offices to all the people likely to know anything, or to be good judges .of the matter. The deuce a one could be found but Croker. He came and questioned the agent, nay, cross-questioned him in his sharp way. But there was no shaking his evidence. " Well," says the Eothschildian to the officials, " you still doubt me as if I came here for a paltry reward. If you won't believe what I tell you about the King of France and the courier who brought him the news, how will you believe what I am going to tell you, and what astonished me more than anything else; when Louis XVIII. read the letter, he started up, hugged the dusty, dirty courier, and kissed the fellow on both cheeks."

" My Lord," said Mr. Oroker, " you may believe every word that this gentleman says ; for no English imagination could invent this circumstance of a kiss; and no possible circumstance could be a stronger guarantee of truth."