MY desire was once to pass a peaceful and pleasant winter in Brussels, attending to my work, improving my mind. Brussels is a bright and cheerful town, and I think I could have succeeded had it not been for the Belgian Army. The Belgian Army would follow me about and worry me. Judging of it from my own experience, I should say it was a good army. Napoleon laid it down as an axiom that your enemy never ought to be permitted to get away from you-never ought to be allowed to feel, even for a moment, that he had shaken you off. What tactics the Belgian Army might adopt under other conditions I am unable to say, but against me personally that was the plan of campaign it determined upon and carried out with a success that was astonishing, even to myself.
I found it utterly impossible to escape from the Belgian Army. I made a point of choosing the quietest and most unlikely streets, I chose all hours-early in the morning, in the afternoon, late in the evening. There were moments of wild exaltation when I imagined I had given it the slip. I could not see it anywhere, I could not hear it.
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