那天从早晨到日落，炮声隆隆，没有停过。到了天黑之后，炮轰才突然停止。
我们都知道当时发生了什么事。每个英国人都讲着这个故事，讲了又讲，对这场著名的战役一点也不会感到厌倦。那些当天战败的百万勇敢同胞，他们想起这件事时仍是忿恨难平，巴不得有机会雪耻。如果战后的胜利站在他们那边，他们成了得意的一方，把可怕的仇恨和愤怒留给我们，两个不甘示弱的国家就会没完没了地斗下去，光荣与耻辱，成功与失败，互相消长。数百年后，我们法国人和英国人可能还在互相吹嘘和残杀，勇敢地维护魔鬼的“荣誉”法典。
作者：英国小说家萨克雷
来源：《名利场》
The Battle of Waterloo
All that day, from morning until past sunset, the cannon never ceased to roar. It was dark when the cannonading stopped all of a sudden.
All of us have read of what occurred during that interval. The tale is in every Englishman’s mouth; ad you and I, who were children when the great battle was won and lost, and never tire of hearing and recounting the history of that famous action. Its remembrance rankles still in the bosoms of millions of the countrymen of those brave men who lost the day. The pant for an opportunity of revenging that humiliation; and if a contest, ending in a victory on their part, should ensure, elating them in their turn, and leaving its cursed legacy of hatred and rage behind to us, there is no end to the so-called glory and shame, and to the alternations of successful and unsuccessful murder, in which two high-spirited nations might engage. Centuries hence, we Frenchmen and Englishmen might be boasting and killing each other still, carrying out bravely the Devil’s code of honor.
Written by William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863)
From Vanity Fair
