Part II, Book 1, Chapter 15
Cambronne
Now, there’s no proof that Cambronne (cat name!) actually yelled “Merde!” at the English, and in fact Cambronne himself denied ever saying it, but Hugo is not going to let a small thing like “absence of proof” stop him from telling a good story. He’s the one piloting this narrative, and he feels in his heart that this is true, so therefore it is true.
Because of this, we get an entire chapter of Hugo going into absolute raptures at this (apocryphal) story of Cambronne giving the verbal middle finger to the English.
Hugo declares that the true winner of Waterloo was in fact Cambronne, who embodied the spirit of victory in this single expletive more than anyone else in the battle (RIP everyone else who went down very bravely).
“[T]o say this to destiny […], to make the basest of words the most elevated by combining it with the glory of France […], after this carnage to have the last laugh—this is tremendous.” I absolutely love how excited Hugo is and how he absolutely cannot get over this thing (that likely didn’t actually happen, but again, in his heart it did).
He goes on:
“[O]verwhelmed by numbers, by superior force and circumstance, he finds in his soul an expression: excrement! […] An emanation of the divine whirlwind is released […] It is heard, and the giants’ spirit of old is recognized in Cambronne.”
This chapter—about the thing that happened in the previous chapter—is twice as long as the previous chapter itself, because Hugo cannot stop crowing about the shit heard round the world. I love this for him.
After Cambronne’s epic retort, the English fired, annihilating the last of the Guard. (Cambronne, btw, was wounded, but survived.) On this blood-soaked spot where the true winner of Waterloo went down in a haze of smoke and bullets, the Nivelles mail-coach driver drives by in the peaceful present day, “whistling and cheerfully lashing his horse.”
Oh my god, are we finally back at the plot? Please say we’re back.
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