Part II, Book 1, Chapter 2
Hougomont
In this chapter we take a tour of Hougomont, which is not a Victor Hugo theme park (you wish), but a manor in the French countryside where the fighting at Waterloo began.
Like an enthusiastic tour guide with a flair for the macabre, Hugo walks us through the property and brings to life the vivid senselessness of violence and death, with the grounds of the estate serving as evidence. We’re shown what the carnage has left on the manor: where cannonballs and bullet holes have riddled or destroyed walls, where blood, bullets, and fire damaged the chapel, the well in the courtyard full of skeletons, the apple orchard that hosted a mutual massacre and soaked the soil with blood.
All of this happened long enough ago that the manor, now abandoned and left to be the spookiest farm in the world, is a peaceful crumbling place—the juxtaposition—contrasting its current state of quiet with the knowledge that it was, for one terrible day, a site of overwhelming violence—is pretty darn good. It’s so horrifying and evocative and is great storytelling on Hugo’s part.
It also feels like we’re getting further and further away from the main story.
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