Out of respect for the French reader, the grandest word that any Frenchman has ever uttered must not be repeated. Dump no sublimity into the stream of history.
At our own risk, we shall disregard this notice.
Among these giants, then, there was one Titan, Cambronne.
To speak out this word and then die, what could be more sublime than this! For to be ready to die is to die, and it was no fault of his if amid a storm of grape-shot he still lived.
The man who won the battle of Waterloo was not Napoleon routed; it was not Wellington giving ground at four o'clock, driven to despair at five; it was not Blücher, who had not fought at all: the man who won the battle of Waterloo was Cambronne.
To overwhelm with such a word the thunder-bolt which kills you, is to win the victory.
To reply thus to disaster, to say this to fate, to lay such a foundation for the lion which was to mark the spot, to hurl this reply to the night's rain, to the masked wall of Hougomont, to the sunken road of Ohain, to the delay of Grouchy, to the arrival of Blücher, to be Irony in the tomb, to struggle to his feet again after having fallen, to drown in two syllables the European coalition, to offer to kings these latrines already used by the Cæsars, to make the last of words the first, lending it the splendor of France, to end Waterloo with the jeers of the Mardi-Gras, to supplement Leonidas with Rabelais, to sum up this victory in one last word impossible to repeat, to lose ground and preserve history, after such carnage to have the laugh on his side, this is grand.
This insult to the lightning reaches the sublimity of Æschylus.
Cambronne's exclamation has the effect of an explosion. It is the bursting of a bosom with disdain; it is the surcharge of agony which breaks out. Who did conquer? Was it Wellington? No. Without Blücher he was lost. Was it Blücher? No. If Wellington had not begun, Blücher could not have finished. This Cambronne, this new-comer upon the scene, this unknown soldier, this infinitesimal atom of the war, feels that there is a lie somewhere in the disaster, which doubles its bitterness; and at the moment when he is bursting with rage, they offer him this mockery, life! How could he help bursting out? They are there,--all the kings of Europe, the conquering generals, the thundering Jupiters; they have a hundred thousand victorious soldiers, and behind the hundred thousand, a million; their cannon, the matches lighted, are yawning; they have trampled under foot the Imperial Guard and the Grand Army; they have just crushed Napoleon; only Cambronne is left; only this earthworm remains to protest. He will protest. Then he looks about for a word, as he would for a sword. Froth rises to his lips, and this froth is the word. Before this victory, stupendous but commonplace, before this victory without victors, driven to despair, he stands erect again. He yields to its weight, but he proves its nothingness; and he does more than spit upon it; and weighed down by numbers, by force, by matter, he finds for his soul one expression, "Merde!" We repeat--to say this, to do this, to find this, is to win the victory.