Join Host Bree Carlile as she reads the eighty-fifth chapter of Les Miserables.

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>> Speaker A: Take a look, in the book and let's see

what we can find.

Take it chapter by chapter. One

fight M at a time

so many adventures and

mountains we can climb

to give word for word, line by

line, one bite at a time.

>> Brie Carlisle: Welcome to bite at a time books where we read you your

favorite classics one byte at a time. my name is

Bre Carlisle and I love to read and wanted to

share my passion with listeners like you. If you

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while we try to keep the text as close to the original as

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>> Brie Carlisle: Values today well be

continuing.

Les Miserable by Victor Hugo

chapter 15 Gabron

if any french reader object to having his

susceptibilities offended, one word would have

to refrain from repeating in.

>> Brie Carlisle: His presence what is perhaps the finest.

>> Brie Carlisle: Reply that a frenchman ever made. This

would enjoin us from consigning something sublime to history

at our own risk and peril. Let us violate this

injunction. But now then, among those

giants, there was one titan, Cabron,

to make that reply and then perish. What could be

grander? For being willing to die is the same as

to die. And it was not this mans fault if he survived after

he was shot. The winner of the battle at

Waterloo was not Napoleon who was put to

flight, nor Wellington giving way at

00 in despair at five, nor

Bluescher who took no part in the engagement.

The winner of Waterloo was skabrone.

To thunder forth such a reply as the lightning flash that

kills you is to conquer, thus to

answer the catastrophe, thus to speak to

fate. To give this pedestal to the future

lion. To hurl such a challenge to the midnight

rainstorm, to the treacherous wall of

Hougoumonto, the sunken road of Ohain. To

grouchys delay, to bluchers arrival. To

be irony itself in the tomb. To act

so as to stand upright though fallen.

To drown in two syllables. The european coalition.

To offer kings privies, which the caesars once knew, to

make the lowest of words, the most lofty. By entwining

with it the glory of France. Insolently. To end

Waterloo with Mardi Gras. To finish

Leonidas with rebellus. To set the crown

on this victory by a word impossible to speak.

To lose the field and preserve history. To

have the laugh on your side after such a carnage.

This is immense.

It was an insult such as a thundercloud might

hurl. It reaches the grandeur of

Aeschylus. Corons reply

produces the effect of a violent break.

Tis like the breaking of a heart under a weight of

scorn. Tis the overflow of agony

bursting forth. Who conquered

Wellington? No. Had

it not been for Blucher, he was lost. Was it

bluescher? No. If Wellington

had not begun, Blucher could not have finished.

This cabron, this man spending his last

hour, this unknown soldier,

this infinitesimal of war.

Realizes that here is a falsehood,

a falsehood in a catastrophe. And so

doubly agonizing. And at the moment when his

rage is bursting forth because of it, he

has offered this mockery

life. How could he restrain

himself? Yonder all the kings of Europe,

the generals flushed with victory, the Jupiter starting

thunderbolts. They have 100,000

victorious soldiers. And back of the hundred

thousand, a million. Their cannons stand

with yawning mouths. The match is

lighted. They grind down under their heels the

imperial guards and the grand army.

They have just crushed Napoleon. And

only remains. Only this

earthworm is left to protest. He

will protest. Then he seeks for the

appropriate word as one seeks for a sword.

His mouth froths, and the froth is the word.

In the face of this mean and mighty victory, in face

of this victory, which counts none victorious.

This desperate soldier stands

erectile. He grants its overwhelming

immensity, but he establishes its

triviality. And he does more than spit upon

it. Borne down by numbers,

by superior force, by brute matter,

he finds in his soul an expression,

excrement. We repeat it. To

use that word, to do thus, to invent such an expression.

Is to be the conqueror. The spirit

of mighty days. That pretentious moment made its descent on

that unknown Mandev. Cabron invents the

word for Waterloo as ruget invents the

Marseillaise. Under the visitation of a breath from

on high, an emanation from the divine

whirlwind leaps forth and comes sweeping over these

men, and they shake, and one of them sings the

song supreme, and the other utters the frightful cry.

This challenge of titanic scorn, cibrone

hurls not only at, Europe, in the name of the empire.

That would be a trifle.

>> Brie Carlisle: He hurls it at the past in.

>> Brie Carlisle: The name of the revolution. It is heard,

and Cabron is recognized as possessed by the ancient spirit

of the titans. Danton seems to be

speaking. Kleber seems to be

bellowing at that word from

cabron, the english voice responded, fire.

The batteries flamed. The hell trembled.

From all those brazen mouths belched a last terrible

gush of grapeshot. A vast volume of smoke,

vaguely white in the light of the rising moon,

rolled out, and when the smoke dispersed, there was no

longer anything there. That

formidable remnant had been annihilated.

The guard was dead. The four

walls of the living redoubt lay prone, and hardly

was there discernible here and there even a quiver in the

bodies. It was thus that the french

legions, greater than the roman legions,

expired on Mont Saint Jean, on the

soil watered with rain and blood amid the

gloomy grain, on the spot where nowadays Joseph,

who drives the post wagon from nival, passes

whistling and cheerfully whipping up his horse at

00 in the morning. Thank you for

joining bite at a time books today while we wrote a.

>> Brie Carlisle: Bite of one of your favorite classics.

>> Brie Carlisle: Again, my name is Brie Carlisle, and

I hope you come back tomorrow,

>> Brie Carlisle: For the next bite of, le miserable.

Dont forget to sign up for our

newsletter@byteadatimebooks.com, comma. And

check out the shop. You can check out the show notes

or our website, byteaditimebooks.com,

for the rest of the links for our show. Wed love

to hear from you on social media as well.

>> Speaker A: Adventures and mountains we

can climb,

take your word forward, line by

line, one bite at a time.