Join Host Bree Carlile as she reads the seventy-seventh chapter of Les Miserables.

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>> Speaker A: Take it chapter by chapter one

fight at a time

so many adventures and mountains

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

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>> Brie Carlisle: Today we'll be continuing Les Miserable

by Victor Hugo.

Chapter seven Napoleon in a good

humor the

emperor, though ill and discommoded on

horseback by local trouble, had never been

in a better humor than on that day. His

impenetrability had been smiling ever since the morning

on the 18 June. That profound

soul, masked by marble, beamed blindly.

The man who had been gloomy at Austerlitz was gay at

Waterloo. The greatest favorites of destiny

make mistakes. Our joys are composed

of shadow. The supreme smile is

gods alone, Rudette, Caesar,

Pompeius, Phlebitz, and the legionaries of the Fulminix

legion. Pompey was not

destined to weep on that occasion, but it is

certain that Caesar left while exploring on

horseback at 01:00 on the preceding night,

in storm and rain, in company with

Bertrand, the communes in the neighborhood of

Rosam, satisfied at the sight of the long line of the

english campfires illuminating the whole horizon. From

freshemont to Brainliud,

it had seemed to him that fate

to whom he had assigned a day on the field of Waterloo

was exact to the appointment. He

stopped his horse and remained for some

time motionless, gazing at the lightning and

listening to the thunder. And this fatalist

was heard to cast into the darkness this mysterious

saying, we are in accord.

Napoleon was mistaken. They were no

longer in accord. He took not a

moment for sleep. Every instant of that

night was marked by a joy for him. He

traversed the line of the principal outposts,

halting here and there to talk to the

sentinels. At, 02:30 near the wood

of Ugomande, he heard the tread of a column on the

march. He thought at the moment

that it was a retreat on the part of Wellington.

He said, it is the rearguard of the English getting

underway for the purpose of decamping. I will take

prisoners the 6000 English who have just arrived at

Ostend. He conversed

expansively. He regained the animation which

he had shown at his landing on the 1 march when he

pointed out to the grand marshal, the enthusiastic peasant of

the gulf, Juan, and cried,

izejdehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehe.

Well, Bertrand, here is a reinforcement. Already

on the night of the 17th to the 18 June, he

rallied Wellington. That little Englishman needs

a lesson, said Napoleon. The rain

redoubled in violence. The thunder

rolled. While the emperor was speaking at,

30 oclock in the morning, he lost one

illusion. Officers who had been dispatched to

reconnoitre announced to him that the enemy was not making any

movement. Nothing was stirring.

Not a bivouac fire had been extinguished. The

English army was asleep. The silence

on earth was profound. The only noise

was in the heavens. At 04:00

a peasant was brought in to him by the scouts.

This peasant had served as a guide to a brigade of english

cavalry, probably, vivians brigade,

which was on its way to take up a position in the village of

Ohain at the extreme left.

00 two belgian deserters reported to

him that they had just quitted their regiment and that the

english army was ready for battle. So much

the better, exclaimed Napoleon. I prefer

to overthrow them rather than to drive them back.

In the morning. He dismounted in the mud on the slope which

forms an angle with the plansnut road,

had a kitchen table and a peasants chair brought to

him from the farm of rossome, seated

himself with a truss of straw for a carpet

and spread out on the table the chart of the

battlefield, saying to salt as he did

so, a pretty checkerboard.

In consequence of the rains during the night,

the transports of provisions embedded in the soft

robes had not been able to arrive. By

morning, the soldiers had had no sleep.

They were wet and fasting.

This did not prevent Napoleon from exclaiming

cheerfully to ney, we have 90 chances out of

100. At 08:00, the

emperors breakfast was brought to him. He

invited many generals to it. During breakfast it

was said that Wellington had been to a ball two nights before

in Brussels, at the Duchess of Richmonds.

And Soult, a rough man of war with the face of

an archbishop, said, the ball takes place

today. The emperor jested with

Ney, who said, Wellington will not be so simple

as to wait for your majesty. That was his

way. However, he was fond of

jesting, says Flory de Chabalon.

A merry humor was at the foundation of his character,

says Gorgaud. He abounded in

pleasantries which were more peculiar than witty.

Says Benjamin Constant, these

gaieties of a giant are worthy of insistence.

It was he who called his grenadiers his

grumblers. He pinched their ears.

He pulled their mustaches. The emperor did

nothing but play pranks on us, is the remark of one of

them. During the mysterious trip from

the island of Elba to France on the 27

February on the open sea. The

french brig of war, the Zephyr, having

encountered Le Brig, and constant, on which Napoleon

was concealed, and having asked the news of Napoleon

from Leon Constant, the emperor

who still wore in his hat the white and

amaranthine cockadewn with

bees, which he had adopted at the Isle of

Elba, laughingly seized the speaking

trumpet and answered for himself,

the emperor is well. A

man who laughs like that is on familiar terms with

events. Napoleon indulged in many fits of

this laughter during the breakfast at Waterloo.

After breakfast he meditated for a quarter of an

hour. Then two generals seated

themselves on the truss of straw, pen in hand

and their paper on their knees. And the emperor

dictated to them the order of battle. At

00, at the instant when the french

army, ranged in echelons and set in motion in five

columns, had deployed the divisions in two

lines. The artillery between the

brigades, the music at their head as they beat the

march with rolls on the drums and the blasts of

trumpets. Mighty,

vast, joyous. A, sea of casks, of

sabers and of bayonets on the horizon.

The emperor was touched and twice exclaimed,

magnificent. Magnificent.

00 and 10:30 the

whole army, incredible as it may appear,

had taken up its position and ranged itself in

six lines forming, to repeat the

emperors expression, the figure of six

V's. A few moments after the formation

of the battle array. In the midst of that profound

silence, like that which heralds the beginning of a

storm which precedes engagements,

the emperor tapped Hakso on the shoulder as he beheld

the three batteries of twelve pounders, detached

by his orders from the corpse of Erlon, Rhael and

Lobau, and destined to begin the action

by taking Mount St. John, which was situated

at the intersection of the nival in the Djenapp roads, and said

to him, there are four and 20 handsome maids.

General sure of the issue,

he encouraged with a smile, as they passed before

him the company of sappers of the first

corps, which he had appointed to barricade Mont

Saint Jean as soon as the village should be

carried. All this serenity had been

traversed by but a single word of haughty pity

perceiving on his left, at a spot where there

now stands a large tomb, those admirable scotch

greys with their superb horses massing

themselves.

He said, it is a pity. Then he

mounted his horse, advanced beyond Rossam,

and selected for his post of observation a contracted

elevation of turf to the right of the road from Genappe to

Brussels, which was his second station during the

battle. The third station,

the one adopted at 07:00 in the evening

between La Belle alliance and La Haye saint, is

formidable. It has a rather

elevated knoll which still exists and

beheld which the guard was massed on a slope of the plain.

Around this knoll, the balls rebounded from the pavements of the

road up to Napoleon himself. As

at Brienne, he had over his head the shriek of the bullets

and of the heavy artillery, moldy

cannonballs, old sword blades and shapeless

projectiles, eaten up with rust, or picked up at

the spot where his horses feet stood Scabra

Rubiggin a few years ago,

a shell of 60 pounds, still charged, and

with its fuse broken off level with the bomb, was

unearthed. It was at, this last

post that the emperor said to his guide, Lacoste,

a hostile and terrified peasant who was attached to the

saddle of a tsar, and who turned round at

every discharge of canister and tried to hide behind

Napoleon. Fool. It is shameful youll

get yourself killed with a ball in the back.

He who writes these lines has himself found in the

friable soil of the on, turning over the

sand, the remains of the neck of a bomb,

disintegrated by the oxidization of six and 40

years, and old fragments of iron, which

parted like elder twigs between the fingers.

Everyone is aware that the variously inclined

undulations of the plains where the engagement between

Napoleon and Wellington took place, are no longer what they

were on June 18, 1815.

By taking from this mournful field the wherewithal to

make a monument to it. Its real relief has

been taken away, and history,

disconcerted, no longer finds her bearings there.

It has been disfigured for the sake of glorifying

it. Wellington, when

he beheld Waterloo once more, two years later,

exclaimed, they have altered my field of

battle. Where the great pyramid of

earth, surmounted by the lion rises

today, there was a hillock which

descended in an easy slope towards the Nivelle

road, but which was almost an escarpment

on the side of the highway to Janap. The

elevation of this escarpment can still be measured by

the height of the two knolls of the two great sepulchres which

enclosed the road from Genappe to Brussels.

One, the english tomb, is on the

left, the other, the german tomb, is

on the right. There is no french

tomb. The whole of that plain is a

sepulchre for France. Thanks to the

thousands upon thousands of cartloads of earth

employed in the hillock. 150ft in

height and half a mile in circumference,

the plateau of Mont Saint John is now accessible by

an easy slope. On the day of battle,

particularly on the side of La Haye Saint, it

was abrupt and difficult of approach.

The slope there is so steep that the english cannon

could not see the farm situated in the bottom of the

valley, which was the center of the

combat. On the 18 June

1815, the rains had still further increased this

acclivity. The mud complicated the problem

of the ascent, and the men not only only

slipped back, but stuck fast in the mire.

Along the crest of the plateau ran a sort of

trench, whose presence it was impossible for the distant

observer to divine. What was this

trench? Let us explain.

Brainliud is a belgian village.

Okhain is another. These

villages, both of them concealed in curves of the

landscape, or connected by a road about a league and a half in

lengthen, which traverses the plain along its

undulating level, and often enters

and buries itself in the hills like a furrow,

which makes the ravine of the road in some

places in 1815,

as, At the present day, this road cut

the crest of the plateau of Mont Saint Jean between

the two highways from Genappe and nival.

Only it is now on a level with the

plane. It was then a holloway,

its two slopes have been appropriated for the monumental

hillock. This road was and

still is, a trench throughout the greater portion of its

course, a hollow trench,

sometimes a dozen feet in depth, and

whose, banks, being too steep, crumbled away here and

there, particularly in winter,

under driving rains. Accidents

happened here. The road was so narrow at the

brainlieute entrance that a passerby was crushed by a

cart, as is proved by a stone cross

which stands near the cemetery and which

gives the name of the dead Monsieur Bernard

de Beurre, merchant of Brussels, and the date of

the accident, February

1637. It was so

deep on the tableland of Mount St. John that a

peasant, Methunicais, was crushed

there in 1783 by a slide

from the slope, as, is stated on another stone

cross, the top of which has disappeared

in the process of clearing the ground, but whose

overturned pedestal is still visible on the grassy slope to the

left of the highway between La Haye Saint and the farm of

Mont Saint Jean. On the day of

battle, this hollow road, whose

existence was in no way indicated

bordering the crest of Mont Saint Jean, a

trench at the summit of the escarpment, a rut

concealed in the soil, was invisible,

that is to say, terrible.

Thank you for joining bite at a time books today while

we read a bite of one of your favorite classics.

Again, my name is Brie Carlisle,

and I hope you come back tomorrow for the next

bite of Le Miserable.

>> Brie Carlisle: Dont forget to sign up for our

newsletter@byteadatimebooks.com, and check

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

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>> Speaker A: many adventures and mountains

we can climb.

Take your words forward, line by

line, one bite at a time.