It was an insult such as a thunder-cloud might hurl!
It reaches the grandeur of AEschylus!
Cambronne's 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 Blucher?
No!
If Wellington had not begun, Blucher could not have finished.
This Cambronne, 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 is offered this mockery,--life!
How could he restrain himself? Yonder are all the kings of Europe, the general's flushed with victory, the Jupiter's darting thunderbolts; they have a hundred thousand victorious soldiers, and back of the hundred thousand a million; their cannon 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 Cambronne 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 face of this mean and mighty victory, in face of this victory which counts none victorious, this desperate soldier stands erect.
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 at that portentous moment made its descent on that unknown man.
Cambronne invents the word for Waterloo as Rouget 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.