580 Les Miserables
replied. It replied to the grape-shot with a fusillade, con-
tinually contracting its four walls. The fugitives pausing
breathless for a moment in the distance, listened in the
darkness to that gloomy and ever-decreasing thunder.
When this legion had been reduced to a handful, when
nothing was left of their flag but a rag, when their guns, the
bullets all gone, were no longer anything but clubs, when
the heap of corpses was larger than the group of survivors,
there reigned among the conquerors, around those men
dying so sublimely, a sort of sacred terror, and the Eng-
lish artillery, taking breath, became silent. This furnished
a sort of respite. These combatants had around them some-
thing in the nature of a swarm of spectres, silhouettes of
men on horseback, the black profiles of cannon, the white
sky viewed through wheels and gun-carriages, the colos-
sal death’s-head, which the heroes saw constantly through
the smoke, in the depths of the battle, advanced upon them
and gazed at them. Through the shades of twilight they
could hear the pieces being loaded; the matches all lighted,
like the eyes of tigers at night, formed a circle round their
heads; all the lintstocks of the English batteries approached
the cannons, and then, with emotion, holding the supreme
moment suspended above these men, an English general,
Colville according to some, Maitland according to others,
shouted to them, ‘Surrender, brave Frenchmen!’ Cam-
bronne replied, ‘——-.’
{EDITOR’S COMMENTARY: Another edition of this
book has the word ‘Merde!’ in lieu of the ——above.}