 Hugo devotes another 19 chapters (Volume II, Book I) to an account of—and a meditation on the place in history of—the Battle of Waterloo, the battlefield which Hugo visited in 1861 and where he finished writing the novel.It opens volume 2 with such a change of subject as to seem the beginning of an entirely different work.The fact that this 'digression' occupies such a large part of the text demands that it be read in the context of the 'overarching structure' discussed above.