Les Miserables (abridged) (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (142 page)

This revolution imposed a new constitution, but retained the king and limited suffrage to 1 percent of potentially eligible voters—the wealthiest males.

To hold the coronation ceremony in a secular building instead was symbolically to diminish the influence of the Catholic Church in the government.

Euryanthe
was composed by the German Romantic artist Carl Maria von Weber (1786-1826), who was quite popular in France and particularly distinguished in his work for the piano.

Hugo alludes to the Cabalist doctrine of “Occultation”: to preserve the free will and moral responsibility of humans, who would be overwhelmed by a direct view of God’s glory, he “withdraws” behind the masks of the sun and stars.

Figuratively means “hairdresser,” but literally, “codfish.”

“Omnibus” because anybody can ride on her.

Saint Martin, bishop of Tours (ca. 316-397), cut his warm winter cloak in half to give part to a freezing beggar.

Slang for “drink” (from a variant form of
lecher,
to lick).

Black bread.

Gavroche says
rentrons dans la rue
(“let’s go back inside the street”) because it is literally his home.

Frédéric Lemaître (1800-1876), a celebrated actor, gave rousing performances in romantic plays. Gavroche may well have received free tickets as payment for being part of a
claque
that would applaud vehemently—performing a function similar to today’s laugh and applause tracks on television.

Hugo contrasts the grim prison that evokes Milton’s Hell with a pleasant garden that recalls the pioneering children’s books by Arnaud Berquin (1741-1791), a sentimental, moralizing author.

“What a good night for an escape.”

“Let us go. What are we doing here?”

“It’s raining enough to put out the devil’s fire. And then the police are going by. There is a soldier there who is standing sentinel. Shall we let them arrest us here?”

What is it you tell us there? The innkeeper couldn’t escape. He don’t know the trade, indeed! Tear up his shirt and cut up his bedclothes to make a rope, to make holes in the doors, to forge false papers, to make false keys, to cut his irons, to hang his rope outside, to hide himself, to disguise himself, one must be a devil! The old man couldn’t do it, he don’t know how to work.

Your innkeeper must have been caught in the act. One must be a devil. He is an apprentice. He has been duped by a spy, perhaps even by a sheep, who made him talk. Listen, Montparnasse, do you hear those cries in the prison? You have seen all those lights. He is retaken, come! He must be left to get his twenty years. I have no fear, I am no coward, that is known; but there is nothing more to be done, or otherwise they will make us dance. Don’t be angry, come with us. Let us go and drink a bottle of old wine together.

I tell you that he is retaken. At the present time, the innkeeper isn’t worth a penny. We can do nothing here. Let us go. I expect every moment that a sergent de ville will have me in his hand.

A rope (argot of the Temple).

My rope (argot of the Barrières).

A man.

A child (argot of the Temple).

A child (argot of the Barrières).

“A child like me is a man, and men like you are children.”

“How well the child’s tongue is hung!”

“The Parisian child isn’t made of wet straw.”

This rope.

“Fasten the rope.”

“To the top of the wall.”

“To the cross-bar of the window.”

Your daughter.

“Nothing to do there.”

Stupid.

Whereas Cosette’s mother, Fantine, met with a cruel lover who destroyed her. Hugo implies that such “permissive evil” must be part of a larger providential plan that we cannot apprehend.

The Jungfrau, or Virgin, is a high, snow-covered peak in the Swiss Alps. Hugo evokes a fantastic vision of white on white—absolute purity.

In addition to being a great visionary poet and a great satiric poet, Hugo is a great love poet. See, for example, “Aurore” and “L‘Âme en fleur,” books I and II of
Les Contemplations
(1856).

Dog.

Brought; from the Spanish
llevar.

Eat.

To break a pane by means of a plaster of mastic, which, sticking to the window, holds the glass and prevents noise.

Cry.

Saw.

Cut.

‘Tis not the first of the new year, / To hug papa and mamma dear.

To work here.

Knife.

Francs, sous, or farthings.

So plump is my arm, / My leg so well formed, / Yet my time has no charm.

A Jew.

Thénardier, who has become a complete monster, is ready to see his daughter murdered without blinking an eye.

Pantin, Paris.

Théodule is “unbearable” because the three-colored cockade on his uniform, symbol of the constitutional compromise between the king (white) and the people (blue and red are the colors of Paris) offends M. Gillenormand, a conservative royalist.

Napoleon is made, / All of willow braid.

Evokes a well-known fable by Jean de La Fontaine, in which a buzzing, pesky fly takes credit for having gotten a team of horses to haul a heavy coach uphill; Gavroche acts like that fly (but more effectively).

In a privileged moment of moral and political insight, Marius understands the dignity and necessity of his participation in the uprising of 1832. The next two paragraphs represent his thoughts in free indirect discourse.

Napoléon’s victory there was grand, because many soldiers were involved; to capture the Bastille (where the defenders surrendered, and which at the time contained only three prisoners) was “immense” owing to its symbolic importance.

As in the Champmathieu affair, despite the strong temptation, Jean Valjean cannot allow another person to die to ensure his own happiness. He sadly recognizes his painful moral duty to do everything possible to save Marius.

The Mother Country.

Nearly every time Hugo mentions children in this novel, he implicitly advocates for more public aid for those orphaned and abandoned.

This paragraph encapsulates Hugo’s vision of spiritual progress for all humanity.

On April 15,1834, government agents mistakenly murdered an innocent working man and his family in a poor neighborhood of Paris, on suspicion of subversive activities. Honoré Daumier protested with a famous lithograph.

Another allusion to Dante’s
Inferno,
with the implication that Jean Valjean’s horrible struggles will ultimately prove redemptive.

“The City” includes l‘Île de la Cite and l’Île Saint-Louis in the Seine.

A rhetorical term for a pithy concluding exclamation, here used whimsically to create a mock-heroic style.

Not only is Marius’ body heavy to carry, but Marius also represents a figurative cross to bear because he makes Jean Valjean suffer jealousy, rage, and the fear of losing Cosette.

A universal symbol of evil and entrapment, often used by Hugo.

Refers to the figurative chalice of suffering that Christ, foreseeing his crucifixion, had to accept at Gethsemane and drain to the bottom.

Thénardier puns by using the French idiom for “liberty”—
la clé des champs
(“the key to the fields”).

Thénardier uses the idiomatic expression
ça me botte
—“that puts boots on my feet” (in a day when many had to go barefoot).

The French term used is
le recel,
which refers to the felonies of receiving stolen goods or hiding persons wanted by the police.

Jean-Baptiste Greuze (1725-1805) was a prominent painter of maudlin, moralizing subjects, and cloyingly cute children and girls.

“To pull the Devil by the tail” is a French idiom for “to have trouble making ends meet.”

French lawyers often served as investment managers for individuals and were notorious for absconding with their clients’ funds. See Flaubert’s “Un coeur simple.”

The French
faire la noce
is a pun also meaning “have an orgy.” Thénardier, dis guised as a Spaniard in the Mardi Gras procession, makes the same pun when he sees Cosette and Marius’ wedding carriage pass:
“We’re the real
‘noce.”’

The hydra was a huge legendary serpent with seven heads; when you cut off one, several grew back. The image refers to Jean Valjean’s temptation by angry, selfish thoughts.

For the remainder of this paragraph and the next, and intermittently throughout the rest of the chapter, Hugo renders Marius’ inner questioning with free indirect discourse, to make him more vividly, intimately present to us.

The
métaphore maxima
conveys the supernatural mysteries that underlie Jean Valjean’s extraordinary behavior.

Marius is at the beginning of his moral progress, and Jean Valjean at the end of his.

“Begone, Satan”—Christ’s final reply to the Devil’s three temptations in the Bible, Matthew 4:10.