One Minute There, Then She Was Gone

Have you been waiting with bated breath? Thought so! Well, dear readers, wait no more, because here is the second half of 
Book Eight - The Wicked Poor Man

Drama! Action! Suspense!
The odor of burning
human flesh!

Victor Hugo's Les Misérables gets pretty dramatic here at the end of Volume 3: Marius; as you'll remember, young Marius is standing on the commode spying through a hole in the plaster at the con-man next door, who has just been given cash and gifts by the sweet ol' man, father of his beloved angel, but wasn't able to follow her to her house because he gave all his cash to the con-man's bedraggled daughter. WHAT WILL HAPPEN? Well, I'll tell you:

• Jondrette (the con-man) says he recognizes the old guy, makes his daughters leave, and whispers the old guy's identity to his wife. She doesn't believe it, and furthermore, is outraged when Jondrette whispers the girl's identity. Wife's not happy. "Surprise, rage, hate, wrath, were mingled and combined in one monstrous intonation." (p.508)
• Jondrette's not as pissed as his wife. He's ready to rake in the cash. "Thunder! It was not so very long ago that I was a parishioner of the parish of die-of-hunger-if-you-have-a-fire,-die-of-cold-if-you-have-bread!" (p.508) he says. 
• He's got the old guy returning at six that evening to bring some more cash, and is going off to set a trap. Machinations! Plans! Schemes!

Now, Marius can't let this lie. He's got a beloved to protect! So he creeps out of the house (his neighbors think he's been gone all this time) and heads to get the cops. And here's an interesting twist! The commissioner isn't in, but there's an inspector filling in, so Marius goes to talk to him. "This man's air was not much less ferocious nor less terrible than Jondrette's; the dog is, at times, no less terrible to meet than the wolf." (p.512) (This is not the first time the wolf and dog have made an appearance when discussing this particular guy's appearance.) (Have you guessed who it is?)

Marius tells the inspector that he has an urgent, private matter to relate. He goes on about the plot and the accomplices and the girls setting a trap and then says where it's all going down. "[A]ll this was to be carried out at six o'clock that evening, at the most deserted point of the Boulevard de l'Hopital, in house No. 50-52.
"At the sound of this number, the inspector raised his head and said coldly:-'So it is in the room at the end of the corridor?' " (p.513)

Marius is like 'oh, you know it?' and the inspector's all 'yeah, yeah, can't hide there, too exposed, gotta make a plan - oh, you say all those bad guys from Book Seventh will be there? Fine, here, take these guns, shoot as a signal if there are urgent problems, we'll be there about six - oh, and if you need me, send a message to Inspector Javert.'

Marius heads home and takes up his position on top of the furniture. Jondrette is doing a lot of stage-
setting: a coal brazier with some tools heating in it, dark corners, oiled door hinges, etc. He sends his daughter next door to be sure Marius is gone, but she is so distracted by her reflection and teenage dreaminess that she only claims to have looked under the bed where Marius had hidden himself. (If you're wondering, yes, this is all just as farcical as you might be imagining.)

Everything's finally ready. "The Jondrette lair was, if the reader recalls what we have said of the Gorbeau building, admirably chosen to serve as the theatre of a violent and sombre deed, and as the envelope for a crime. It was the most retired chamber in the most isolated house on the most deserted boulevard in Paris." (p.519)

Of course, they don't have enough chairs, and Ma Jondrette dashes over to Marius's room to borrow his. Lucky for him he's in a dark corner and she's in a hurry to get back to the action. He's got his pistol cocked and his ears alert as the old guy enters; he knows the cops are nearby, and he hopes to learn some stuff about his angel before the night is over.

As Jondrette accepts the man's cash and chats about his injured daughter's hand, and various sob stories about work and wages and being under the boot of The Man and so forth, a few quiet brutes enter, one at a time. Jondrette is all 'hey, that guy? Just a neighbor, no big. Ignore him. And him, too. You can't see their faces 'cause they work with coal, it makes them dirty. How 'bout them Knicks?' Once everyone was in place, he starts yelling at the old guy, wants to know if he's recognized, can't believe the old guy's denials. Jondrette says that he was an inn-keeper, named Thenardier. The old guy still denies knowledge.

"Marius did not hear this reply. Any one who had seen him at that moment though the darkness would have perceived that he was haggard, stupid, thunder-struck…. Let the reader recall what that name meant to him! That name he had worn on his heart, inscribed in his father's testament!…That man, to whose service Marius was burning to devote himself, was a monster! That liberator of Colonel Pontmercy was on the point of committing a crime whose scope Marius did not, as yet, clearly comprehend, but which resembled an assassination!" (p.526)

"He shuddered. Everything depended on him. Unknown to themselves, he held in his hand all those begins who were moving about there before his eyes. If he fired his pistol, M. Leblanc [Marius's name for the old guy] was saved and Thenardier lost; if he did not fire, M. Leblanc would be sacrificed, and who knows? Thenardier would escape. Should he dash down the one or allow the other to fall? Remorse awaited in either case." (p.527)

Thenardier, meanwhile, is heaping invective upon Leblanc. Here are some of his exclamations (p.527-9):

1. Done for! Smoked brown! Cooked! Spitchcodked!
2. Mister philanthropist! Mister threadbare millionaire! Mister giver of dolls! you old ninny!
3. Old charity monger, get out with you! Are you a hosier, Mister millionaire?
4. you old blackguard, you child-stealer!
5. And with his goody-goody air!
6. I said to myself: 'Blockhead! Come, I've got you! I lick you paws this morning, but I'll gnaw your heart this evening!'
7. Ah! you folks warm your feet, you have Sakoski boots, you have wadded great-coats, like archbishops, you lodge on the first floor in houses that have porters, you eat truffles, you eat
   
   asparagus at forty francs the bunch in the month of January, and green peas, you gorge yourselves, and when you want to know whether it is cold, you look in the papers to see what the engineer Chevalier's thermometer says about it.

In the course of this diatribe, he not only confirms to the eavesdropping Marius that he's the same guy who saved ("saved") Marius's dad Colonel Pontmercy at Waterloo, but he speaks not so sweetly about the beloved patriarch.

"Moreover, there was in all these words of Thenardier, in his accent, in his gesture, in his glance which darted flames at every word, there was, in this explosion of an evil nature disclosing everything, in that mixture of braggadocio and abjectness, of pride and pettiness, of rage and folly, in that chaos of real griefs and false sentiments, in that immodesty of a malicious man tasting the voluptuous delights of violence, in that shameless nudity of a repulsive soul, in that conflagration of all sufferings combined with all hatreds, something which was as hideous as evil, and as heart-rending as the truth." (p.529)

So now Marius has a quandary: protect the father of his angel, or do service for the devil who (he thinks) protected his father? He starts to shoot (to summon Javert's men), he fails to shoot, more thugs show up in Thenardier's room. Thenardier is pacing and ranting, "with full confidence that the door was guarded, and of holding an unarmed man fast, he being armed himself, of being nine against one, supposing that the female Thenardier counted for but one man." (p.530)

A battle ensues, and as strong as the old man is, the odds are bad, and they end up capturing him, searching him, and tying him to the bed. Being a clever criminal, Thenardier comments on the fact that Marius (and I) missed: during all of this ruckus, the old man didn't cry out for help. Why? Because he wants to evade the law himself. And this makes Thenardier all the more sure that his request will be fulfilled. He merely wants 200,000 francs from the man. Thenardier dictates a letter for the old man to write to his daughter, asking her to come to him at once, with the bearers of the letter.

In the course of this, we discover that the old man's actual name is Urbain Fabre, which means Marius has been carrying the father's handkerchief all along, but never mind. Fabre writes his address on the letter and one of the thugs, along with Thenardier's wife, head off to deliver it. Everyone settles in to await their return. Marius is still unsure where his conscious stands with all of these men, but he does know he'll give his life to protect Mademoiselle Fabre, so he has an action plan, at any rate.

It turns out Thenardier instructed the thug to abduct the angel, and hold her until he got the ransom from Fabre, which horrifies poor besotted Marius. Eventually the outraged Madame Thenardier returns. The address Fabre gave was false! It's not even a house! Marius breathes a sigh of relief - his angel is safe. But why bother with the false address, Thenardier demands to know.

" 'To gain time!' cried the prisoner in a thundering voice, and at the same instant he shook off his bonds;
they were cut. The prisoner was only attached to the bed now by one leg." (p.538) Fabre reaches for the iron-hot chisel resting in the fireplace and brandishes it before the seven conspirators can react. How did he do it? I love this part:

"The judicial examination to which the ambush in the Gorbeau hovel eventually gave rise, established the fact that a large sou piece, cut and worked in a peculiar fashion, was found in the garret, when the police made their descent on it. This sou piece was one of those marvels of industry, which are engendered by the patience of the galleys in the shadows and for the shadow, marvels which are nothing else than instruments of escape. These hideous and delicate produce of wonderful art are to jewelers' work what the metaphors of slang are to poetry…. The
unhappy wretch who aspires to deliverance finds means sometimes without tools, sometimes with a common wooden-handled knife, to saw a sou into two thin plates, to hollow out these plates without affecting the coinage stamp, and to make a furrow on the edge of the sou in such a manner that the plates will adhere again. This can be screwed together and unscrewed at will; it is a box. In this box he hides a watch-spring, and this watch-spring, properly handled, cuts good-sized chains and bars of iron. The unfortunate convict is supposed to possess merely a sou; not at all, he possesses liberty." (p.538)

Fabre makes it clear through vicious means that nothing Thenardier and his thugs can do will cause him to name his actual address. "[H]e extended his arm, and laid the glowing chisel which he held in his left
hand by its wooden handle on his bare flesh.
"The crackling of the burning flesh became audible, and the odor peculiar to chambers of torture filled the hovel.
"Marius reeled in utter horror, the very ruffians shuddered, hardly a muscle of the old man's face contracted, and while the red-hot iron sank into the smoking wound, impassive and almost august, he fixed on Thenardier his beautiful glance, in which there was no hatred, and where suffering vanished in serene majesty." (p.539)

Ewwwwww!

Fabre throws the chisel out the window, and the ruffians attempt to grab him, which the Thenardiers decide knifing their prisoner is their only option.

Marius is freaking the heck out. "For the last hour he had had two voices in his conscience, the one enjoining him to respect his father's testament, the other crying to him to rescue the prisoner." (p.539) As he looks around despairingly, he notices the scrap of paper the older Thenardier had written on that morning in her attempts to impress him. Her words were, "THE BOBBIES ARE HERE," and they give Marius an idea. He wraps it around a bit of plaster and tosses it through the gap between their rooms, where the Thenardiers find it and assume it came through the open window.

All bad guys dive for the rope-ladder that is resting by the window, jostling and pushing in an attempt to be the first to escape. They can't settle on an order, and one of the ruffians suggests drawing lots to see who leaves first.

"Thenardier exclaimed:- 'Are you mad! Are you crazy! What a pack of boobies! You want to waste time, do you? Draw lots, do you? By a wet finger, by a short straw! With written names! Throw into a hat!-'
" 'Would you like my hat?' cried a voice on the threshold.
"All wheeled round. It was Javert.
"He had his hat in his hand, and was holding it out to them with a smile." (p.540)

The next chapter is titled One Should Always Begin by Arresting the Victims. So that's promising.

Javert and his guys spent a long time sitting around, surrounding the Gorbeau house. His first move was to capture the Thenardier girls, though Eponine got away. Then they waited, and waited, and watched all the well-known bad guys arrive, and Javert had ants in his pants, so up they went, even though Marius hadn't signaled them.

"He had arrived just in the nick of time.
"The terrified ruffians flung themselves on the arms which they had abandoned in all the corners at the moment of flight. In less than a second, these seven men, horrible to behold, had grouped themselves in an attitude of defense, one with his meat-axe, another with his key, another with his bludgeon, the rest with shears, pincers, and hammers. Thenardier had his knife in his fist. The Thenardier woman snatched up an enormous paving-stone which lay in the angle of the window and served her daughters as an ottoman." (p.541)

Javert suggests mildly that instead of exiting via the window, the gang should use the door. One of the crooks passes his gun to Thenardier, whispering, " 'It's Javert. I don't dare fire at that man. Do you dare?' " (p.541) Javert is all 'hey, go for it, you won't hit me no matter how close you are' and Thenardier is all 'bang!' but he misses and Javert is all 'told ya!' and the ruffians proceed to toss their weapons at Javert's feet and surrender. The other cops come in and start cuffing everyone, but one person challenges them:

"The Thenardier woman had entrenched herself in one of the angles of the window, and it was she who had just given vent to this roar.
"The policemen and agents recoiled.
"She had thrown off her shawl, but retained her bonnet; her husband, who was crouching behind her, was almost hidden under the discarded shawl, and she was shielding him with her body, as she elevated the paving-stone above her head with the gesture of a giantess on the point of hurling a rock.
" 'Beware!' she shouted….
[everyone backs off and she calls them cowards]
"Javert smiled, and advanced across the open space which the Thenardier was devouring with her eyes.
" 'Don't come near me,' she cried, 'or I'll crush you.'
" 'What a grenadier!' ejaculated Javert; 'you've got a beard like a man, mother, but I have claws like a woman.' " (p.542)

She throws the rock at him, which he ducks easily, and it lands at his feet. He collars the couple and had his men cuff them, and tells them, FYI, your kids are in jail, too.

And now Javert shows off a little, to make the ruffians fear him even more. He tells them to keep their masks on, lines them up, and names them one by one. While he's at it, he notices the dude tied to the chair, and orders the cops to untie him, and also to not let anyone leave the room. Javert sits himself at the table and starts writing his report. After the standard opening lines, he says, " 'Let the gentleman whom these gentlemen bound step forward.'
"The policemen glanced round them.
" 'Well,' said Javert, 'where is he?'
"The prisoner of the ruffians, M. Leblanc, M. Urbain Fabre, the father of Ursule or the Lark, had disappeared.

"The door was guarded, but the window was not. As soon as he had found himself released from his bonds, and while Javert was drawing up his report, he had taken advantage of confusion, the crowd, the darkness, and of a moment when the general attention was diverted from him, to dash out the window….
" 'The devil!' ejaculated Javert between his teeth, 'he must have been the most valuable of the lot.' " (p.543)

And all that's left to end this long entry, Book Eight, and Volume III: Marius is this: the next night, a ragamuffin lad came singing down the road, tossing insults at an old woman who turns out to be the portress of No. 50-52. She recognizes him as the imp (who Hugo notes we met back when we first went to the Thenardiers' inn in Volume II) whose whole family was just carted off to various Parisian jails. The portress takes a certain grim pleasure in informing him of their current abodes. The boy turns on his heel and walks back out into the night.

(Happy birthday to me! I am "only" two volumes away from completion of this silly self-imposed task. It's been fun, if time-consuming. But I'll go on.)

In My Life She Has Burst Like the Music of Angels

Y’all ain’t gonna believe how action-packed this part is. Fasten your seat belts, ‘cause Volume 3: Marius of Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables is a wild ride.

Victor Hugo: close observer
of teenage girls

Ado, begone! It’s time for

Book Eighth – The Wicked Poor Man

Poor Marius! So many sad things in his life, the worst of which seems to be that the old man and his pretty daughter have vamoosed for good. He goes all around Paris looking for them, in places both sensible and strange, all of his youthful exuberance and dreaminess and so forth shattered; “he was a lost dog.” (p.482)

“He took to living more and more alone, utterly overwhelmed, wholly given up to his inward anguish, going and coming in his pain like the wolf in the trap, seeing the absent one everywhere, stupefied by love.” (p.483) Poor boo. After ages of this, “he had been obliged to take to dining again, alas! Oh, infirmities of ideal passions!” (p.484)

So he’s walking out to get some food, when he gets bashed in passing by two fleeing grubby girls. “Through the twilight, Marius could distinguish their livid faced, their wild heads, their disheveled hair, their hideous bonnets, their ragged petticoats, and their bare feet.” (p.484) He overhears them fretting (in “repulsive slang” p.484) about how they’ve barely escaped being nabbed by the cops. They head off, and Marius finds a packet on the ground, which he pockets, since the girls are gone.

“ ‘How gloomy my life has become!’ he said to himself. ‘Young girls are always appearing to me, only formerly they were angels and now they are ghouls.’ “ (p.484) Don’t you feel sorry for Marius? Marius really wants you to feel sorry for him.

So he eats, heads home, and re-discovers the packet. Turns out it holds a pile of stinky tobacco-smelling letters, addressed to various people, signed with various names, each relaying a different sob story but all in the same hand. One – important info for later! – is addressed “To the benevolent Gentleman of the church of Saint-Jacqusedu-haut-Pas” (p.486) from a down-at-luck but grateful actor supplicant calling himself Fabantou.

So Marius is all, ‘huh, someone’s a con artist, eh?’ but is too bummed out by love to care, much less to speculate that the fleeing girls had any connection to it all.

Next morning, there’s a knock at the door, and to his surprise the voice that answers his “come in” isn’t Ma’am Bougon, the portress. “It was a dull, broken, hoarse, strangled voice, the voice of an old man roughened with brandy and liquor.” (p.488) It belongs to “one of those beings which are both feeble and horrible, and which cause those to shudder whom they do not cause to weep.” (p.488), also known as the older of the girls who ran into him in the street, also known, lo and behold, as the girl next door.

(Shall we see what Hugo has to say about this particular teen aged girl’s grim appearance? “The most heart-breaking thing of all was, that this young girl had not come into the world to be homely. In her early childhood she must even have been pretty. The grace of her age was still struggling against the hideous, premature decrepitude of debauchery and poverty. The remains of beauty were dying away in that face of sixteen, like the pale sunlight which is extinguished under hideous clouds at dawn on a winter’s day.” (p.488) In case someone needs to refute that the modern cult of beauty is at fault for causing teen girls to be image-obsessed, be aware that creepy old men have been scrutinizing and judging teen girls for centuries, and it leaves a mark, okay?)

So, this wretch brings Marius a letter asking for alms, and what? Surprise! It looks just like the other letters (but is signed “Jondrette”) He figures out that the girls have to carry supplication letters on behalf of their dad, the gross guy next door, and Marius takes some time to ruminate about the sad life the girls live, how poverty and manipulation and all are turning them into more monsters than women.

The girl, meanwhile, is having a ball. She hesitatingly reads a little from Marius’s books, writes on his paper, tells how her little brother is a friend of artists (take note for later, folks) and sometimes gets tickets to the theater she can use, lets Marius know how handsome he is, etc. Marius is all, ‘uh, yeah, uh, here’s your letters?’ and hands over the packet. She’s delighted, thought they were lost for good, and dashes off to deliver the one to “that old fellow who goes to mass.” (p.491) Marius comes up with five francs for her, keeping his last sixteen sous for himself. (He also paid 6 months rent for the neighbors at one point when he had cash. Remember, Marius is proud of living poorly to spurn his grandfather.)

So now Marius realizes that his level of destitution isn’t on the same scale as his neighbors. He contemplates all that misery and if this volume weren’t already so voluminous, I’d share more, but as it is, let’s get to the point: he discovers a hole near the ceiling that allows him to stand on the furniture and see into the Jondrette’s room. Or “hovel” as we should call it. “Marius was poor, and his chamber was poverty-stricken, but as his poverty was noble, his garret was neat. The den upon which his eye now rested was abject, dirty, fetid, pestiferous, mean, sordid.” (p.494)

Notable among the broken, shoddy furnishings, the lack of food, the barely-clothed torsos of the residents, was the fact that Jondrette had tobacco for his pipe. He’s writing more letters, and his big coarse wife is lauding him hollowly and his pitiful younger daughter is morose.

Marius is about to leave them to it, when the older daughter bursts into the hovel and tells her family that the old fellow from the church is following her, about to join them in their home. After Jondrette quizzed her closely to be sure she wasn’t spreading misinformation, he sprang into action. He put out the fire, broke the straw out of the bottom of their one chair, forced the younger girl to shove her hand through the window pane, breaking it to let in the cold and bloodying herself to add more pathos to their home. “One would have said he was a general making the final preparation at the moment when the battle is on the point of beginning.” (p.498) He tears his shirt, sends his wife to bed, encourages the kid to cry, and stands posing at the mantle, ready to look as miserable as possible, muttering about how the philanthropist probably won’t give them anything but bread and clothes that don’t fit and all his work will have been for nothing.

A knock!

The man and his daughter enter!

“Marius had not quitted his post. His feelings for the moment surpassed the powers of the human tongue.

It was She!” (p. 500)

He’s agog, he can’t believe his angel is in that horrible garret. His soul soars.

Meanwhile, the old man has given Jondrette the expected bundle of clothes and food, which Jondrette pretends to appreciate while making snide comments to his daughter about it. But he wants more, so he “exclaimed with an accent which smacked at the same time of the vainglory of the mountebank at fairs, and the humility of the mendicant on the highway” (p.501), pointing out the lack of fire and clothes, the broken window, the “ill” wife in the bed. He pinches his daughter’s bleeding hand to make her sob more, attributing the injury to unsafe factory work. He claims they’ll be kicked out if they don’t come up with a year’s rent, and names an amount that would have covered 18 months instead. (Also, Marius knows it’s a lie because it had only been 6 months since he paid their back rent.)

The philanthropist hands over his coat and the only five francs he has on him, promising to return at six that evening with the sixty francs Jondrette needs.

Marius kind of noticed all this, but mostly he’s been staring at the girl all this time. Her. His angel. Being all angelic with her charitable goods, her kindness to mother and daughters, and so on. When they leave, Marius tries to follow, but the cabbie is all “pay in advance, bub” and Marius is all “I’m good for it, I swear!” and the cabbie is all “you think I was born yesterday?” and since Marius gave his cash to the Jondrette girl, he can’t afford to follow his angel. ALAS!

He’s super sad and grumpy as he heads back to his room, and the last person he wants to see is the Jondrette girl who took his cash, but she butts into his room and suggests that, since she is always running helpful errands for her dad, she has the skills to help him out of whatever jam is bumming him out. She is NOT delighted to be asked to find the Angel Girl’s address, but she agrees. “There was a shade in the words ‘the beautiful lady’ which troubled Marius,” (p.506) but he pays no attention to his instinct and promises her anything if she’ll find his lady love.

Okay, this particular volume has a LOT more action, but there’s a limit to how long I’m willing to

make this post. So we shall leave it here with these compelling questions:

·      Will the philanthropist return with the cash?

·      Will the younger Jondrette have her arm cut off due to injury?

·      Will the older Jondrette find the angel lady’s address?

·      Will Marius fall through the commode he’s standing on to spy on his neighbors? 

A Breath Away from Hell

And now is the part of Victor Hugo's Les Misérables where Hugo gets philosophical.

Well, another one of the parts.

But this time about depravity, so that's always fun! Let's see what Volume 3: Marius has to tell us about the human condition, in:

I'm halfway through this novel,
I've seen the stage production
and a film, and I've yet to see
why they made a book cover
featuring a lot of shoes.

Book Seventh - Patron Minette

Well, diving right into it: "Human societies all have what is called in theatrical parlance, a third lower floor." (p.477) So: up top, all those "great political, revolutionary, and philosophical" folks discussed in Book Fourth. Nobility of thought and action, etc. Progress. 

Below that, normal everyday schlubs.

Below that is "the great cavern of evil." (p.478) Nothing redeeming here. Nothing good. "Its name is simply theft, prostitution, murder, assassination. It is darkness, and it desires chaos.Its vault is formed of ignorance." (p.479) (I think Hugo disapproves!)

And in that evil place: "A quartette of ruffians, Claquesous, Gueulemer, Babet, and Montparnasse governed the third lower floor of Paris, from 1830 to 1835." (p.479) Now, Hugo does a gorgeous job of describing these four evil dudes, and since this chapter is exactly half-way through the book, I encourage you all to just go read it for fun. My favorite part: "[Claquesous] was a ventriloquist. Babet said: 'Claquesous is a nocturne for two voices.'" (p.480)

Possibly not the Proteus
Hugo meant.

So you've got these four baddies. They "formed a sort of Proteus, winding like a serpent among the police," (p.480) making it impossible for the police to pin anything on any one. "These four men were not four men; they were a sort of mysterious robber with four heads, operating on a grand scale in Paris; they were that monstrous polyp of evil, which inhabits the crypt of society." (p.481) And the underworld called them Patron-Minette. Plus lots of other things; Hugo makes a list. It is long.

Basically, he's not big on gray areas here. There is black, and there is white. These four: black. "What is necessary to cause these spectres to vanish? Light. Light in floods. Not a single bat can resist the dawn. Light up society from below." (p.482)

Presumably, the next long chapter will proceed to do just that.

In Your Eyes I am Just Like a Child

I am going to have to work diligently to get anywhere close to completion of Victor Hugo's Les Misérables by the end of 2013. Do feel free to scold me for my tardiness.

So, we're in the midst of Volume 3: Marius, and that young man is living the poor but noble life, while his grandfather thinks harsh thoughts about him, and about everyone. Start rubbing your hands together in anticipation now, folks, because here comes:

Coy womanhood! Or, actually,
girlhood, because dang but
does Hugo wax rhapsodic
about teenagers, or what?

Book Sixth - The Conjunction of Two Stars
Not to give too much away, but one of those stars is the affable, attractive Marius, who likes to take morning walks through various public places in Paris. The other first appears sitting on a bench with a white-haired old guy: "a sort of child thirteen or fourteen years of age, so thin as to be almost homely, awkward, insignificant, and with a possible promise of handsome eyes." (p.466) Marius passes them frequently, and doesn't particularly note the duo. "He found the man to his taste, but the girl insipid." (p.466) 

After a couple of years of this - them on the bench, him walking by - things change. This is when you can think about 60-year-old Hugo writing about teenage girls:

• "The person whom he now beheld was a tall and beautiful creature, possessed of all the most charming lines of a woman at the precise moment when they are still combined with all the most ingenuous graces of the child; a pure and fugitive moment, which can be expressed only by these two words, - 'fifteen years.'" (p.467)
• "In six months the little girl had become a young maiden; that was all. Nothing is more frequent than this phenomenon. There is a moment when girls blossom out in the twinkling of an eye, and becomes roses all at once. One left them children but yesterday; today, one finds them disquieting to the feelings." (p.467) Does one, Victor? DOES ONE?
• "As three days in April suffice to cover certain trees with flowers, six months had sufficed to clothe her with beauty. Her April had arrived." (p.467)
• That not metaphor enough for you? How about a poor person who suddenly has wads of cash? "That is the result of having pocketed an income; a note fell due yesterday. The young girl had received her quarterly income." (p.467)
• "Her eyes were of a deep, celestial blue, but in that veiled azure, there was, as yet, nothing but the glance of a child. She looked at Marius indifferently, as she would have stared at the brat running beneath the sycamores," despite the fact that he's walking past her bench half a dozen times. (p.468)
• But then one spring day Marius walks by, and "the young girl raised her eyes to him, the two glances met.  What was there in the young girl's glance on this occasion? Marius could not have told. There was nothing and there was everything. It was a strange flash." (p.468)
• "There comes a day when the young girl glances in this manner. Woe to him who chances to be there!" (p.468)
• "It is a snare which the innocent maiden sets unknown to herself, and in which she captures hearts without either wishing or knowing it. It is a virgin looking like a woman." (p.468) Ummmm....

So all of that happens, and Marius goes home and glances in the mirror and is horrified to realize that he's "been so slovenly, indecorous, and inconceivably stupid as to go for his walk in the Luxembourg with his 'every-day clothes,' that is to say, with a hat battered near the band, coarse carter's boots, black trousers which showed white at the knees, and a black coat which was pale at the elbows." (p.468) Ah, that magical moment when a guy realizes that he's making an impression with his appearance.

The next day he gets dandified and heads for his walk. "On the way thither, he encountered Courfeyrac, and pretended not to see him. Courfeyrac, on his return home, said to his friends:- 'I have just met Marius' new hat and new coat, with Marius inside them. He was going to pass an examination, no doubt. He looked utterly stupid.'" (p.469)

Lots of perambulation follows. It would make a great madcap movie montage. Marius strolls by, pretending it's just as usual, but looking sidelong at the girl. He walks closer to the bench some days, further away but slower other days. Sometimes he doubles back, sometimes he hides behind the statues and trees to spy on her, sometimes he sits on a nearby bench, going over his mental catalogue of her every gown and bonnet, and thinking inane things about how she was ignoring him, but she couldn't "help feeling esteem and consideration for me, if she only knew that I am the veritable author of the dissertation on Marcos Obregon de la Ronde," (p.470) and so forth. It even occurred to him that the girl's dad might start thinking his behavior odd.

One day! Oh, bliss! Marius was sitting on a bench near them, pretending to read, and she and her dad
walked past him! "He felt his brain on fire. She had come to him, what joy! And then, how she had looked at him! She appeared to him more beautiful than he had ever seen her yet." (p.471) It was heaven on earth, natch. "At the same time, he was horribly vexed because there was dust on his boots. He thought he felt sure that she had looked at his boots too." (p.472)

Nevertheless, Marius was on Cloud Nine, and unaccountably merry when dining with his friends. "When the mine is charged, when the conflagration is ready, nothing is more simple. A glance is a spark." (p.472)

Marius (as those of us who spent pages and pages reading his back story know) had this hero-worship thing happening with his father, which "gradually become a religion, and, like all religious, it had retreated to the depths of his soul. Something was required in the foreground. Love came." (p.473) On with the madcap montage, now with less pacing and more of Marius crouching behind pedestals trying to look grand for his lady love while being unnoticed by the dad.

"Sometimes, he remained motionless by the half-hour together in the shade of a Leonidas or a Spartacus, holding in his hand a book, above which his eyes, gently raised, sought the beautiful girl, and she, on her side, turned her charming profile towards him with a vague smile. While conversing in the most natural and tranquil manner in the world with the white-haired man, she bent upon Marius all the reveries of a virginal and passionate eye. Ancient and time-honored manoeuvre which Eve understood from the very first day the world, and which every woman understood from the very first day of her life! her mouth replied to one, and her glance replied to another." (p.473)

Papa starts playing mind-games with the dumb boy - walking to another bench while leaving his daughter at the original, to see which of them Marius follow, coming to the park alone to see if Marius would spy on Papa alone. Marius is goofy enough to fall for his traps.

And here's my favorite love-struck stupidity story: one day when Papa and the girl leave the park, Marius finds a handkerchief on the bench embroidered with "U.F." and instantly snatches it up, decides her name must be Ursule, keeps it by his heart during the day, on his pillow at night, and decides it embodies her soul. "This handkerchief belonged to the old gentleman, who had simply let it fall from his pocket." (p.474) So then Marius spent days kissing the handkerchief in front of "Ursule" in the park. "The beautiful child understood nothing of all this, and signified it to him by imperceptible signs. 'O modesty!' said Marius." (p.474)

Let's ogle teenagers with fancy language again, shall we? One windy day Ursule and Papa walked past Marius and he got up to follow. "All at once, a gust of wind, more merry than the rest, and probably charged with performing the affairs of Springtime, swept down from the nursery, flung itself on the alley, enveloped the young girl in a delicious shiver, worthy of Virgil's nymphs, and the fawns of Theocritus, and lifted her dress, the robe more sacred than that of Isis, almost to the height of her garter. A leg of exquisite shape appeared. Marius saw it. He was exasperated and furious." (p.474)

"Alas, the poor child had done nothing; there had been but one culprit, the wind; but Marius, in whom quivered the Bartholo who exists in Cherubin, was determined to be vexed, and was jealous of his own shadow." (p.474)

So jealous dumb Marius is watching Ursule, who glances at him. He "darted a sullen and ferocious glance at her. The young girl gave way to that slight straightening up with a backward movement, accompanied by a raising of the eyelids, which signifies: 'Well, what is the matter?' This was 'their first quarrel.'" (p.474) (Because it's totally kosher for guys to get mad at gals for being blown about by the wind and glare at them and them to not question it but just to be saddened.) (I'm sarcastic, but check out Hugo's further commentary: "Marius' wrath against 'Ursule,' just and legitimate as it was, passed off. He finally pardoned her; but this cost him a great effort; he sulked for three days." (p.475))

Eventually, Marius follows the duo home. He asks the porter lots of nosy questions, gets info about which floor they live on, that he's not rich but does good works with what income he has, and leaves feeling that he'll get the guy's name out of the porter soon. But the next day, when Marius follows them home, Papa sends Ursule inside and stares down Marius, who's standing in the street.

For the next eight torturous days, no Ursule or Papa in the Luxembourg gardens. No sign of them at them coming or going from their house. Eventually he goes to the house and there's no light in the window. He asks the porter.

They'd moved out the day before. No forwarding address.

Poor dumb love-struck Marius.

I am Agog! I am Aghast!

(Is Mel writing about Les Mis at last?)

Hello, fellow fans of Victor Hugo's Les Misérables - I'm back! But though it took me a really, really long narrative time to reach the point of something happening in Volume 3: Marius, it seems that pretty soon, it's probably going to turn out that there might be some actual action on the page. Let's get through:

A simple meal, a quiet life...
all a man needs.

Book Fifth - The Excellence of Misfortune

So, Marius is nobly indigent. His clothes are shoddy. He's earning an honest pittance at a publishing job. "He lived on it. How? Not so badly. We will explain." (p.453) I just bet we will. In short, he has a hovel overhead, not much in the way of clothing, eats a lot of bread, and is totally full of himself for living this life. He won't go into debt. "He even said to himself, that a creditor is worse than a master; for the master possesses only your person, a creditor possesses your dignity and can administer to it a box on the ear." (p.454)

Meanwhile, he's still crazy about his dear departed dad, and to a lesser but still freakish extent, old Thenardier who "rescued" him at Waterloo. (Remember Waterloo?) (Hi to my husband's cousin's daughter's roommate, BTW! You remember Waterloo, don't you?) Marius's grandfather is super-pouty about Marius's desertion of him in the no-good father's honor. "There are fathers who do not love their children; there exists no grandfather who does not adore his grandson." (p.455) And also, "Old men need affection as they need the sun." (p.455) So this estrangement isn't so good for Gillenormand.

Sigh. I'd love to tell you more about all this, but you see, there was that church warden who first told Marius about his father's banishment from his life. And Hugo says, "As we shall see M. Mabeuf again, later on, a few words will not be superfluous." (p.458) As if Hugo is any kind of judge about what is superfluous! Still, I give him props for these fun descriptive details:

• "He never went out without a book under his arm, and he often returned with two." (p.458)
• "He had... no teeth, either in his mouth or his mind...." (p.458)

Anyway, let's leave the bookish old man alone - at the moment, Marius only sees him a couple of times a month. What he loves to do almost daily is take long walks about Paris, thinking Deep Thoughts, socializing more often, observing the world, etc. (He would go out ut: broke. He can't afford a carriage, and walking gets his boots dirty, and "in a drawing-room you may be soiled everywhere except on your shoes. In order to insure a good reception there, only one irreproachable thing is asked of you; your conscious? No, your boots." (p.461))

Let's keep following Marius on his walks, shall we? You never know who he'll run across! Oh, wait. No. Hugo diverts again - back to Sad Grandpa Gillenormand. He's busy ranting about what he guesses Marius is doing with his free time. (Rabble-rousing.) "The nineteenth century is poison. The first scamp that happens along lets his beard grow like a goat's, thinks himself a real scoundrel, and abandons his old relatives. He's a Republican, he's a romantic." (p.463) (Kids these days!)

His daughter brings in the nephew she adores, Theodule, who just nods along with the rant. And even though he agrees that "Students deliberating on the National Guard,-such a thing could not be seen among the Ogibewas nor the Cadodaches! [sic] Savages who go naked, with their noodles dressed like a shuttlecock, with a club in their paws, are less of brutes than those bachelors of arts!" (p.464), Sad Grandpa doesn't decide to love him best of all. (Yes, I included that last part because: noodles dressed like a shuttlecock!)

Don't You Fret, M'sieur Marius

Well, howdy, folks! You all remember how I'm reading Victor Hugo's Les Misérables this year, and posting about it all the time? (If by "all" I can mean "yeah, some....") Well here I am again!

Interesting and Informative
and Historical and... yeah.

To be honest, Volume 3: Marius didn't start out dynamically. So I slogged through (but here I am at 47% complete, which is encouraging), and am giving you all this at the low, low price of one entry:
Book First - Paris Studied in Its Atom
Book Second - The Great Bourgeois
Book Third - The Grandfather and the Grandson
Book Fourth - The Friends of the A B C

We meet Marius. Eventually. First, Mister Victor's Recap of All Things Ever. This is where we meet "the gamin - the street Arab - of Paris" (p.388) who you'll know better as Gavroche. Here's some of Hugo's delightful prose about this breed of guy:

• "The gamin is not devoid of literary intuition. His tendency, and we say it with proper amount of regret, would not constitute classic taste. He is not very academic by nature." (p.389)
• "All crimes of the man begin in the vagabondage of the child." (p.392)
• "There are two things to which he plays Tantalus, and which he always desires without ever attaining them: to overthrow the government, and to get his trousers sewed up again." (p.394)
• "The Paris gamin of today, like the graeculus of Rome in days gone by, is the infant populace with the wrinkle of the old world on his brow." (p.395)
• "This child never felt so well as when he was in the street. The pavements were less hard to him than his mother's heart." (p.399)

He also goes on a great deal about the universality of Paris:

• "Paris makes more than the law, it makes the fashion; Paris sets more than the fashion, it sets the routine. Paris may be stupid, if it sees fit; it sometimes allows itself the luxury; then the universe is stupid in company with it." (p.397)
• "Paris is always showing its teeth; when it is not scolding it is laughing." (p.398)
• "As for the Parisian populace, even when a man grown, it is always the street Arab; to paint the child is to paint the city; and it is for that reason that we have studied this eagle in this arrant sparrow." (p.398) (Oh, is that why? I thought you just liked to bloviate.)
• "To stray is human. To saunter is Parisian." (p.437)

So Gavroche, on the rare occasion that he returns home, shows up at the hovel we know so well, where Valjean and Cosette briefly took refuge after leaving the Thenardier inn. All new inhabitants by now, including Gavroche's poorly-off family in the attic room (mom, dad, two almost-grown and well-loved sisters) - they never particularly welcomed him home, which Gavroche took in stride, not knowing any better.

Also in this treasure-box of a building: "a very poor young man who was called M. Marius." (p.400)

And now: Mister Victor's Recap of Marius's Entire Family Tree. Salient points: grandfather M. Gillenormand is the life and soul of an anti-Napoleon salon filled with gray-haired folk. He lives with one of his two daughters (the ugly one. "Both had wings, the one like an angel, the other like a goose." (p.406)) Her grand-nephew Theodule was her favorite person. Her other grand-nephew Marius, who actually lived with them, was a serious chap, who never saw his father. The father, Baron Pontmercy, we already met (Hugo sure is fond of weaving all these random people together across the breadth of his book) - he was Napoleon's soldier who Thenardier "rescued" (i.e., started to steal from until caught) from a pile of corpses at Waterloo. Pontmercy went through the rest of life loyal to Napoleon, and was reviled, and had to give up his son to M. Gillenormand in order to keep the poor kid alive. He had to promise never to see him, and Gillenormand intercepted all the letters he wrote Marius, though there were a few sympathetic church folk who used to observe Pontmercy lurking behind a column just to get a glimpse of his son. And finally Pontmercy dies, after summoning Marius, who makes it to his room an hour too late. Marius is saddened, and after he finds out how much his dad suffered for his sake, vows to fulfill Pontmercy's last request, which is to look up that nice M. Thenardier and see if he needs anything.

Sigh.

Marius (who is "on the whole, a cold and ardent, noble, generous, proud, religious, enthusiastic lad; dignified to harshness, pure to shyness." (p.417)) becomes an anti-Royalist in honor of Pontmercy, which Gillnormand and his daughter find out (as does Marius's cousin Theodule, sent to spy on Marius, but Theodule opts carelessly against ratting out his cousin.) So grandpa throws him out. He doesn't have anywhere to go, but fortunately he's spotted by a classmate from college, who is part of this gang of young Revolutionaries called The Friends of the A B C (do you really want the whole long detailed political history as to why? I didn't think so.)

Enjolras (the leader), Combeferre (the guide), Jean Prouvaire, Fauilly, Courfeyrac (the center), Bahorel (the clown), Lesgle or Laigle, Joly, and Grantaire - we meet them all here. I'm not really going to pass along the introductions, delightful though some of them are, because: wordy Hugo. "All these young men who differed so greatly, and who, on the whole, can only be discussed seriously, held the same religion: Progress." (p.438) Any rate, Marius mixes in with them, but doesn't pay too much attention to their philosophies, being mostly concerned with not having any cash or a job. (M. Gillnormand does have his daughter send him cash, but he returns it as tainted stuff, and moves - presumably to the hovel - in order to save what he has left and to prevent her readily finding him again.)

"Marius had fallen into a wasps'-nest of wits. However, although he was silent and grave, he was, none the less, both winged and armed." (p.442) (See, Hugo, this is why I forgive your interminable history lessons! That is a genius line.) So one day when he's half-paying attention as they all sit around drinking wine and gibbering on about Progress, Marius overhears something which causes him to stand up and make a grand speech about how if it weren't for Napoleon, they wouldn't have Paris as it was, they wouldn't have Progress, yadda yadda. Kind of stuns the group into silence.

Drink With Me

Don’t remind me, don’t remind me: I’m a month behind on LesMis Project. At least. Valjean is turning in his coffin. (That’s what’s known as foreshadowing in the literary trades, BTW.)

But! This is the end of Volume 2: Cosette. Soon I will move on to Marius! First, though –

No more sweeping! Hooray!

Book Eighth – Cemeteries Take That Which is Committed Them

So, poor Fauchelevent is totally confounded about how Valjean and this kid appeared in his garden, but he’s committed to helping them, even though no men are allowed in the convent. He “understood nothing of the matter. How had M. Madeline got there, when the walls were what they were? Cloister walls are not to be stepped over. How did he get there with a child? One cannot scale a perpendicular wall with a child in one’s arms.” (p.354) (Well, not unless you’re Valjean you can’t, apparently.) But hey, Valjean had risked his life to save Fauchelevent, so turn about is fair play and all.

Fortunately for Valjean (who, let’s face it, does manage to get himself fortuitously out of as many scrapes as he gets himself in, at least since the initial 19 year prison term), one of the nuns is dying. This means a couple of things: everyone else will be distracted praying for her, and when she dies, outsiders have to enter to sign the death certificate and bring out her coffin. Fauchelevent and Valjean cook up a plan wherein Fauchelevent will stick Cosette in a basket and haul her off to a fruit-seller friend of his to await the next move. Meanwhile, somehow or another Valjean will get out then they will reenter under guise of Fauchelevent’s brother and niece, the one to be the gardener’s assistant, the other to join the convent school.

The nun dies, and Fauchelevent is summoned to the prioress. Now, Fauchelevent is actually a kinda clever guy, but he looks and acts like a simple guy. “The whole convent thought him stupid.” (p.359) So they don’t know that he recognizes all the bells and signals that happen in the place just like another language, and think he’s the old, lame, slow, totally unthreatening guy he makes out to be, which is perfect for their needs.

Reverend Mother starts an interrogation, and Fauchelevent his counter-interrogation, and eventually they come to the two essential points: he has a brother who he wants to come join him to help with the things he’s too infirm to do, and she wants him to pretend to send the dead nun to the cemetery but really put her (in the coffin she’s used as a bed for many years) (as you do) in the crypt under the convent. He mentions various legal and moral objections, which she adeptly bats aside, and logistical objections, which she tells him to figure out, and he finally agrees. As he’s leaving, she says his brother and niece can move in the day after the nun’s mortal remains are dealt with as she wishes. (He tries to get Valjean brought in to help with moving the slab that covers the crypt, describing his strength: “A perfect Turk!” (p.366) but Reverend Mother assures him he can do it on his own.)

“The strides of a lame man are like the ogling glances of a one-eyed man; they do not reach their goal very promptly.” (p.367) But eventually Fauchelevent gets back to the gardener’s cottage to relay the prioress’s plan. He still doesn’t know how he’s going to get Valjean out of the convent, though.

Valjean, of course, has a plan. Instead of sticking dirt in the dummy coffin to go to the cemetery, he’ll stick himself. “Jean Valjean gave way to one of those rare smiles which lighted up his face like a flash from heaven in the winter. ‘You know, Fauchelevent, what you have said: “Mother Crucifixion is dead.” And I add: “and Father Madeline is buried.’” (p.368) Despite the jokes, he convinces Fauchelevent that he’s serious, so they figure out the logistics of where to hide him pre-coffinization, and what kinds of air holes and provisions he’ll need, etc.

“What seemed unprecedented to Fauchelevent was, we repeat, a simple matter to Jean Valjean. Jean Valjean had been in worse straits than this. Any man who has been a prisoner understands how to contract himself to fit the diameter of the escape…. An escape is a cure. What does not a man undergo for the sake of a cure?” (p.369) Besides, “to live for a long time in a box, to find air where there is none, to economize his breath for hours, to know how to stifle without dying – this was one of Jean Valjean’s gloomy talents.” (p.369) (Dude, I am so not suited to the life of a convict.)

The plan also calls for Fauchelevent to send his friend the gravedigger off to drink while he “buries” the body, in reality releasing Valjean and sending him off to collect Cosette from the fruit-seller. Finally they iron out all the obstacles. “’That is settled, Father Fauchelevent. All will go well.’ ‘Provided nothing goes wrong,’ thought Fauchelevent. ‘In that case, it would be terrible.’” (p.370) (See, Hugo knows about foreshadowing, too!)

MINOR hiccup: Fauchelevent’s gravedigger friend? Dead. The new guy? Not a drunken sot who can easily be sent off. Or difficultly sent off. No matter what Fauchelevent tries – even offering to buy the drinks himself! – the new guy is going to bury the body before he leaves the cemetery.

So Valjean’s coffin is lowered into the grave. “He had a certain sensation of cold.” (p.375) (Understatement is another literary technique.) He heard the priest and choir boy chanting Latin over his head. He heard a shovelful of dirt hit the coffin lid. And another. And a third. At the fourth: “There are things which are too strong for the strongest man. Jean Valjean lost consciousness.” (p.376)

Finally Fauchelevent hits upon a desperate plan to stop this new gravedigger from burying his pal. There’s a system of cards to do with locking the cemetery gates and the guard and fines, and when he pick-pockets the gravedigger’s card, he’s able to convince him to run home and look for it before he gets fined, offering to bury the coffin himself. The gravedigger gratefully agrees and rushes off, and Fauchelevent hops into the grave to pry up the coffin lid. He freaks the heck out to find Valjean possibly dead, then freaks out again to see Valjean alive. “To see a corpse is alarming, to behold a resurrection is almost as much so.” (p.379)

They get out of the grave, though, and bury the coffin, dropping the gravediggers tools off at his place and letting him know the burial was over and that Fauchelevent had “found” his missing gate-card, so now the gravedigger thinks that Fauchelevent is the best guy ever.

The nuns and religious community also think Fauchelevent is the best guy ever, for putting the dead nun in the crypt. Goodwill just surrounds the guy. His “brother” “Ultime Fauchelevent” becomes his assistant with no problems, Cosette charms the nuns by looking like someone who will grow up to be ugly (apparently nuns love that in a kid – easier to cure them of vanity that way) and she becomes a charity pupil at the convent school. So although “Javert watched the quarter for more than a month,” (p.384) Cosette and Valjean were safely hidden. (There’s lots of sad stuff here about how easy it was for Cosette to keep her secrets from her classmates, because of the awful training in terror and silence via the Thenardiers, yikes. Poor kid.)

It was a little paradise for Valjean. Safety, the garden (he always liked working with crops), Cosette growing and laughing and spending time with him when she wasn’t in school, and a kind of salvation. You see, Valjean had started to forget the lessons of the Bishop with the silver, and to compare his actions with those of man (against whom he tended to look rather saintly) as opposed to comparing them to what God would like (against which he was scraping by.) So he was able to swing back to the side of the angels.

He compared captivity in prison to that in the convent: In prison, “they lived nameless, designated only by numbers, and converted, after a manner, into cipers themselves, with downcast eyes, with lowered voices, with shorn heads, beneath the cudgel and in disgrace.” (p.385) The nuns “also lived with shorn heads, with downcast eyes, with lowered voices, not in disgrace, but amid the scoffs of the world, not with their backs bruised with the cudgel, but with their shoulders lacerated with their discipline.” (p.385) “What had those men done? They had stolen, violated, pillaged, murdered, assassinated. They were bandits, counterfeiters, poisoners, incendiaries, murderers, parricides. What had these women done? They had done nothing whatever.” (p.386) It goes on for a while in this vein, but basically: Valjean is moved by the ‘imprisonment’ of the nuns, and the fact that their devout community has allowed him to regain his own faith and communion with God. And, yes, he’s noticed that twice now when he was in his most desperate straits, he was saved by his encounters with religious people.

“Many years passed….” (p.388) and that’s the end of Volume 2: Cosette.