Les Misérables

By Victor Hugo, Isabel F. Hapgood and Ken Mondschein

“The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but he who causes the darkness.”

“So long as ignorance and poverty exist on earth, books of the nature of Les Misérables cannot fail to be of use,” says Victor Hugo in the preface of his famous novel. Certainly, Les Misérables is French history recounted through the personal stories of its main characters. The tale offers philosophical insight on the good deeds that can happen even amidst ignorance and poverty. This handsome volume is a beautiful addition to any classic literature library.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Canterbury Classics
• Release date: Oct 1, 2015
• ISBN: 9781626865037

Victor Hugo

Victor Hugo (1802–1885), born in Besançon, France, is widely considered one of the greatest French writers and influencers in the romantic literary movement. He rose to fame at a young age, having published his first collection of poetry at just twenty years old. As an avid activist against capital punishment, Hugo used his novels to reveal the injustices and hardships facing Parisians. He became active in politics and was elected the French Parliament, where he advocated against the death penalty. When Louis-Napoléon gained power over France in 1851, Hugo was deemed a traitor, and he fled to Brussels in exile. During this time, he wrote his most thought-provoking and searing works, many of which have been adapted into award-winning films and musicals, such as Les Misérables and The Hunchback of Notre Dame.  

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

Les Misérables is one of the world’s most beloved stories. Since its first publication in 1862, Victor Marie Hugo’s novel has been adapted for the stage and screen, and even translated into a comic book format. The tale of former convict Jean Valjean, the orphan Cosette, the revolutionary Marius, the relentless Inspector Javert, and the scurrilous Thénardiers has delighted, thrilled, and brought tears to the eyes of millions. It is a story about class, religion, politics and, of course, love. Yet, few fans of Les Misérables have read Hugo’s original work. This shortcoming is one thing that this edition aims to correct. Whereas Les Misérables can be a challenging work—particularly because of Hugo’s digressions on subjects ranging from street argot to biographical portraits of the characters—we think that this volume will fill an important place on any bookshelf, giving readers a full picture of this classic novel.

The version we have chosen to present is Isabel Florence Hapgood’s 1887 translation, one of the first (though not the first) to present Hugo to an English-speaking audience. Hapgood was born in 1851 in Boston, Massachusetts. Her father, Asa, was an inventor who profited from the rapid industrialization of the region. Hapgood was raised and educated in Worcester, an industrial town near Boston. She showed an early talent for languages, and grew up to become a well-known scholar of Russian Orthodox Church liturgy and practices. However, as a woman, her professional opportunities would have been limited. She is perhaps best known for translating Russian writers, especially Tolstoy and Gogol (the former of whom she met on an 1887–89 trip through Russia), though she also translated Hugo’s Notre Dame de Paris (better known as The Hunchback of Notre Dame) and Toilers of the Sea. She never married or had children, died in 1928, and is buried in Worcester Rural Cemetery.

Life and Times of Victor Hugo

It is impossible to understand Victor Hugo’s life and work without understanding the times he lived in. Hugo was a child of the French Revolution—born in 1802, twelve years after the overthrow of the Bourbon monarchy and two years before Napoleon Bonaparte crowned himself emperor of France. Begun with high ideals and ending in chaos, the Revolution upended the structure of society and plunged the nation into terror and disorder. At first, the Revolution was about social justice—the belief that all men were equal, regardless of their birth. The men who first demanded widespread changes in the way things were done in France were well educated and wealthy, but found themselves excluded from the highest places in society by dint of their common birth.

However, destabilizing the social structure was dangerous: The well-intentioned men who had begun the Revolution found their plans ruined by mob violence. King Louis XVI was executed as a traitor, and lofty values were washed away by the torrents of blood running in the streets. The nascent democracy dissolved into infighting and purges even as France was invaded by foreign powers determined to restore the monarchy. Even after stability was restored, the external threat remained. It was not until Napoleon Bonaparte seized power at the very end of 1799, defeated the invading armies, and proceeded to spread the Revolution’s values of equality, liberty, and fraternity to the rest of Europe that the danger was removed. In 1804, however, things would come full circle as Napoleon crowned himself emperor—albeit of an empire that outwardly espoused the aims of the Revolution.

Napoleon’s forces were at last defeated by a coalition of European nations in 1814. His return from exile and final defeat in 1815 represented the end of his personal power. But the Revolution lived on: Despite the fact that the Bourbon monarchy was restored in France and the old order seemingly brought back, the genie had been let out of the bottle. French politics would be divided forever after. Idealistic Republicans wanted to carry forth the banner of the Revolution and create a new and better world, while reactionary Conservatives sought to turn back the clock, believing that any sort of progress toward liberalism would result in the same chaos the Revolution had unleashed. Between them were all flavors of ideology, and Victor Hugo would experience the full spectrum of political belief in his lifetime.

Hugo’s father Joseph was a committed Republican and a high-ranking officer in Napoleon’s army, while his mother Sophie was Catholic and conservative. The conflict between the two led to an unhappy marriage, and they separated in 1803. Hugo’s mother returned with him to Paris, where she ensured that Victor and his brothers received a Catholic Royalist education. This is not to say that Hugo had no mind of his own: His mother died in 1821, and the following year, at the age of twenty, he married a childhood friend of whom Sophie had not approved—the nineteen-year-old Adèle Foucher. Hugo’s rise to fame as a poet and a novelist happened nearly simultaneously with his marriage: His first book of poems was published to much acclaim in 1822. His first novel, Han of Iceland, a historical romance that takes place in Norway, was published in 1823. The same year saw the birth of Hugo’s first son, Léopold, who unfortunately died in infancy—a common occurrence at the time.

Even if Hugo rebelled against his mother by marrying Adèle, the early training she had given him remained: The young writer’s commitment to king and church remained firm through his early career. Unlike so many thinkers, who begin as radicals and become more conservative with age, Victor Hugo became more left-wing the older he got! Yet, if we look at his life as a whole, we see that he was, in fact, consistent: through it all, his stance was that of the romantic poet, the self-made and self-directed man in opposition to the powerful and unjust, who held forth the idea of liberty and brotherhood for all. In fact, Hugo was never not a provocateur. Art in the nineteenth century was political, and his writing was no exception. Already in Han of Iceland we see Hugo’s social consciousness—in this case, a rebellion by Norwegian miners against unjust royal prerogatives drives much of the plot.

Three years after Han of Iceland, in 1826, came another volume of poetry and Bug-Jargal, a novel of the Haitian Revolution. Hugo’s play Cromwell in 1827 began his ascent as not just a good but a great writer—someone whose writing bespoke the spirit of his age. Though Cromwell was too lengthy to stage, the introduction served as something of a manifesto for the Romantic movement growing in France. The old forms of things needed to be swept away; the new should prevail. As Hugo said in his introduction to Cromwell, There are neither rules nor models; or, rather, there are no other rules than the general laws of nature. The same antiauthoritarian ideas Hugo mentions in his introduction to Cromwell are evident in his artwork, which is wonderfully free and seems to prefigure much of the avant-garde work of the abstract impressionists and the surrealists. Hugo pursued art as a hobby, but kept his work out of the public eye; the painter Eugène Delacroix said that if Hugo had chosen to dedicate himself to painting instead of writing, he would have been the leading artist of the century.

Romanticism

As Yale historian Peter Gay put it, Romanticism sought the reenchantment of the world. Romantics dismissed the tradition of the old world and focused on emotion, individual experience, and being true to oneself. In this, it was both the product and the antithesis of Enlightenment rationality and the world of heartless industrial capitalism. Romantics embraced religion, even mysticism. (As he aged, Hugo himself abandoned formal Catholicism for spiritualism, but he always believed in the power of the supernatural.) Romantics put their trust in feelings. Rather than a perfect future, they looked to an imagined past, in which they placed the origins of authentic national culture and the brotherhood of all members of the nation-state. Most of all, they believed in authenticity of feeling, especially romantic love.

To Romanticism, we may ultimately credit not only the struggling students of Puccini’s La Bohème, but also the cool pose of James Dean, the rebellious stance of Joe Strummer of the Clash, and even—more conservatively—the country-squire hobbits of J. R. R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth and the inhabitants of Walt Disney’s fantastical realms. While rejecting the modern, workaday world and idealizing the individual, Romanticism nonetheless promotes themes of social progress and mobility. Even as it claimed to upset the order of the world, it reinforced it—wild feeling, such as that of Marius and Cosette, subverted to the well-ordered, money-minded rituals of bourgeois courtship; the radical ideals of republicanism and equality subverted to parliamentary governments run by moneyed business interests.

Most of all, Romanticism is a seeming rejection of traditional society, or at least those elements of it that sought to beat down the new, self-made man of the post-Napoleonic world. This interest in the political and social questions of the age played out in Hugo’s other work, as well. His 1829 novel Last Day of a Condemned Man overtly criticized the death penalty, while his play Marion de Lorme, released the same year, was banned as an affront to good morals. To ensure the success of his next play, Hernani, in February 1830, Hugo organized a Romantic army of young, foppishly dressed artists and would-be artists. (The term bohemian had not come into fashion, but these young men certainly fit the description.) The army occupied the theater for hours before the play, ensuring the authorities would not stop the show. The artists made a mess of the building and horrified the more conservative theatergoers. Fistfights broke out between audience members—a symptom of the social tensions in French society and a foretaste of the violence that would once again sweep the nation later that year. In July 1830, the second Revolution, the so-called July Revolution, broke out when the restored Bourbon monarch, Charles X, was overthrown and his cousin Louis Philippe was installed as a constitutional monarch—the citizen-king who called himself King of the French instead of King of France. Despite this, Louis Philippe was not popular: He governed in the name of the richest men in society, and in 1832, the June Rebellion—the one depicted in Les Misérables—sought to overthrow Louis Philippe.

The political turmoil was matched by the emotional turmoil in this stage of Hugo’s life. His wife Adèle began an affair with Hugo’s protégé, Charles Saint-Beuve. Heartbroken, Hugo found consolation with Juliette Drouet (née Julienne Josephine Gauvain), a brilliant and beautiful actress who would be cast in his plays Lucrece Borgia and Maria Tudor in 1833—following which she would abandon her stage career to become his full-time mistress, secretary, and traveling companion. The date he officially took her as his mistress—February 16, 1833—would be commemorated in Les Misérables as Marius and Cosette’s wedding day. Another play Hugo wrote, Le Roi s’amuse (The King Takes His Amusement), was banned for its portrayal of a debauched monarch in 1832, but it provided the Italian composer Giuseppe Verdi, no less an ardent nationalist and republican than Hugo, with the raw material for his opera Rigoletto. Juliette’s letters to Hugo are considered literary works in their own right, and she may be considered the true love of his life.

In 1831 Hugo published The Hunchback of Notre Dame to resounding success. The cathedral had been heavily damaged in the first Revolution, but the novel’s popularity led to its restoration by the architect and antiquarian Eugène Viollet-le-Duc. It was Hugo’s last success for a while; a series of lesser literary works and political poetry followed, punctuated by the death in 1843 of his eldest daughter, Léopoldine, who tragically drowned with her husband, Charles Vacquerie, soon after their marriage. Hugo only learned of her death by reading of it in a newspaper while he was vacationing in the south of France. Hugo’s poems on her death were published in 1856 as Contemplations.

It was in this era that Hugo became more involved in partisan politics. In 1841 he was both elected to the Académie Francaise, the official arbiter of French arts and letters, and given a seat in the upper house of the French assembly by Louis Philippe. For the next seven years, he argued vehemently for liberal causes such as the abolition of the death penalty, freedom of the press, and independence for Poland—and against all manner of social injustice. However, little headway could be made: the rich elites controlled Louis Philippe’s France, and only about one percent of the people could vote.

In February 1848, it seemed that the much-hoped-for Revolution might be imminent: Since it was illegal to have political meetings, the middle-class opposition had been organizing banquets as fund-raisers. When the government outlawed these, people took to the streets and erected barricades—an effective and traditional tactic in old Paris’s narrow medieval cityscape. Riots broke out, and, in one incident, fifty-two people were killed. The increasingly unpopular Louis Philippe, seeing the writing on the wall, abdicated, and the Second Republic was declared. Elections followed, and Hugo was elected to Parliament. However, his impassioned advocacy of universal male suffrage, free public schools, and an end to poverty caused a rapid break with the party. Hugo even began a newspaper—one of some 450 that sprang up in the aftermath of the February Revolution. Newspapers were the Internet of the age, the social media by means of which the Revolution was organized.

Victory in Defeat

In the end, this revolution also failed when it fell into anarchy. Infighting ended only when Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte—nephew and heir of the first emperor—was elected president at the end of 1848. Louis-Napoleon’s famous name was acceptable to both reformers and conservatives; because of the desire for stability, people conveniently forgot that he had twice before tried to seize control of the government by means of a coup d’êtat. But those who do not study history are doomed to repeat its mistakes: The Second Republic came to an end in 1851 when its new president, prevented from running for a second term, staged a third, successful coup, crowned himself Emperor Napoleon III, and began the Second Empire in 1853. Louis-Napoleon’s government was pro-business, pro-trade, and pro-development, but most decidedly conservative in style and not democratically inclined. Only one aspect of the Second Empire’s aesthetic was at all innovative: Louis-Napoleon had Baron Georges-Eugène Haussmann raze Paris’s old neighborhoods and build the broad boulevards so familiar to us today—difficult to barricade, but easy for an army to march down. While employees and women did begin to receive more rights, the more left-wing, progressive elements were dissatisfied. This is why 1848 is known as the year history failed to turn. For Hugo, Louis-Napoleon was a traitor, and the new emperor’s victory meant the writer’s exile—first to Belgium, then the island of Jersey in the English Channel, and then the nearby island of Guernsey. In exile, he continued his activism against the death penalty; wrote political works, including Napoleon the Little and History of a Crime, criticizing Louis-Napoleon; and published three acclaimed volumes of poetry and some novels—including Les Misérables. Though set in the 1830s, it is really a novel about 1848 and its aftermath.

In defeat and exile, Victor Hugo remained undaunted. He declined Louis-Napoleon’s amnesty in 1859 and only returned during the course of the events leading to the final French Revolution in 1870–71. Rather than a weakness in the French government, this revolution was brought on by an external crisis: Otto von Bismarck, Chancellor of Prussia, picked a fight with the French as a means of uniting Germany under his king, Wilhelm I. The Prussian victory was swift; the French declared war on July 19, and Napoleon III was captured at the Battle of Sedan on August 31. The left-wing opposition in Paris, together with the army, declared itself the Third Republic and was besieged by Prussian forces from September 19, 1870, to January 1871. Hugo returned to Paris in time for the Prussian siege, where he famously survived by eating meat from animals donated to him by the zoo. Those less fortunate were reduced to eating cats, dogs, rats, and horses.

Once again, France found itself having to build a new government, albeit in a power vacuum caused by foreign invasion rather than by internal disturbance. This was the Third Republic. Hugo was made a member of the republic’s parliament, but he resigned a month later in the face of mounting crisis. Parisian radicals revolted against the republic, which wished to capitulate to the Prussians, and established a Communist government for the city in the spring of 1871. The Parisian Commune was swiftly defeated: Government troops marched down Haussmann’s wide boulevards and quickly brought the rebels to heel. Hugo, meanwhile, had fled to Belgium, but was expelled for giving refuge to fleeing Communards. He briefly returned to Guernsey before coming back to Paris. The years of 1870 and 1871 were full of personal tragedies for Hugo, as well. Within a span of just a few months, he had suffered a mild stroke, lost his campaign to be elected to the National Assembly, witnessed the tragic death of one of his sons (another son would die in 1873), and seen his daughter Adèle committed to an insane asylum.

In his declining years, Victor Hugo was more a living national treasure than a potent force in either art of politics. He was elected to the Senate in 1876 but got little of his radical agenda accomplished. Similarly, his later novels, such as The Man Who Laughs and Ninety-Three, were eclipsed by the works of the new generation of writers such as Émile Zola. He suffered a stroke in 1878 and thereafter wrote no more, though he did publish works he had composed earlier. In 1881 he was honored with a triumphal parade. His beloved Juliette died in 1883; Hugo followed her in 1885. All of France mourned him, and more than two million people joined his funeral procession. He was buried in the Panthéon, where he rests today alongside Alexandre Dumas and Émile Zola.

Themes in Les Misérables

Hugo’s political beliefs and social agenda permeate Les Misérables. It is socially realist—not in the sense that it is believable, but what happens to his characters is designed to elicit sympathy in the reader and inspire real-world actions. His digressions are more than just background—they explain social and moral points he wishes to make. As narrator, he interjects himself into the novel at several points, recounting his own experiences, especially in the insurrection at the Passage du Saumon. Even Hugo’s use of letters and dashes to identify names and places—an idiosyncrasy that this translation has preserved—would, to a contemporary audience, signal the verisimilitude of the story. All of these techniques are, first and foremost, meant to bring the reader into the story.

Hugo employs his considerable literary powers to make a number of political and social points—foremost among them, the power of love. Bishop Myriel, who begins the novel, is an interesting character. Religion was a fraught topic in Hugo’s France: The Catholic Church tended to support the most reactionary, anti-Republican politics. The hypocrisy of the church was a favorite Romantic theme—but so, too, was the power of authentic religious feeling. In Bishop Myriel, Hugo gives us a model of a real Christian, who acts from love of humanity, not a love of power. Conversely, later, in the Petit-Picpus convent, Hugo shows us a rigid, sterile, and disciplinary Christianity that threatens to extinguish real love.

Similarly, Fantine loves the bourgeois Tholomyès, but his love is false. More concerned with propriety, he will not consort with a lower-class woman. The Thénardiers are no better; in fact, they are the inversion of bourgeois values. Instead of sacrificing and lavishing attention and education on their children in hopes they will have a better life, they ignore them in favor of their own selfish, small-minded desires. The neglected Gavroche, ironically, is the only Thénardier who is really happy.

Javert, similarly, is devoid of love. His devotion to duty is a poor substitute for compassion, and his hounding of Valjean makes the ex-convict feel that he has no choice but to be a criminal, even if he would rather be a good man. In Javert, Hugo personifies and critiques the French court system, as well as a society that allows men no second chances. The Champmathieu affair, which can have no happy ending, makes a poignant case for the heartlessness of the law. In the end, Javert cannot let go of Valjean without destroying himself.

On the other hand, Valjean’s love for Cosette, and Cosette’s and Marius’s love—real, proper love—transcend the evils of the world, such as the corrupt justice system and class snobbery. Though Cosette was born poor and illegitimate, in defiance of social convention, she is educated and promised a bright future and happy marriage with Marius. If her identity is a lie, it is a true lie. After all, rejection of tradition in Romantic idealism does not mean artlessness. Hugo’s age was one of self-fashioning. Valjean goes from convict to a rich philanthropist, to a fugitive, to a gardener, and in so doing raises Cosette from poverty to the promise of a happy middle-class life. In her, we see Hugo’s agenda of extinguishing class distinctions and poverty, and providing education for all. What Hugo is saying in Les Misérables is consonant with the political beliefs he espoused all his life: People are naturally good, but are made bad by their circumstances. To make a better world, we must therefore repair society, fashioning a world based on love, not money and rules.

Les Misérables is thus a very personal work. It is a novel about a failed revolution, written after a failed revolution. Ultimately, Victor Hugo makes the point that, though individuals may fall in the struggle, so long as good and loving men and women survive to shape the next generation of idealists, the cause they stood for—the creation of a more perfect and happy world—marches on.

Ken Mondschein, PhD

Northampton, Massachusetts

February 26, 2015

PREFACE

So long as there shall exist, by virtue of law and custom, decrees of damnation pronounced by society, artificially creating hells amid the civilization of earth, and adding the element of human fate to divine destiny; so long as the three great problems of the century—the degradation of man through pauperism, the corruption of woman through hunger, the crippling of children through lack of light—are unsolved; so long as social asphyxia is possible in any part of the world—in other words, and with a still wider significance, so long as ignorance and poverty exist on earth, books of the nature of Les Misérables cannot fail to be of use.

HAUTEVILLE HOUSE, 1862

VOLUME I:

FANTINE

BOOK FIRST: A JUST MAN

CHAPTER I

M. Myriel

In 1815, M. Charles-Francois-Bienvenu Myriel was Bishop of D——. He was an old man of about seventy-five years of age; he had occupied the see of D—— since 1806. Although this detail has no connection whatever with the real substance of what we are about to relate, it will not be superfluous, if merely for the sake of exactness in all points, to mention here the various rumors and remarks which had been in circulation about him from the very moment when he arrived in the diocese. True or false, that which is said of men often occupies as important a place in their lives, and above all in their destinies, as that which they do. M. Myriel was the son of a counselor of the Parliament of Aix; hence he belonged to the nobility of the bar. It was said that his father, destining him to be the heir of his own post, had married him at a very early age, eighteen or twenty, in accordance with a custom that is rather widely prevalent in parliamentary families. In spite of this marriage, however, it was said that Charles Myriel created a great deal of talk. He was well formed, though rather short in stature, elegant, graceful, intelligent; the whole of the first portion of his life had been devoted to the world and to gallantry.

The Revolution came; events succeeded each other with precipitation; the parliamentary families, decimated, pursued, hunted down, were dispersed. M. Charles Myriel emigrated to Italy at the very beginning of the Revolution. There his wife died of a malady of the chest, from which she had long suffered. He had no children. What took place next in the fate of M. Myriel? The ruin of the French society of the olden days, the fall of his own family, the tragic spectacles of ’93, which were, perhaps, even more alarming to the emigrants who viewed them from a distance, with the magnifying powers of terror, did these cause the ideas of renunciation and solitude to germinate in him? Was he, in the midst of these distractions, these affections which absorbed his life, suddenly smitten with one of those mysterious and terrible blows that sometimes overwhelm, by striking to his heart, a man whom public catastrophes would not shake, by striking at his existence and his fortune? No one could have told: all that was known was, that when he returned from Italy he was a priest.

In 1804, M. Myriel was the Curé of B——. He was already advanced in years, and lived in a very retired manner.

About the epoch of the coronation, some petty affair connected with his curacy—just what, is not precisely known—took him to Paris. Among other powerful persons to whom he went to solicit aid for his parishioners was M. le Cardinal Fesch. One day, when the Emperor had come to visit his uncle, the worthy Curé, who was waiting in the anteroom, found himself present when His Majesty passed. Napoleon, on finding himself observed with a certain curiosity by this old man, turned around and said abruptly, Who is this good man who is staring at me?

Sire, said M. Myriel, you are looking at a good man, and I at a great man. Each of us can profit by it.

That very evening, the Emperor asked the Cardinal the name of the Curé, and some time afterward M. Myriel was utterly astonished to learn that he had been appointed Bishop of D——.

What truth was there, after all, in the stories that were invented as to the early portion of M. Myriel’s life? No one knew. Very few families had been acquainted with the Myriel family before the Revolution.

M. Myriel had to undergo the fate of every newcomer in a little town, where there are many mouths that talk, and very few heads that think. He was obliged to undergo it although he was a bishop, and because he was a bishop. But after all, the rumors with which his name was connected were rumors only—noise, sayings, words; less than words—palabres, as the energetic language of the South expresses it.

However that may be, after nine years of episcopal power and of residence in D——, all the stories and subjects of conversation that engross petty towns and petty people at the outset had fallen into profound oblivion. No one would have dared to mention them; no one would have dared to recall them.

M. Myriel had arrived at D—— accompanied by an elderly spinster, Mademoiselle Baptistine, who was his sister, and ten years his junior.

Their only domestic was a female servant of the same age as Mademoiselle Baptistine, and named Madame Magloire, who, after having been the servant of M. le Curé, now assumed the double title of maid to Mademoiselle and housekeeper to Monseigneur.

Mademoiselle Baptistine was a long, pale, thin, gentle creature; she realized the ideal expressed by the word respectable; for it seems that a woman must needs be a mother in order to be venerable. She had never been pretty; her whole life, which had been nothing but a succession of holy deeds, had finally conferred upon her a sort of pallor and transparency; and as she advanced in years she had acquired what may be called the beauty of goodness. What had been leanness in her youth had become transparency in her maturity; and this diaphaneity allowed the angel to be seen. She was a soul rather than a virgin. Her person seemed made of a shadow; there was hardly sufficient body to provide for sex; a little matter enclosing a light; large eyes forever drooping—a mere pretext for a soul’s remaining on the earth.

Madame Magloire was a little, fat, white old woman, corpulent and bustling; always out of breath, in the first place, because of her activity, and in the next, because of her asthma.

On his arrival, M. Myriel was installed in the episcopal palace with the honors required by the Imperial decrees, which class a bishop immediately after a major-general. The mayor and the president paid the first call on him, and he, in turn, paid the first call on the general and the prefect.

The installation over, the town waited to see its bishop at work.

CHAPTER II

M. Myriel Becomes M. Welcome

The episcopal palace of D—— adjoins the hospital.

The episcopal palace was a huge and beautiful house, built of stone at the beginning of the last century by M. Henri Puget, Doctor of Theology of the Faculty of Paris, Abbé of Simore, who had been Bishop of D—— in 1712. This palace was a genuine seignorial residence. Everything about it had a grand air, the apartments of the Bishop, the drawing rooms, the chambers, the principal courtyard, which was very large, with walks encircling it under arcades in the old Florentine fashion, and gardens planted with magnificent trees. In the dining room, a long and superb gallery that was situated on the ground floor and opened on the gardens, M. Henri Puget had entertained in state, on July 29, 1714, My Lords Charles Brulart de Genlis, archbishop; Prince d’Embrun; Antoine de Mesgrigny, the capuchin, Bishop of Grasse; Philippe de Vendome, Grand Prior of France, Abbé of Saint Honore de Lerins; Francois de Berton de Crillon, bishop, Baron de Vence; Cesar de Sabran de Forcalquier, bishop, Seignor of Glandeve; and Jean Soanen, Priest of the Oratory, preacher in ordinary to the king, bishop, Seignor of Senez. The portraits of these seven reverend personages decorated this apartment; and this memorable date, the 29th of July, 1714, was there engraved in letters of gold on a table of white marble.

The hospital was a low and narrow building of a single story, with a small garden.

Three days after his arrival, the Bishop visited the hospital. The visit ended, he had the director requested to be so good as to come to his house.

Monsieur the director of the hospital, said he to him, how many sick people have you at the present moment?

Twenty-six, Monseigneur.

That was the number which I counted, said the Bishop.

The beds, pursued the director, are very much crowded against each other.

That is what I observed.

The halls are nothing but rooms, and it is with difficulty that the air can be changed in them.

So it seems to me.

And then, when there is a ray of sun, the garden is very small for the convalescents.

That was what I said to myself.

In case of epidemics—we have had the typhus fever this year; we had the sweating sickness two years ago, and a hundred patients at times—we know not what to do.

That is the thought which occurred to me.

What would you have, Monseigneur? said the director. One must resign one’s self.

This conversation took place in the gallery dining room on the ground floor.

The Bishop remained silent for a moment; then he turned abruptly to the director of the hospital.

Monsieur, said he, how many beds do you think this hall alone would hold?

Monseigneur’s dining room? exclaimed the stupefied director.

The Bishop cast a glance around the apartment, and seemed to be taking measures and calculations with his eyes.

It would hold full twenty beds, said he, as though speaking to himself. Then, raising his voice, Hold, Monsieur the director of the hospital, I will tell you something. There is evidently a mistake here. There are thirty-six of you, in five or six small rooms. There are three of us here, and we have room for sixty. There is some mistake, I tell you; you have my house, and I have yours. Give me back my house; you are at home here.

On the following day the thirty-six patients were installed in the Bishop’s palace, and the Bishop was settled in the hospital.

M. Myriel had no property, his family having been ruined by the Revolution. His sister was in receipt of a yearly income of five hundred francs, which sufficed for her personal wants at the vicarage. M. Myriel received from the State, in his quality of bishop, a salary of fifteen thousand francs. On the very day when he took up his abode in the hospital, M. Myriel settled on the disposition of this sum once for all, in the following manner. We transcribe here a note made by his own hand:

NOTE ON THE REGULATION OF MY HOUSEHOLD EXPENSES.

M. Myriel made no change in this arrangement during the entire period that he occupied the see of D——. As has been seen, he called it regulating his household expenses.

This arrangement was accepted with absolute submission by Mademoiselle Baptistine. This holy woman regarded Monseigneur of D—— as at one and the same time her brother and her bishop, her friend according to the flesh and her superior according to the Church. She simply loved and venerated him. When he spoke, she bowed; when he acted, she yielded her adherence. Their only servant, Madame Magloire, grumbled a little. It will be observed that Monsieur the Bishop had reserved for himself only one thousand livres, which, added to the pension of Mademoiselle Baptistine, made fifteen hundred francs a year. On these fifteen hundred francs these two old women and the old man subsisted.

And when a village curate came to D——, the Bishop still found means to entertain him, thanks to the severe economy of Madame Magloire, and to the intelligent administration of Mademoiselle Baptistine.

One day, after he had been in D—— about three months, the Bishop said:

And still I am quite cramped with it all!

I should think so! exclaimed Madame Magloire. Monseigneur has not even claimed the allowance that the department owes him for the expense of his carriage in town, and for his journeys about the diocese. It was customary for bishops in former days.

Hold! cried the Bishop. You are quite right, Madame Magloire.

And he made his demand.

Some time afterward the General Council took this demand under consideration, and voted him an annual sum of three thousand francs, under this heading: Allowance to M. the Bishop for expenses of carriage, expenses of posting, and expenses of pastoral visits.

This provoked a great outcry among the local burgesses; and a senator of the Empire, a former member of the Council of the Five Hundred which favored the 18 Brumaire, and who was provided with a magnificent senatorial office in the vicinity of the town of D——, wrote to M. Bigot de Preameneu, the minister of public worship, a very angry and confidential note on the subject, from which we extract these authentic lines:

Expenses of carriage? What can be done with it in a town of less than four thousand inhabitants? Expenses of journeys? What is the use of these trips, in the first place? Next, how can the posting be accomplished in these mountainous parts? There are no roads. No one travels otherwise than on horseback. Even the bridge between Durance and Chateau-Arnoux can barely support ox teams. These priests are all thus, greedy and avaricious. This man played the good priest when he first came. Now he does like the rest; he must have a carriage and a posting-chaise, he must have luxuries, like the bishops of the olden days. Oh, all this priesthood! Things will not go well, M. le Comte, until the Emperor has freed us from these black-capped rascals. Down with the Pope! (Matters were getting embroiled with Rome.) For my part, I am for Caesar alone. Etc., etc.

On the other hand, this affair afforded great delight to Madame Magloire. Good, said she to Mademoiselle Baptistine; Monseigneur began with other people, but he has had to wind up with himself, after all. He has regulated all his charities. Now here are three thousand francs for us! At last!

That same evening the Bishop wrote out and handed to his sister a memorandum conceived in the following terms:

EXPENSES OF CARRIAGE AND CIRCUIT.

Such was M. Myriel’s budget.

As for the chance episcopal perquisites, the fees for marriage bans, dispensations, private baptisms, sermons, benedictions, of churches or chapels, marriages, etc., the Bishop levied them on the wealthy with all the more asperity, since he bestowed them on the needy.

After a time, offerings of money flowed in. Those who had and those who lacked knocked at M. Myriel’s door, the latter in search of the alms that the former came to deposit. In less than a year the Bishop had become the treasurer of all benevolence and the cashier of all those in distress. Considerable sums of money passed through his hands, but nothing could induce him to make any change whatever in his mode of life, or add anything superfluous to his bare necessities.

Far from it. As there is always more wretchedness below than there is brotherhood above, all was given away, so to speak, before it was received. It was like water on dry soil; no matter how much money he received, he never had any. Then he stripped himself.

The usage being that bishops shall announce their baptismal names at the head of their charges and their pastoral letters, the poor people of the countryside had selected, with a sort of affectionate instinct, among the names and prenomens of their bishop, that which had a meaning for them; and they never called him anything except Monseigneur Bienvenu. We will follow their example, and will also call him thus when we have occasion to name him. Moreover, this appellation pleased him.

I like that name, said he. Bienvenu makes up for the Monseigneur.

We do not claim that the portrait herewith presented is probable; we confine ourselves to stating that it resembles the original.

CHAPTER III

A Hard Bishopric for a Good Bishop

The Bishop did not omit his pastoral visits because he had converted his carriage into alms. The diocese of D—— is a fatiguing one. There are very few plains and a great many mountains; hardly any roads, as we have just seen; thirty-two curacies, forty-one vicarships, and two hundred and eighty-five auxiliary chapels. To visit all these is quite a task.

The Bishop managed to do it. He went on foot when it was in the neighborhood, in a tilted spring-cart when it was on the plain, and on a donkey in the mountains. The two old women accompanied him. When the trip was too hard for them, he went alone.

One day he arrived at Senez, which is an ancient episcopal city. He was mounted on an ass. His purse, which was very dry at that moment, did not permit him any other equipage. The mayor of the town came to receive him at the gate of the town, and watched him dismount from his ass, with scandalized eyes. Some of the citizens were laughing around him. Monsieur the Mayor, said the Bishop, and Messieurs Citizens, I perceive that I shock you. You think it very arrogant in a poor priest to ride an animal which was used by Jesus Christ. I have done so from necessity, I assure you, and not from vanity.

In the course of these trips he was kind and indulgent, and talked rather than preached. He never went far in search of his arguments and his examples. He quoted to the inhabitants of one district the example of a neighboring district. In the cantons where they were harsh to the poor, he said: Look at the people of Briancon! They have conferred on the poor, on widows and orphans, the right to have their meadows mown three days in advance of everyone else. They rebuild their houses for them gratuitously when they are ruined. Therefore it is a country that is blessed by God. For a whole century, there has not been a single murderer among them.

In villages that were greedy for profit and harvest, he said, Look at the people of Embrun! If, at the harvest season, the father of a family has his son away on service in the army, and his daughters at service in the town, and if he is ill and incapacitated, the Curé recommends him to the prayers of the congregation; and on Sunday, after the Mass, all the inhabitants of the village—men, women, and children—go to the poor man’s field and do his harvesting for him, and carry his straw and his grain to his granary. To families divided by questions of money and inheritance he said, Look at the mountaineers of Devolny, a country so wild that the nightingale has not been heard there once in fifty years. Well, when the father of a family dies, the boys go off to seek their fortunes, leaving the property to the girls, so that they may find husbands. To the cantons that had a taste for lawsuits, and where the farmers ruined themselves in stamped paper, he said, "Look at those good peasants in the valley of Queyras! There are three thousand souls of them. Mon Dieu! It is like a little republic. Neither judge nor bailiff is known there. The mayor does everything. He allots the imposts, taxes each person conscientiously, judges quarrels for nothing, divides inheritances without charge, pronounces sentences gratuitously; and he is obeyed, because he is a just man among simple men. To villages where he found no schoolmaster, he quoted once more the people of Queyras, Do you know how they manage? he said. Since a little country of a dozen or fifteen hearths cannot always support a teacher, they have schoolmasters who are paid by the whole valley, who make the round of the villages, spending a week in this one, ten days in that, and instruct them. These teachers go to the fairs. I have seen them there. They are to be recognized by the quill pens that they wear in the cord of their hat. Those who teach reading have only one pen; those who teach reading and reckoning have two pens; those who teach reading, reckoning, and Latin have three pens. But what a disgrace to be ignorant! Do like the people of Queyras!"

Thus he discoursed gravely and paternally; in default of examples, he invented parables, going directly to the point, with few phrases and many images, which characteristic formed the real eloquence of Jesus Christ. And being convinced himself, he was persuasive.

CHAPTER IV

Works Corresponding to Words

His conversation was gay and affable. He put himself on a level with the two old women who had passed their lives beside him. When he laughed, it was the laugh of a schoolboy. Madame Magloire liked to call him Your Grace. One day he rose from his armchair, and went to his library in search of a book. This book was on one of the upper shelves. As the bishop was rather short of stature, he could not reach it. Madame Magloire, said he, fetch me a chair. My greatness does not reach as far as that shelf.

One of his distant relatives, Madame la Comtesse de Lo, rarely allowed an opportunity to escape of enumerating, in his presence, what she designated as the expectations of her three sons. She had numerous relatives, who were very old and near to death, and of whom her sons were the natural heirs. The youngest of the three was to receive from a grandaunt a good hundred thousand livres of income; the second was the heir by entail to the title of the Duke, his uncle; the eldest was to succeed to the peerage of his grandfather. The Bishop was accustomed to listen in silence to these innocent and pardonable maternal boasts. On one occasion, however, he appeared to be more thoughtful than usual, while Madame de Lo was relating once again the details of all these inheritances and all these expectations. She interrupted herself impatiently, "Mon Dieu, cousin! What are you thinking about?"

I am thinking, replied the Bishop, of a singular remark, which is to be found, I believe, in St. Augustine, ‘Place your hopes in the man from whom you do not inherit.’

At another time, on receiving a notification of the decease of a gentleman of the countryside, wherein not only the dignities of the dead man, but also the feudal and noble qualifications of all his relatives, spread over an entire page, What a stout back Death has! he exclaimed. What a strange burden of titles is cheerfully imposed on him, and how much wit must men have, in order thus to press the tomb into the service of vanity!

He was gifted, on occasion, with a gentle raillery, which almost always concealed a serious meaning. In the course of one Lent, a youthful vicar came to D——, and preached in the cathedral. He was tolerably eloquent. The subject of his sermon was charity. He urged the rich to give to the poor, in order to avoid hell, which he depicted in the most frightful manner of which he was capable, and to win paradise, which he represented as charming and desirable. Among the audience there was a wealthy retired merchant, who was somewhat of a usurer, named M. Geborand, who had amassed two million in the manufacture of coarse cloth, serges, and woolen galloons. Never in his whole life had M. Geborand bestowed alms on any poor wretch. After the delivery of that sermon, it was observed that he gave a sou every Sunday to the poor old beggar-women at the door of the cathedral. There were six of them to share it. One day the Bishop caught sight of him in the act of bestowing this charity, and said to his sister, with a smile, There is M. Geborand purchasing paradise for a sou.

When it was a question of charity, he was not to be rebuffed even by a refusal, and on such occasions he gave utterance to remarks that induced reflection. Once he was begging for the poor in a drawing room of the town; there was present the Marquis de Champtercier, a wealthy and avaricious old man, who contrived to be, at one and the same time, an ultra-royalist and an ultra-Voltairian. This variety of man has actually existed. When the Bishop came to him, he touched his arm, You must give me something, M. le Marquis.

The Marquis turned around and answered dryly, I have poor people of my own, Monseigneur.

Give them to me, replied the Bishop.

One day he preached the following sermon in the cathedral: My very dear brethren, my good friends, there are thirteen hundred and twenty thousand peasants’ dwellings in France which have but three openings; eighteen hundred and seventeen thousand hovels that have but two openings, the door and one window; and three hundred and forty-six thousand cabins besides which have but one opening, the door. And this arises from a thing which is called the tax on doors and windows. Just put poor families, old women and little children, in those buildings, and behold the fevers and maladies that result! Alas! God gives air to men; the law sells it to them. I do not blame the law, but I bless God. In the department of the Isere, in the Var, in the two departments of the Alpes, the Hautes, and the Basses, the peasants have not even wheelbarrows; they transport their manure on the backs of men; they have no candles, and they burn resinous sticks, and bits of rope dipped in pitch. That is the state of affairs throughout the whole of the hilly country of Dauphine. They make bread for six months at one time; they bake it with dried cow dung. In the winter they break this bread up with an ax, and they soak it for twenty-four hours, in order to render it eatable. My brethren, have pity! Behold the suffering on all sides of you!

Born a Provencal, he easily familiarized himself with the dialect of the south. He said, "En be! Moussu, ses sage? as in lower Languedoc; Onte anaras passa? as in the Basses-Alpes; Puerte un bouen moutu embe un bouen fromage grase," as in upper Dauphine. This pleased the people extremely, and contributed not a little to win him access to all spirits. He was perfectly at home in the thatched cottage and in the mountains. He understood how to say the grandest things in the most vulgar of idioms. As he spoke all tongues, he entered into all hearts.

Moreover, he was the same toward people of the world and toward the lower classes. He condemned nothing in haste and without taking circumstances into account. He said, Examine the road over which the fault has passed.

Being, as he described himself with a smile, an ex-sinner, he had none of the asperities of austerity, and he professed, with a good deal of distinctness, and without the frown of the ferociously virtuous, a doctrine that may be summed up as follows: Man has upon him his flesh, which is at once his burden and his temptation. He drags it with him and yields to it. He must watch it, check it, repress it, and obey it only at the last extremity. There may be some fault even in this obedience; but the fault thus committed is venial; it is a fall, but a fall on the knees that may terminate in prayer. To be a saint is the exception; to be an upright man is the rule. Err, fall, sin if you will, but be upright. The least possible sin is the law of man. No sin at all is the dream of the angel. All that is terrestrial is subject to sin. Sin is gravitation.

When he saw everyone exclaiming very loudly, and growing angry very quickly, Oh! Oh! he said, with a smile. To all appearance, this is a great crime that all the world commits. These are hypocrisies which have taken fright, and are in haste to make protest and to put themselves under shelter.

He was indulgent toward women and poor people, on whom the burden of human society rest. He said, The faults of women, of children, of the feeble, the indigent, and the ignorant, are the fault of the husbands, the fathers, the masters, the strong, the rich, and the wise.

He said, moreover, Teach those who are ignorant as many things as possible; society is culpable, in that it does not afford instruction gratis; it is responsible for the night which it produces. This soul is full of shadow; sin is therein committed. The guilty one is not the person who has committed the sin, but the person who has created the shadow.

It will be perceived that he had a peculiar manner of his own of judging things; I suspect that he obtained it from the Gospel.

One day he heard a criminal case, which was in preparation and on the point of trial, discussed in a drawing room. A wretched man, being at the end of his resources, had coined counterfeit money, out of love for a woman, and for the child which he had had by her. Counterfeiting was still punishable with death at that epoch. The woman had been arrested in the act of passing the first false piece made by the man. She was held, but there were no proofs except against her. She alone could accuse her lover, and destroy him by her confession. She denied; they insisted. She persisted in her denial. Thereupon an idea occurred to the attorney for the crown. He invented an infidelity on the part of the lover, and succeeded, by means of fragments of letters cunningly presented, in persuading the unfortunate woman that she had a rival, and that the man was deceiving her. Thereupon, exasperated by jealousy, she denounced her lover, confessed all, proved all.

The man was ruined. He was shortly to be tried at Aix with his accomplice. They were relating the matter, and each one was expressing enthusiasm over the cleverness of the magistrate. By bringing jealousy into play, he had caused the truth to burst forth in wrath, he had educed the justice of revenge. The Bishop listened to all this in silence. When they had finished, he inquired, Where are this man and woman to be tried?

At the Court of Assizes.

He went on, And where will the advocate of the crown be tried?

A tragic event occurred at D——. A man was condemned to death for murder. He was a wretched fellow, not exactly educated, not exactly ignorant, who had been a mountebank at fairs, and a writer for the public. The town took a great interest in the trial. On the eve of the day fixed for the execution of the condemned man, the chaplain of the prison fell ill. A priest was needed to attend the criminal in his last moments. They sent for the Curé. It seems that he refused to come, saying, That is no affair of mine. I have nothing to do with that unpleasant task, and with that mountebank: I, too, am ill; and besides, it is not my place.

This reply was reported to the Bishop, who said, Monsieur le Curé is right: it is not his place; it is mine.

He went instantly to the prison, descended to the cell of the mountebank, called him by name, took him by the hand, and spoke to him. He passed the entire day with him, forgetful of food and sleep, praying to God for the soul of the condemned man, and praying the condemned man for his own. He told him the best truths, which are also the most simple. He was father, brother, friend; he was bishop only to bless. He taught him everything, encouraged and consoled him. The man was on the point of dying in despair. Death was an abyss to him. As he stood trembling on its mournful brink, he recoiled with horror. He was not sufficiently ignorant to be absolutely indifferent. His condemnation, which had been a profound shock, had, in a manner, broken through, here and there, that wall which separates us from the mystery of things, and which we call life. He gazed incessantly beyond this world through these fatal breaches, and beheld only darkness. The Bishop made him see light.

On the following day, when they came to fetch the unhappy wretch, the Bishop was still there. He followed him, and exhibited himself to the eyes of the crowd in his purple camail and with his Episcopal cross upon his neck, side by side with the criminal bound with cords.

He mounted the tumbril with him, he mounted the scaffold with him. The sufferer, who had been so gloomy and cast down on the preceding day, was radiant. He felt that his soul was reconciled, and he hoped in God. The Bishop embraced him, and at the moment when the knife was about to fall, he said to him, God raises from the dead him whom man slays; he whom his brothers have rejected finds his Father once more. Pray, believe, enter into life: the Father is there. When he descended from the scaffold, there was something in his look that made the people draw aside to let him pass. They did not know which was most worthy of admiration, his pallor or his serenity. On his return to the humble dwelling, which he designated, with a smile, as his palace, he said to his sister, I have just officiated pontifically.

Since the most sublime things are often those which are the least understood, there were people in the town who said, when commenting on this conduct of the Bishop, It is affectation.

This, however, was a remark that was confined to the drawing rooms. The populace, which perceives no jest in holy deeds, was touched, and admired him.

As for the Bishop, it was a shock to him to have beheld the guillotine, and it was a long time before he recovered from it.

In fact, when the scaffold is there, all erected and prepared, it has something about it that produces hallucination. One may feel a certain indifference to the death penalty, one may refrain from pronouncing upon it, from saying yes or no, so long as one has not seen a guillotine with one’s own eyes: but if one encounters one of them, the shock is violent; one is forced to decide, and to take part for or against. Some admire it, like de Maistre; others execrate it, like Beccaria. The guillotine is the concretion of the law; it is called vindicte; it is not neutral, and it does not permit you to remain neutral. He who sees it shivers with the most mysterious of shivers. All social problems erect their interrogation point around this chopping knife. The scaffold is a vision. The scaffold is not a piece of carpentry; the scaffold is not a machine; the scaffold is not an inert bit of mechanism constructed of wood, iron, and cords.

It seems as though it were a being, possessed of I know not what somber initiative; one would say that this piece of carpenter’s work saw, that this machine heard, that this mechanism understood, that this wood, this iron, and these cords were possessed of will. In the frightful meditation into which its presence casts the soul the scaffold appears in terrible guise, and as though taking part in what is going on. The scaffold is the accomplice of the executioner; it devours, it eats flesh, it drinks blood; the scaffold is a sort of monster fabricated by the judge and the carpenter, a specter that seems to live with a horrible vitality composed of all the death that it has inflicted.

Therefore, the impression was terrible and profound; on the day following the execution, and on many succeeding days, the Bishop appeared to be crushed.

Reviews for Les Misérables

[sarahliz2182 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This got so much better towards the end. 3.5 stars is a better fit.

[deferredreward_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The story of the results of forgiveness and grace is powerful. I really grew to love, hate, pity, and otherwise empathize with the characters in this book. At times the writing was amazingly beautiful, at others the insights were hilarious or profound. All in all an excellent, mostly terribly sad book. However, reading the entirety of this unabridged version has really opened my eyes to the potential benefit of an abridged version of this, or other massive classic works. There were hundreds of pages in this book that could have been omitted without detriment to the story, in fact, not having to trudge through these parts may have made it more powerful by not losing the emotional pull of the story as we wade through 70+ pages on how nuns lived in certain convents (which convent I believe was given fewer pages of story than the historical exposition). I'd be afraid to have a child read the unabridged, lest I destroyed his love of books. :/

[scott_hercher · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This is a wonderful story, but Hugo goes off on too many unnecessary digressions. Long sections on slang, the history of a convent, the construction of the Paris sewer system, etc., really don't add to the tale. I'm glad I read it, but I don't think I would recommend it to others.

[katieloucks · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Long, but worth reading.

[ashooles · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I love the musical and I love the over all story of Les Mis, but I found the book really difficult to get through. I started it a year ago, and just managed to get through it now. The characters and the plot about the characters was beautiful, but all the back story and history of France was rather dull and long for my liking. I am not taking away from the story itself, as I know it's a classic, and I adore the musical. This was just very hard for me to read.

[rainpebble_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

"Les Miserables" by Victor HugoMy thoughts and comments:I finished "Les Miserables" as part of the Le Salon group read yesterday morning and, (attempting to keep it spoiler free), yes, this is indeed a book that I loved and will read again over the years. Hugo has a way about writing that almost made me feel like he was attempting to lure my head from the story at times, but if so, he sadly failed. He tends to do what my mum calls "going off on a tangent". He gets caught up in a netherwind and is off and running with it for a while but then here he brings it back to the story line and yes, it usually had some little/big something to do with one or the other of the characters, including Paris.By the way, this is the best book with Paris as the backdrop that I have ever read.So I really liked it; I cared very much about most of the characters. I think that the only character I actually detested was Thenardier. I liked how Hugo built his characters so they were multifacted and layered and not just one dimensional. And he took the time to do it, which not all authors do; sometimes all parts of a character are described at once. But not here. Here, we actually got to see the growth (to the bad or the good) of the characters.Thank you Le Salon, for organizing this read. For me, it was a reading experience of a lifetime for me. I highly recommend Victor Hugo's "Les Miserables".

[kassilem · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I didn't realize I was listening to the abridged version of the book until I saw that the page number was supposed to be over a thousand pages, which would have been impossible in a audiobook of 13 hours. Once again I have been mislead - the first time when I read The Count of Monte Cristo abridged. And yet I did not feel as if I were missing pieces of the story. Perhaps because I went into this having seen the movie adaption and the musical play? I'm not sure I have the patience to go through another 700 pages of Hugo, to tell the truth, but I've heard the experience of the unabridged book is wonderful. I will take everyone's word on it. I haven't decided if I like the book as much as I do because I loved the play and movie first or not but regardless this is a classic I enjoyed reading. There's a charm to watching Jean-Valjean redeem himself but yet is always just human in his emotions.

[rbeene-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

It's long but well worth the read. I consider this my favorite classic novel.

[michael8xolotl · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Certainly one of the greatest things ever written.

[trayceetee · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

I know this is a classic, but I just couldn't get into it. I found it terribly boring, and I gave it a good try--about ten chapters. I simply couldn't make myself care. Major blah.




Added a "gave-up-on" shelf to put this book on.

[kalliegrace · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This took me 3 whole days to get through, it's probably the longest narrative I've ever read. I am surprised by how modern it felt, how easy it was to follow, and how much Hugo loved Parisian sewers. Oh Javert, find something better to do with your life! It is so hard to imagine seeing the world so black and white like that, but I know it happens. I haven't seen the movie or play, so I was also surprised how little page time Fantine gets, it's all her daughter in the end. This has so many excellent takes on redemption, love, social issues, and so much history woven in as well.

[anishainkspill · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is a mix of fiction and nonfiction. In its fiction mode, there are many moments that make this 1000+ page worth reading; some are very sad, whilst others made me smile. Gavroche’s spirit is wonderful (for one so young he’s been through so much and yet is so free and so brave) but it’s Jean Valjean and Fantine that make the story. And though I didn’t like the ending, it was the right ending, as a whole this has left quite an impression on me.

[shirfire218_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I decided it was high time to read this reknowned and beloved classic finally. My expectations were high. But it turned out this was a hard back for me to get through. I stuck with it and finally completed it, but only through a stubborn persistence. It dragged on, and on, and on until I felt that it would never end. There are many places throughout the book where the author digresses in what I would term rambling. These soliliquoys were the author's opinion on sundry subjects from recounting battles to many social issues of the time and even including lengthy discourses on the city of Paris' sewer system leading up to a section of the story that transpires there. Victor Hugo certainly had vociferous opinions, but I tended to disagree with his analyses on many occasions, particularly having to do with social issues. In fact this tendency to have multiple chapters of these ramblings seemed to divide the book into two separate tomes. Or perhaps it should have been divided up thusly. Each time it would take off on one of these diversions, it took away from the story for me.

Of course, throughout the book, we do pick up the famous, beloved story of Fontine, Cosette and Jean Valjean; which is naturally why I was reading this book. And though it was like pulling teeth, eventually, and bit by excruciating bit, it came out piece by piece. In the ending chapters particularly the story became way too melodramatic for my liking. Only after I finally finished the book, could I appreciate the greatness of this classic and finally embrace and fully sympathize with the main characters. I always believe so much is lost in translation when reading a book outside of its original language. So many nuances and little plays on words have to be lost, just by virtue of the differences in languages. So I realize that likely had a big effect on my impression of this novel.

[benkaboo-51322 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Summary: A massive book by a French patriot about people, humanity society and philosophy.
He uses an epic story of one mans redemption to illustrate and navigate a lot of these ideas.

Things I liked:

Characters:

I loved the characters like Val Jean and Gav Roche. Fantine and Javert and many other besides.

While they may have been a little unrealistic at times (extreme people in extreme circumstances certainly not like anyone I really know or have met); they ooze poetry (extreme ideas counter pointed within themselves or against each other). Just thinking about the contrast of Val Jean and Javert right now gives me goose bumps.

I also really liked the way he would introduce a small-ish character into the story, use them and let them go again.

Scope:


Hugo will set up a character hundreds of pages earlier for a beautiful payoff later on (for example the Sister Simplice who never lies (not even to spare Fantine the pain not having her daughter,
who then lies twice to Javert to protect Val Jean. Other characters like this include the horticulturist who dies waving the flag at the barricade and Thenadier who weaves his way through the entire story .

Things I thought could be improved:

Informational Sections:

I'm a bit in two minds, but basically I think a lot of the 'non-fiction' sections could have potentially been moved to an appendix at the back. It seems you'd just be getting to a really good bit of the plot and then STOP !!! I'd be treated to 140 pages on Waterloo or the sewersof Paris (their historical antecedents etc). It's been pointed out to me and I agree that this information does add to the plot, but I still think a bit of editing could have tightened things up a bit.

Name dropping:

I get the impression Victor Hugo had read very widely and learnt about a lot of things and events because he must have mentioned just about everyone of them in this book. I got probably about 30% of them and found all the classical references a bit over the top sometimes.

Highlight:

For me the section when Javert confronts Val Jean by Fantine's bedside gave me goosebumps.


Jean Valjean, armed with his bar of iron, walked slowly up to Fantine's couch. When he arrived there he turned and said to Javert, in a voice that was barely audible:-

"I advise you not to disturb me at this moment."

One thing is certain, and that is that Javert trembled.

[cindywho-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Phew - this was a long one. I downloaded a French edition to an e-reader and read it on the T. Hugo loves to digress and I found myself zoning out on the long descriptions of Waterloo and such. The man did love his language though and there are some great passages and lots of interesting words that the weak French/English dictionary installed on the reader couldn't handle. Who knew there were so many French words for hovel? The best parts of course were the adventures of Jean Valjean, the badass ex-prisoner who knew how to escape and be a loving father to the orphan Cosette.

[danielstj · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A masterpiece!

Though not flawless Les Misérables earns its five-star rating through and through. The characters are unforgettable, the plot easily digestible and the romanticism palatable. Still relevant, though a little dated, Les Misérables stands tall.

Hats off.

[jonfaith · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but he who causes the darkness.

It will always be Belmondo when I think of Jean Valjean in that wonky adaptation I saw at the Vogue back in the 90s. The film affected me deeply, thinking about the Occupation and questions of race and justice; the Willa Cather quote which surfaces a number of times. Beyond all that, the smoldering desire to read the novel was forged and eventually realized. I read Les Miserables here and there, with airports occupying a great deal of the effort. One drunken night in New Orleans the following year I spied someone in a pub reading the novel with obvious pleasure. I wished the man well and tripped out into the balmy night.

[cavernism · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I've never been married, but reading Les Miserables is what I imagine marriage would be like. I started out so excited to get into the the book, knowing that it was going to be a doozy, but knowing that it was a classic and that I liked the overall story and characters. Then around page 500, Hugo starts going on and on about nunneries and I think, "I did not sign up for this!"

This indignant thought leads to temptation; after all, why bother time with this long-winded book when there are so many other, shorter, newer books out there? Everywhere I turn, a temptation. Every time, though, I always refrain and turn back to good ol' Les Miserables, because every time I pick it up again and become engrossed with the intricate thought processes and descriptions, I would remember why I was reading it in the first place.

Sure, there are (as in marriage), times when I wanted to rip my hair out, and other times when things got so syrupy that I wanted to puke, but as a whole, looking back over all those pages, all that time I spent with this book...it really is stunning. Just know that if you're picking up this book with the intention of finishing it, you're entering a pretty hefty commitment. For richer or poorer, better or worse...

[johnjgaynard · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Les Misérables was one of the first full-length (very full length!) books I managed to read in French. I can still remember the Friday afternoon, all those years ago, when I began to read it. I didn't look up from its pages until the following Sunday evening. A truly magnificent book.

[sprainedbrain · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Beautifully written, long-winded but informative. I read the Denny translation and listened to the Hopwood translation read by Homewood. Jean Valjean forever!

[justagirlwithabook · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I read the abridged version when I was in 9th grade and I absolutely fell into the story - I loved it! I want to revisit this one again soon, but go for the unabridged version (which will be a bit of a challenge but I'm up for it). I have yet to see the adaptation and would like to read it before I do watch it.

[ssimon2000-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Wow, I knew going in that this was a beast of a book. I knew the basic plot from the movies and the musical, but I was not prepared in the least for the political and social commentary about the dregs of French society.

The story of Jean Valjean, Fantine, and Cosette, is the heart of the book. If this is the story you are looking for, I'd recommend finding a good abridged version. If you want to know about the innumerable details of Waterloo (skewed toward the French viewpoint, of course), French monasteries and convents, the treatment of galley slaves, the lives of the thousands of homeless children in and around Paris... I could go on, but you get the point. This book is more of a treatise on the downtrodden and how the more-fortunate need to turn their attention and wealth to helping them.

I do love this story, which is a perfect analogy of redemption and salvation. Jean Valjean, the galley slave turned mayor turned fugitive. Cosette, the young girl saved out the pit of despair and pain. It's a wonderful story, if you can get through many, many tangents that push and pull the characters.

[elizabeth_foster-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Amazing. A passionate tale, full of nostalgia for days gone by. A tale of redemption, of a convict with a conscience, of the great arc of life told through fully-fleshed out characters. As much social commentary as it is a fictional piece, in Les Miserables the genius of Victor Hugo is on full display.

[billt568-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Great book, but man it was long.

[gypsysmom_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I know I read at least parts of this book many years ago and I was familiar with the story and the characters. However, I thought it would be a great book to listen to and I was able to download a copy of the audiobook from my library. The story is compelling but the narrator, David Case, practically spoiled it for me. I kept losing the thread because his voice was annoying and monotonous. He also had a very odd way of pronouncing the French names that made them almost unintelligible.

Jean Valjean was convicted of theft of a loaf of bread which he stole to feed his sister's children. He spent many years in the galleys and when he was finally released he was treated as a pariah. One man, a bishop, was kind to him and gave him food and shelter for a night but Jean Valjean took the bishop's silver and fled in the night. When he was apprehended by the police he told them the bishop had given him the silver and the bishop confirmed the story. He also gave Jean the silver candlesticks. By this man's example Jean determined that he should turn over a new leaf and help others. He successfully started a business that made him a lot of money but also provided jobs with good wages which improved the region's economy. He was even appointed the mayor but one detective. Javert, realized who he was and had him arrested just as he was trying to help one of his employees dying of TB get reunited with her daughter. Although Valjean was again relegated to the galleys he managed to escape after a few years in a way that made it seem he was dead. He found his employee's daughter, Cosette, and adopts her, moving to Paris and changing his name again. When Cosette is grown a young man, Marius, sees her in the Gardens of Luxembourg and falls in love. Javert has again found Valjean and Valjean has determined that he and Cosette should leave for England. Marius and Cosette wanted to marry so Cosette writes a letter to Marius to tell him of this plan. Marius gets caught up in the students' revolution and Valjean saves him from certain death by spiriting him away through the sewers of Paris. When Marius recovers he marries Cosette but he is appalled when Valjean discloses his past. He banishes Valjean from their house but when he realizes that Valjean is the man who rescued him he and Cosette go to Valjean and are reconciled before Valjean dies.

It's quite a convoluted plot and relies extensively on coincidence and synchronicitiy. Nevertheless Valjean comes across as a heroic figure and the reader can't help but feel sorry for him.

[emathison-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I read this book during my sophomore year of high school. I think that its when we had the KBAR (kick back and read) period. This allowed me to read the novel bit by bit at a leisurely pace.

What I remember most is how Hugo chose to write this work. Some areas of the novel followed a pattern of one chapter of details and "setting the scene" followed by one chapter of story action.

I enjoyed reading it, although this book requires patience. You might not finish if you aren't a patient person or create a schedule to help see you though.

[kaitanya64 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is a slow read, but well worth the effort. Hugo chronicles the time and place in detail, with many digressions that may seem unneccessary to the modern reader, but I think are essential to the texture of the work. The novel's main story deals with the convict Jean Valjean, and his search for redemption against the backdrop of 19th century poverty and a vindictive penal system. Lots of food for ethical thought.

[lydia1879 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I won't even lie, this book took me 3-4 months to read? I did put it down a lot, but I always picked it up again.

Having said that, this book is probably one of the most rewarding books I've ever read. This book left one of the greatest impressions on me. I don't usually have 'favourite' books - I can't pick one book to end all books, but when I think about the books that affected me most, this book comes out on top.

I read the unabridged version of this book and I have to say it did take me quite a while to get used to Victor Hugo's writing style. He will build a world meticulously, talking of a village and its history, building it brick by brick. Nothing will happen, and as a reader, I would often drown in the details.

Then, suddenly, a character enters the scene and so much happens in 20 pages that I can't even look up because the plot grips me so much. World-building aside, I adored a lot of Victor Hugo's characters.

Jean Valjean, Javert and a couple of other characters all have very distinct character arcs and it's wonderful to watch them transform.

This book has one of the strongest and most resonant voices I've ever read. It talks about class, about judging people prematurely, about compassion, about love, about how a person's past is always their future. These are all still very relevant ideas and so it's not as antiquated as you might think.

Fair warning, though - this book will make you cry. I cried for the last 100 pages or so. (I suppose it is called 'The Miserable', which is sort of indicative and warning enough - but still.)

This book does a really brilliant job of finishing the plot into a nice little dovetail, which I really appreciated. And afterwards I wondered how one man could write a book like that, and what an incredible feat it must've been.

[brokentune · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I had to re-read Les Miserables. I fell in love with the story on the first read, but not the language. Having seen a few adaptations on stage and screen in the few years since my first read of the book, it has not lost any of its original appeal but I noticed that in all the adaptations I was drawn to Javert almost more than to Valjean. So, it was time to rediscover the original characters from the book... I still don't find the language used adequately telling the story - but maybe that's a translation issue. (And yeah, Javert is still the character that intrigues me most.)

[bookworm12_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This book is an undeniable masterpiece. The sheer scope of the novel is praise-worthy. Then you add on fascinating characters, the complicated plot, which weaves countless lives together, the detailed history of France and so much more and it blows you away. The basic plot (there's no way to briefly sum up the whole thing) follows a convict named Jean Valjean. He was imprisoned for stealing bread and now, years later, he tries to make a life for himself in 19th century France.

The plot is complex and the characters are intricately connected in unexpected ways. I loved the Bishop at the very beginning of the story. His gentle heart and merciful choices make him unforgettable even though he is only in a brief section of the book. The police chief Javert is a villain of sorts. He is so focused on living by the letter of the law that he misses the point of true justice.

Hugo writes dozens of pages of French history in between actions scenes. By the time I made it through his wandering sidetracked thought I'd sometimes forget where we'd left the major characters. I just wish that Hugo had had a better editor. It's not even that the history lessons weren't interesting, it's just that they hindered the flow of the book (at more than 1,400 pages, it doesn't need to be hindered). Apparently Hugo told his editor that he wasn't allowed to remove anything from the book. ANYTHING. Not a single line. Now this obviously shows Hugo's passion for his work and his desire to maintain the integrity of his original vision, but there are editors for a reason. Sometimes authors aren't the best judge of what might improve their book after its been completed.

I loved the story. It's such an inspiring tale of redemption and sacrifice. There are so many beautiful lines in the novel that are a testament to Hugo's talent.

"One can no more prevent the mind from returning to an idea than the sea from returning to a shore. In the case of the sailor, this is called a tide; in the case of the guilty, it is called remorse."

Over all I really enjoyed it. I was able to sink completely into the time period because of the books length and details. I do believe that trimming a few of the historical parts would have sharpened the focus on the plot, but that's just my opinion. I'm so glad I read it. It is one of those books that provide such a rich experience. It's not one I'll read every year or something, but it's a story that will stay in my soul for decades to come.