Les Misérables, v. 1/5: Fantine

The reader has, of course, guessed that M. Madeleine is Jean Valjean. We have already looked into the depths of this conscience, and the moment has arrived to look into them aga...

At a period rather later than the date of the letter just quoted he did a thing which the whole town declared to be even more venturesome than his trip in the mountains among th...

At the beginning of October, 1815, and about an hour before sunset, a man travelling on foot entered the little town of D----. The few inhabitants, who were at the moment at the...

The letter-bags between Arras and M---- were still carried in small mail-carts, dating from the Empire. They were two-wheeled vehicles, lined with tawny leather, hung on springs...

Javert broke through the circle and began walking with long strides toward the police office, which is at the other end of the market-place, dragging the wretched girl after him...

There was in the first quarter of this century a sort of pot-house at Montfermeil, near Paris, which no longer exists. It was kept by a couple of the name of Thénardier, and was...

Jean Valjean left the town as if running away; he walked hastily across the fields, taking the roads and paths that offered themselves, without perceiving that he was going roun...

One morning M. Madeleine was in his study, engaged in settling some pressing mayoralty matters, in case he decided on the journey to Montfermeil, when he was told that Inspector...

Society must necessarily look at these things, because they are created by it. He was, as we have said, an ignorant man, but he was not weak-minded. The natural light was kindle...

The moment for closing the trial had arrived: the President ordered the prisoner to stand up, and asked him the usual question: "Have you anything to add to your defence?" The m...

The Bishop's conversation was affable and lively. He condescended to the level of the two old females who spent their life near him, and when he laughed it was a schoolboy's lau...

He advanced a step, closed the door mechanically after him, and gazed at the scene before him. It was a dimly-lighted large hall, at one moment full of sounds, and at another of...

1817 is the year which Louis XVIII., with a certain royal coolness which was not deficient in pride, entitled the twenty-second of his reign. It is the year in which M. Bruguièr...

At this very moment Fantine was joyful. She had passed a very bad night, she had coughed fearfully, and her fever had become worse. In the morning, when the physician paid his v...

Toward the middle of the night Jean Valjean awoke. He belonged to a poor peasant family of La Brie. In his childhood he had not been taught to read, and when he was of man's age...

The house the Bishop resided in consisted, as we have said, of a ground floor and one above it, three rooms on the ground, three bed-rooms on the first floor, and above them a s...

The door was thrown open wide, as if some one were pushing it energetically and resolutely. A man entered whom we already know; it was the traveller whom we saw just now wanderi...

Javert placed Jean Valjean in the town jail. The arrest of M. Madeleine produced an extraordinary commotion in M----, but it is sad to have to say that nearly everybody abandone...

By degrees and with time all the opposition died out; at first there had been calumnies against M. Madeleine,--a species of law which all rising men undergo; then it was only ba...

"Let us not talk hap-hazard or too quickly," he exclaimed; "we must meditate if we desire to be striking; too much improvisation stupidly empties the mind. Gentlemen, no haste;...

She had been discharged toward the end of winter; the next summer passed away, and winter returned. Short days and less work; in winter there is no warmth, no light, no mid-day,...

The Episcopal Palace of D---- adjoined the hospital. It was a spacious, handsome mansion, built at the beginning of the last century by Monseigneur Henri Puget, Doctor in Theolo...

We should run a strong risk of making a mistake were we to conclude from this that Monseigneur Welcome was "a philosophic bishop," or "a patriotic curé." His meeting, which migh...

It was he in truth; the clerk's lamp lit up his face; he held his hat in his hand, there was no disorder in his attire, and his coat was carefully buttoned. He was very pale and...

These Parisians came, one from Toulouse, the second from Limoges, the third from Cahors, the fourth from Montauban, but they were students, and thus Parisians; for studying in P...

It was nearly eight in the evening when the cart we left on the road drove under the archway of the post-house at Arras. The man whom we have followed up to this moment got out,...

From the Mayoralty M. Madeleine proceeded to the end of the town, to a Fleming called Master Scaufflaer, gallicized into Scaufflaire, who let out horses and gigs by the day. To...

The Senator, to whom we have already alluded, was a skilful man, who had made his way with a rectitude that paid no attention to all those things which constitute obstacles, and...

It is not our business to gauge the Bishop of D---- from an orthodox point of view. In the presence of such a soul we only feel inclined to respect. The conscience of the just m...

To give an idea of the domestic life of the Bishop of D----, and the manner in which these two saintly women subordinated their actions, their thoughts, even their feminine inst...

She gave no start of surprise, no start of joy, for she was joy itself. The simple question--"And Cosette?" was asked in such profound faith, with so much certainty, with such a...

It is difficult to form an idea at the present day of what a pleasure party of students and grisettes was four-and-forty years ago. Paris has no longer the same environs; the fa...

Jean Valjean listened, but there was not a sound; he pushed the door with the tip of his finger lightly, and with the furtive restless gentleness of a cat that wants to get in....

Fantine had not seen Javert since the day when the Mayor tore her out of his clutches, and her sickly brain could form no other thought but that he had come to fetch her. She co...

And now, in order to give an idea of what took place at table, we cannot do better than transcribe a passage of a letter written by Mademoiselle Baptistine to Madame Boischevron...

Thanks to the rapid progress of this trade which he had so admirably remodelled, M. sur M. had become a place of considerable trade. Spain, which consumes an immense amount of j...

Here naturally comes a fact which we must not omit, for it is one of those which will enable us to see what manner of man the Bishop of D---- was. After the destruction of the b...

M. Madeleine had Fantine conveyed to the infirmary he had established in his own house, and intrusted her to the sisters, who put her to bed. A violent fever had broken out; she...

Without suspecting the fact, the Mayor of M---- enjoyed a species of celebrity. During the seven years that his reputation for virtue had filled the whole of the Bas Boulonnais,...

This is what had occurred. Half-past twelve was striking when M. Madeleine left the assize court of Arras; and he returned to the hotel just in time to start by the mail-cart in...

On this evening, the Bishop of D----, after his walk in the town, had remained in his bed-room till a late hour. He was engaged on a heavy work on the "duties," which he unfortu...

Three A.M. had struck, and he had been walking about in this way for five hours without a break, when he fell into his chair. He fell asleep, and had a dream. This dream, like m...

Father Madeleine remained as simple as he had been on the first day: he had gray hair, a serious eye, the bronzed face of a workingman, and the thoughtful face of a philosopher....

The incidents we are about to record were only partially known at M----, but the few which were known left such a memory in that town, that it would be a serious gap in this boo...

There is nearly always round a bishop a squad of little abbés, as there is a swarm of young officers round a general. They are what that delightful St. Francis de Sales calls so...

In a twinkling Madame Magloire had run to the oratory, entered the alcove, and returned to the Bishop. He was stooping down and looking sorrowfully at a cochlearia, whose stem t...

As two o'clock pealed from the cathedral bell, Jean Valjean awoke. What aroused him was that the bed was too comfortable, for close on twenty years he had not slept in a bed, an...

When Fantine saw that she could earn her own living, she had a moment of joy. To live honestly by her own toil, what a favor of Heaven! A taste for work really came back to her:...

M. Myriel's domestic life was full of the same thoughts as his public life. To any one who could inspect it closely, the voluntary poverty in which the Bishop lived would have b...

In 1815 M. Charles François Bienvenu Myriel was Bishop of D----. He was a man of about seventy-five years of age, and had held the see of D---- since 1806. Although the followin...

It is not enough to be bad in order to prosper: and the pot-house was a failure. Thanks to the fifty-seven francs, Thénardier had been able to avoid a protest, and honor his sig...

When M. Madeleine was passing one morning through an unpaved lane in the town, he heard a noise and saw a group at some distance, to which he walked up. An old man, known as Fat...

The Russian mountain exhausted, they thought about dinner, and the radiant eight, at length somewhat weary, put into the Cabaret Bombarda, an offshoot established in the Champs...

The monk's widow, then, was good for something. M. Madeleine, however, knew nothing of all this; and they were combinations of events of which the world is fall. M. Madeleine ma...

As these details might, especially at the present day, and to employ an expression which is now fashionable, give the Bishop of D---- a certain "Pantheistic" physiognomy, and ca...

Day was beginning to dawn. Fantine had passed a sleepless and feverish night, though full of bright visions, and towards morning fell asleep. Sister Simplice, who was watching,...

There is in all small towns, and there was at M---- in particular, a class of young men, who squander fifteen hundred francs a year in the provinces with the same air as those o...

The girls, when left alone, leaned out of the windows, two by two, talking, looking out, and wondering. They watched the young men leave the Bombarda cabaret arm in arm; they tu...

At the beginning of 1821, the papers announced the decease of M. Myriel, Bishop of D----, "surnamed Monseigneur Welcome," who had died in the odor of sanctity at the age of eigh...

The man disappears, then appears again. He goes down and again comes up to the surface; he shouts, he holds up his arms, but they do not hear him. The ship, shivering under the...

The whole of this day seemed to be composed of dawn; all nature seemed to be having a holiday, and laughing. The pastures of St. Cloud exhaled perfumes; the breeze from the Sein...

The captured mouse was very small, but the cat is pleased even with a thin mouse. Who were the Thénardiers? We will say one word about them for the present, and complete the ske...

The Bishop, though he had converted his coach into alms, did not the less make his visitations. The diocese of D---- is fatiguing; there are few plains and many mountains, and h...

"I prefer Bombarda," Blachevelle declared; "there is more luxury: it is more Asiatic. Just look at the dining-room with its mirrors: look at the knives, they are silver-handled...

The man followed him. The reader will remember, from our description, that the rooms were so arranged that in order to reach the oratory where the alcove was it was necessary to...

What had become of the mother, who, according to the people of Montfermeil, appeared to have deserted her child? Where was she; what was she doing? After leaving her little Cose...

Love talk and table talk are equally indescribable, for the first is a cloud, the second smoke. Fantine and Dahlia were humming a tune, Tholomyès was drinking, Zéphine laughing,...

When the hour for quitting the bagne arrived, when Jean Valjean heard in his ear the unfamiliar words "You are free," the moment seemed improbable and extraordinary, and a ray o...

Fauchelevent had put out his knee-cap in his fall, and Father Madeleine had him carried to an infirmary he had established for his workmen in his factory, and which was managed...

Of whom? Of misery, of hunger, of cold, of loneliness, of desertion, of destitution. Cursed bargain! A soul for a morsel of bread. Misery offers its wares, and society accepts.

I. M. MYRIEL II. M. MYRIEL BECOMES MONSEIGNEUR WELCOME III. A GOOD BISHOP AND A HARD BISHOPRIC IV. WORKS RESEMBLING WORDS V. MONSEIGNEUR'S CASSOCKS LAST TOO LONG VI. BY WHOM THE...

I. PROGRESS IN BLACK-BEAD MAKING II. MADELEINE III. SUMS LODGED AT LAFITTE'S IV. M. MADELEINE GOES INTO MOURNING V. VAGUE FLASHES ON THE HORIZON VI. FATHER FAUCHELEVENT VII. FAU...

I. THE CLOSE OF A DAY'S MARCH II. PRUDENCE RECOMMENDED TO WISDOM III. THE HEROISM OF PASSIVE OBEDIENCE IV. CHEESEMAKING AT PONTARLIER V. TRANQUILLITY VI. JEAN VALJEAN VII. A DES...

I. SISTER SIMPLICE II. SCAUFFLAIRE'S PERSPICACITY III. A TEMPEST IN A BRAIN IV. SUFFERINGS IN SLEEP V. OBSTACLES VI. SISTER SIMPLICE IS SORELY TRIED VII. THE TRAVELLER TAKES PRE...

I. THE YEAR 1817 II. A DOUBLE QUARTETTE III. FOUR TO FOUR IV. THOLOMYÈS SINGS A SPANISH SONG V. AT BOMBARDA'S VI. IN WHICH PEOPLE ADORE EACH OTHER VII. THE WISDOM OF THOLOMYÈS V...