Les Misérables, v. 3/5: Marius

The attic door was torn open, and three men in blue cloth blouses and wearing masks of black paper came in. The first was thin, and carried an iron--shod cudgel; the second, who...

At this epoch, which was apparently careless, a certain revolutionary quivering was vaguely felt. There were breezes in the air which returned from the depths of '89 and '92; an...

The salon of Madame de T---- was all that Marius Pontmercy knew of the world, and it was the sole opening by which he could look out into life. This opening was gloomy, and more...

One of the conversations among the young men at which Marius was present, and in which he mingled now and then, was a thorough shock for his mind. It came off in the back room o...

A very young girl was standing in the half-open door. The sky-light, through which light entered, was exactly opposite the door, and threw upon this face a sallow gleam. She was...

Any one who had passed at that period through the little town of Vernon, and walked on the handsome stone bridge, which, let us hope, will soon be succeeded by some hideous wire...

Where Marius went we shall learn presently. He was away three days, then returned to Paris, went straight to the library of the Law-school and asked for a file of the _Moniteur_...

At this period Marius was twenty years of age, and he had left his grandfather's house for three. They remained on the same terms, without attempting a reconciliation or trying...

It is hither that Marius had come the first time that he absented himself from Paris; it was to this spot he retired each time that M. Gillenormand said,--"He sleeps out." Lieut...

Accident decreed that the regiment to which Théodule belonged should be quartered in Paris. This was an opportunity for Aunt Gillenormand to have a second idea; her first one ha...

On the day when M. Mabœuf said to Marius, "I certainly approve of political opinions," he expressed the real state of his mind. All political opinions were a matter of indiffere...

We have alluded to a lancer: he was a great-grand-nephew of M. Gillenormand's, on the father's side, who led a garrison life, far away from the domestic hearth. Lieutenant Théod...

There was no change in the appearance of the family, save that mother and daughters had put on stockings and flannel waistcoats taken out of the parcel, and two new blankets wer...

Cities, like forests, have their dens, in which everything that is most wicked and formidable conceals itself. The only difference is, that what hides itself thus in cities is f...

"Very bad," Jondrette replied with a heart-broken and grateful smile. "Very bad, my good sir. Her elder sister has taken her to La Bourbe to have her hand dressed. But you will...

At night, as he undressed to go to bed, his hand felt in his coat pocket the parcel which he had picked up in the boulevard and forgotten. He thought that it would be as well to...

The garret was so dark that persons who came into it felt much as if they were going into a cellar. The two new-comers, therefore, advanced with some degree of hesitation, scarc...

Marius judged that the moment had arrived for him to return to his observatory. In a second, and with the agility of his age, he was at the hole in the partition, and peeped thr...

The collision of young minds has this admirable thing about it, that the spark can never be foreseen or the lightning divined. What will shoot forth presently, no one knows. The...

It is the same with misery as with everything else,--in the end it becomes possible, it assumes a shape. A man vegetates, that is to say, is developed in a certain poor way, whi...

The conclusion of Marius's classical studies coincided with M. Gillenormand's retirement from society; the old gentleman bade farewell to the Faubourg St. Germain and Madame de...

Javert posted his men at nightfall, and ambushed himself behind the trees of the Rue de la Barrière des Gobelins, which joins No. 50-52 on the other side of the boulevard. He ha...

Marius sat down on his bed: it might be about half-past five, and only half an hour separated him from what was about to happen. He heard his arteries beat as you hear the ticki...

Marius, with an aching heart, was just going to descend from the species of observatory which he had improvised, when a noise attracted his attention and made him remain at his...

When M. Gillenormand lived in the Rue Servandoni, he frequented several very good and highly noble salons. Although a bourgeois, M. Gillenormand was welcome in them, and as he h...

Marius had lost nothing of all this scene, and yet in reality he had seen nothing. His eyes remained fixed on the maiden, his heart had, so to speak, seized and entirely enfolde...

On a certain afternoon, which, as we shall see, has some coincidence with the events recorded above, Laigle de Meaux was sensually leaning against the door-post of the Café Musa...

The clerk led him to the commissary's office. A very tall man was leaning here against the fender of a stove, and holding up with both hands the skirts of a mighty coat with thr...

Marius at this period was a handsome young man of middle height, with very black hair, a lofty and intelligent forehead, open and impassioned nostrils, a sincere and calm air, a...

The gamin of Paris at the present day, like the Græculus of Rome in former time, is the youthful people with the wrinkle of the old world on its forehead. The gamin is a grace f...

The next day, at the accustomed hour, Marius took out of the drawers his new coat, his new trousers, his new hat, and his new boots; he dressed himself in this complete panoply,...

On one of the last days of the second week Marius was as usual seated on his bench, holding in his hand an open book in which he had not turned a page for several months, when h...

A quartette of bandits, Babet, Gueulemer, Claquesous, and Montparnasse, governed, from 1830 to 1835, the lowest depths of Paris. Gueulemer was a Hercules out of place, and his d...

Marius, dreamer though he was, possessed, as we have said, a firm and energetic nature. His habits of solitary contemplation, by developing compassion and sympathy within him, h...

These four bandits formed a species of Proteus, winding through the police ranks and striving to escape the indiscreet glances of Vidocq "under various shapes,--tree, flame, and...

Marius ascended the stairs slowly, and at the moment when he was going to enter his cell he perceived behind him, in the passage, the elder of Jondrette's girls following him. T...

Marius had lived for the past five years in poverty, want, and even distress, but he now saw that he had never known what real misery was, and he had just witnessed it; it was t...

Eight or nine years after the events recorded in the second portion of this story, there might be noticed on the Boulevard du Temple and in the regions of the Château d'Eau, a b...

In the second year, just at the point of our story which the reader has how reached, it happened that Marius broke off his daily walk in the Luxembourg, without exactly knowing...

Human societies have ever what is called in theatres "un troisième dessous," and the social soil is everywhere undermined, here for good and there for evil. These works are upon...

Life became severe for Marius: eating his clothes and his watch was nothing, but he also went through that indescribable course which is called "roughing it." This is a horrible...

This evening left a sad obscurity and a profound shock in the mind of Marius, and he felt what the earth probably feels when it is opened by the plough-share that the grain may...

Marius felt a liking for this candid old man, who saw himself slowly assailed by poverty and yet was not depressed by it. Marius met Courfeyrac and sought M. Mabœuf--very rarely...

The gamin loves the town, but he loves solitude as well, for there is something of the sage in him: he is _urbis amator_ like Fuscus, and _ruris amator_ like Flaccus. To wander...

There are no limits to Paris; and no other city has held this sway, which at times derides those whom it holds in subjection. "To please you, O Athenians!" Alexander exclaimed....

At about three o'clock Courfeyrac happened to pass along the Rue Mouffetard, accompanied by Bossuet. The snow was thicker than ever, and filled the air, and Bossuet had just sai...

The mother, looked at by him in a certain way, held her tongue, and there was a momentary silence in the den. The elder girl was carelessly removing the mud from the edge of her...

We have seen how Marius discovered, or fancied he had discovered, that her name was Ursule. Appetite comes while loving, and to know that her name was Ursule was a great deal al...

As for M. Gillenormand's two daughters, they were born at an interval of ten years. In their youth they had been very little alike, and both in character and face were as little...

In Gillenormand sorrow was translated into choler; he was furious at being in despair. He had every prejudice and took every license. One of the things of which he composed his...

Summer passed away, then autumn and winter arrived. Neither M. Leblanc nor the young lady had set foot again in the Luxembourg, while Marius had but one thought, that of seeing...

There are still a few persons residing in the Rue Boucherat, Rue de Normandie, and Rue de Saintonge, who can remember a gentleman of the name of M. Gillenormand, and speak kindl...

In a few days Marius was a friend of Courfeyrac, for youth is the season of prompt weldings and rapid cicatrizations. Marius by the side of Courfeyrac breathed freely, a great n...

At the epoch almost contemporary with the action of this book there was not, as at the present day, a policeman at every street corner (a blessing which we have no time to discu...

The Parisian gamin almost forms a caste, and we might say that a boy does not become so by wishing. The word _gamin_ was printed for the first time, and passed from the populace...

Isolation, separation from everything, pride, independence, a taste for nature, the absence of daily and material labor, the soul-struggles of chastity, and his benevolent ecsta...

Marius had retained the religious habits of his childhood. One Sunday, when he went to hear Mass at St. Sulpice, in the Chapel of the Virgin to which his aunt took him when a bo...

On the day after that in which these events occurred in the house on the Boulevard de l'Hôpital, a lad, who apparently came from the bridge of Austerlitz, was trudging along the...

Since we have uttered the word _modesty_, and as we conceal nothing, we are bound to say, however, that notwithstanding his ecstasy, on one occasion "his Ursule" caused him seri...

Marius still lived at the Gorbeau house, but he paid no attention to his fellow-lodgers. At this, period, in truth, there were no other tenants in the house but himself and thos...

Here disinterestedness fades away, and the dream is vaguely sketched. Every one for himself. The eyeless I yells, seeks, gropes, and groans: the social Ugolino is in this gulf....

In summer he is metamorphosed into a frog, and from afternoon to nightfall, before the Austerlitz and Jena bridges, from the top of coal-rafts and washer-women's boats, dives in...

At this moment the distant and melancholy vibration of a bell shook the windows; six o'clock was striking at St. Médard. Jondrette marked each stroke by a shake of the head, and...

The gamin of Paris is the dwarf of the giantess. Let us not exaggerate: this cherub of the gutter has sometimes a shirt, but in that case has only one; he has shoes at times, bu...

He had his theories; here is one of them: "When a man passionately loves women, and himself has a wife for whom he cares little,--a wife that is ugly, legitimate, full of her ri...

The next day, Mame Bougon,--it was thus that Courfeyrac called the old portress, principal lodger, and charwoman, of No. 50-52, though her real name was Madame Bourgon, as we ha...

He lived in the Marais, at No. 6 Rue des Filles de Calvaire, and the house belonged to him. This house has since been pulled down and rebuilt, and the number has probably been c...

One day the air was warm, the Luxembourg was inundated with light and shade, the sky was as pure as if the angels had washed it that morning, the sparrows were twittering shrill...

At night, thanks to a few half-pence which he always contrives to procure, the _homuncio_ enters a theatre. On crossing this magical threshold he becomes transfigured; he was a...

As for the Parisian people, even when full grown, it is always the gamin. Depicting the lad is depicting the city, and that is the reason why we have studied the eagle in the sp...

At the age of sixteen, when at the opera one night, he had the honor of being examined simultaneously by two beauties, at that time, celebrated and sung by Voltaire,--la Camargo...

He gained prizes in his youth at the college of Moulins, in which town he was born, and was crowned by the hand of the Due de Nivernais, whom he called the Due de Nevers. Neithe...

This lad may be traced in Poquelin, a son of the Halles, and again in Beaumarchais; for gaminerie is a tinge of the Gallic temper. When blended with common sense, it at times ad...

Paris has a child and the forest has a bird; the bird is called a sparrow, the child is called a gamin. Couple these two ideas, the one which is all furnace, the other all dawn;...

Paris begins with the badaud and ends with the gamin: two beings of which no other city is capable; the passive acceptance which is satisfied with looking, and the inexhaustible...

Such was M. Luc Esprit Gillenormand, who had not lost his hair, which was rather gray than white, and always wore it in dog's ears,--altogether venerable. He was a man of the 18...

I. MARIUS LOOKING FOR A GIRL'S BONNET MEETS A MAN'S CAP II. MARIUS FINDS SOMETHING III. FOUR LETTERS IV. A ROSE IN WRETCHEDNESS V. A PROVIDENTIAL PEEP-HOLE VI. THE WILD-BEAST MA...

I. PARVULUS II. THE GAMIN'S CHARACTERISTICS III. HE IS AGREEABLE IV. HE MAY BE USEFUL V. HIS CONFINES VI. A BIT OF HISTORY VII. THE GAMIN WOULD HAVE HIS PLACE IN INDIAN CASTES V...

I. NICKNAMES AND SURNAMES II. LUX FACTA EST III. THE EFFECT OF SPRING IV. BEGINNING OF A GREAT MALADY V. MAME BOUGON IS THUNDER-STRUCK VI. TAKEN PRISONER VII. ADVENTURES OF THE...

I. NINETY YEARS AND TWO-AND-THIRTY TEETH II. LIKE MASTER, LIKE HOME III. LUC ESPRIT IV. AN ASPIRING CENTENARIAN V. BASQUE AND NICOLETTE VI. MAGNON AND HER TWO LITTLE ONES VII. R...

I. AN OLD DRAWING-ROOM II. A RED SPECTRE OF THAT DAY III. REQUIESCANT! IV. THE END OF THE BRIGAND V. MARIUS MEETS A CHURCHWARDEN VI. WHAT RESULTED FROM MEETING A CHURCHWARDEN VI...

I. A GROUP THAT NEARLY BECAME HISTORICAL II. BOSSUET'S FUNERAL ORATION ON BLONDEAU III. MARIUS IS ASTONISHED IV. THE BACK ROOM OF THE CAFÉ MUSAIN V. ENLARGEMENT OF THE HORIZON V...