Les Misérables, v. 4/5: The Idyll and the Epic

Spring in Paris is very frequently traversed by sharp, violent breezes which, if they do not freeze, chill. These breezes, which sadden the brightest days, produce exactly the s...

This is what occurred on this same night at La Force. An escape had been concerted between Babet, Brujon, Gueulemer, and Thénardier, although Thénardier was in secret confinemen...

Father Gillenormand at this period had just passed his ninety-first birthday, and still lived with his daughter at No. 6, Rue des Filles-de-Calvaire, in the old house which was...

Toward the end of April matters became aggravated, and the fermentation assumed the proportions of an ebullition. Since 1830 there had been small partial revolts, quickly suppre...

The more unhappy of the two was Jean Valjean; for youth, even in its sorrow, has always a brilliancy of its own. At certain moments Jean Valjean suffered so intensely that he be...

Laigle of Meaux, as we know, liked better to live with Joly than any one else, and he had a lodging much as the bird has a branch. The two friends lived together, ate together,...

What are the convulsions of a city compared with the convulsions of a soul? Man is even a greater profundity than the people. Jean Valjean at this very moment was suffering from...

Slang is the language of the dark. Thought is affected in its gloomiest depths, and social philosophy is harassed in its most poignant undulations, in the presence of this enigm...

One evening little Gavroche had eaten nothing; he remembered that he had not dined either on the previous day, and that was becoming ridiculous; so he formed the resolution to t...

"Pigritia" is a terrible word. It engenders a world, _la pègre_, for which read, _robbery_; and a Hades, _la pégrenne_, for which read, _hunger_. Hence indolence is a mother, an...

Revolutions have a terrible arm and a lucky hand; they hit hard and choose well. Even when incomplete, bastardized, and reduced to the state of a younger revolution, like that o...

At this moment, when the drama we are recounting is about to enter one of those tragic clouds which cover the beginning of the reign of Louis Philippe, it is quite necessary tha...

The next day--it was June 3, 1832, a date to which we draw attention owing to the grave events which were at that moment hanging over the horizon of Paris in the state of lightn...

Marius had reached the markets; there all was calmer, darker, and even more motionless than in the neighboring streets. It seemed as if the frozen peace of the tomb had issued f...

There is riot, and there is insurrection; they are two passions, one of which is just, the other unjust. In democratic States, the only ones based on justice, it sometimes happe...

Marius witnessed the unexpected dénouement of the snare upon whose track he had placed Javert, but the Inspector had scarce left the house, taking his prisoners with him in thre...

In the spring of 1832, although for three months cholera had chilled minds and cast over their agitation a species of dull calm, Paris had been for a long time ready for a commo...

1831 and 1832, the two years immediately attached to the revolution of July, contain the most peculiar and striking moments of history; and these two years, amid those that prec...

The reader has of course understood that Éponine, on recognizing through the railings the inhabitant of the house in the Rue Plumet, to which Magnon sent her, began by keeping t...

While this sort of human-faced dog was mounting guard against the railing, and six bandits fled before a girl, Marius was by Cosette's side. The sky had never been more star-spa...

Nothing is more extraordinary than the commencement of a riot, for everything breaks out everywhere at once. Was it foreseen? Yes. Was it prepared? No. Where does it issue from?...

All situations have their instincts, and old and eternal mother Nature warned Jean Valjean darkly of the presence of Marius. Jean Valjean trembled in the depth of his mind; he s...

The Parisians, who at the present day on entering the Rue Rambuteau from the side of the Halles notice on their right, opposite the Rue Mondétour, a basket-maker's shop having f...

It seemed as if this garden, created in former times to conceal libertine mysteries, had been transformed and become fitting to shelter chaste mysteries. There were no longer an...

As we see, the whole of slang, the slang of four hundred years ago, as well as that of the present day, is penetrated by that gloomy symbolic spirit which gives to every word at...

One day Cosette happened to look at herself in the glass, and said, "Good gracious!" She fancied that she was almost pretty, and this threw her into a singular trouble. Up to th...

About the middle of the last century a president of the Parliament of Paris who kept a mistress under the rose--for at that day the nobility displayed their mistresses and the b...

Javert's triumph at the Maison Gorbeau had seemed complete, but was not so. In the first place, and that was his chief anxiety. Javert had not been able to make a prisoner of th...

The tragical picture we have undertaken would not be complete, the reader would not see in their exact and real relief those great moments of social lying-in and revolutionary g...

This being the case, is every social danger dissipated? Certainly not. There is no Jacquerie, and society may be reassured on that side; the blood will not again rush to its hea...

A few days after this visit of a ghost to Father Mabœuf,--it was on a Monday, the day of the five-franc piece which Marius borrowed of Courfeyrac for Thénardier,--Marius placed...

In the mean while an adventure had happened to Gavroche; after conscientiously stoning the lamp in the Rue du Chaume, he approached the Rue des Vieilles Haudriettes, and not see...

Jean Valjean's purse was useless to M. Mabœuf, who in his venerable childish austerity had not accepted the gift of the stars; he had not allowed that a star could coin itself i...

Marius no longer called on any one, but at times he came across Father Mabœuf. While Marius was slowly descending the mournful steps which might be called the cellar stairs, and...

It is a singularity of this sort of war, that the attack on barricades is almost always made in the front, and that the assailants generally refrain from turning positions, eith...

How long did he remain there? What was the ebb and flow of this tragical meditation? Did he draw himself up? Did he remain bowed down? Had he been bent till he was broken? Could...

This garden, left to itself for more than half a century, had become extraordinary and charming: passers-by forty years ago stopped in the street to gaze at it, without suspecti...

Shortly after this period, Enjolras made a sort of mysterious census, as if in the view of a possible event. All were assembled in council at the Café Musain. Enjolras spoke, mi...

Since 1823, while the public-house at Montfermeil was sinking and gradually being swallowed up, not in the abyss of a bankruptcy, but in the sewer of small debts, the Thénardier...

Of what is a revolt composed? Of nothing and of everything, of an electricity suddenly disengaged, of a flame which suddenly breaks out, of a wandering strength and a passing br...

How sad the soul is when it is sad through love! What a void is the absence of the being who of her own self fills the world! Oh, how true it is that the beloved being becomes G...

"Yes, my good Monsieur Courfeyrac. Ah! good gracious! are you going to put that table too in your horror? Yes, and the Government also condemned me to a fine of one hundred fran...

Marius kept his promise; he deposited a kiss on this livid forehead, upon which an icy perspiration beaded. It was not an infidelity to Cosette, but a pensive and sweet farewell...

Cosette was in her shadow, as Marius was in his, all ready to be kindled. Destiny, with its mysterious and fatal patience, brought slowly together these two beings, all charged...

When night came Jean Valjean went out, and Cosette dressed herself. She arranged her hair in the way that best became her, and put on a dress whose body, being cut a little too...

In the first fortnight of April Jean Valjean went on a journey; this, as we know, occurred from time to time at very lengthened intervals, and he remained away one or two days a...

Holding a pistol without a cock in the streets is such a public function, that Gavroche felt his humor increase at every step. He cried between the scraps of the Marseillaise wh...

Night had quite set in, and nothing occurred, only confused rumors and fusillades now and then could be heard, but they were rare, badly maintained, and distant. This respite, w...

Jean Valjean suspected nothing; for Cosette, not quite such a dreamer as Marius, was gay, and that sufficed to render Jean Valjean happy. Cosette's thoughts, her tender preoccup...

But the task of wise men differs greatly from that of clever men, and the revolution of 1830 quickly stopped; for when a revolution has run ashore, the clever men plunder the wr...

The ground was, in fact, admirably suited; the entrance of the street was wide, the end narrowed, and, like a blind alley, Corinth formed a contraction in it, the Rue de Mondéto...

In the garden, near the railings looking out on the street, there was a stone bench, protected from the gaze of passers-by by a hedge, but it would have been an easy task to rea...

The voice which summoned Marius through the twilight to the barricade in the Rue de la Chanvrerie had produced on him the effect of the voice of destiny. He wished to die, and t...

Any being hovering over Paris at this moment, with the wings of a bat or an owl, would have had a gloomy spectacle under his eyes. The entire old district of the markets, which...

During the two past years Paris, as we said, had seen more than one insurrection. With the exception of the insurgent districts, as a rule, nothing is more strangely calm than t...

Since the arrival at Corinth and the barricade had been begun no one paid any further attention to Father Mabœuf. M. Mabœuf, however, had not quitted the insurgents: he had gone...

While reading these lines Cosette gradually fell into a reverie, and at the moment when she raised her eyes from the last page the handsome officer passed triumphantly in front...

Marius had left M. Gillenormand's house in a wretched state; he had gone in with very small hopes, and came out with an immense despair. However,--those who have watched the beg...

Properly speaking, however, Jean Valjean's house was at the Rue Plumet, and he had arranged his existence there in the following fashion: Cosette and the servant occupied the pa...

Marius, still concealed at the corner of the Rue Mondétour, had watched the first phase of the combat with shuddering irresolution. Still he was unable to resist for any length...

Nothing came yet: it had struck ten by St. Merry's, and Enjolras and Combeferre were sitting musket in hand near the sally-port of the great barricade. They did not speak, but w...

While the men were making cartridges and the women lint, while a large stewpan full of melted tin and lead, intended for the bullet-mould, was smoking on a red-hot chafing-dish,...

Cosette and Marius lived vaguely in the intoxication of their madness, and they did not notice the cholera which was decimating Paris in that very month. They had made as many c...

At the moment when the insurrection, breaking out through the collision between the people and the troops in front of the Arsenal, produced a retrograde movement in the multitud...

Their life thus gradually became overcast; only one amusement was left them which had formerly been a happiness, and that was to carry bread to those who were starving, and clot...

The journals of the day which stated that the barricade in the Rue de la Chanvrerie, that "almost impregnable fortress," as they called it, reached the level of a first-floor, a...

Marius the whole day through had had a furnace in his brain, but now it was a whirlwind; and this whirlwind which was in him produced on him the effect of being outside him and...

Cosette's sorrow, so poignant and so sharp four or five months previously, had without her knowledge attained the convalescent stage. Nature, spring, youth, love for her father,...

That same day, about four in the afternoon, Jean Valjean was seated on one of the most solitary slopes of the Champ de Mars. Either through prudence, a desire to reflect, or sim...

On reaching St. Jean market, the post at which had been disarmed already, Gavroche proceeded "to effect his junction" with a band led by Enjolras, Courfeyrac, Combeferre, and Fe...

The worthy barber who had turned out the two children for whom Gavroche had opened the elephant's paternal intestines, was at this moment in his shop, engaged in shaving an old...

Jean Valjean re-entered with Marius's letter: he groped his way up-stairs, pleased with the darkness like an owl that holds its prey, gently opened and closed the door, listened...

We will tell what had occurred. Enjolras and his friends were on the Bourdon Boulevard near the granaries at the moment when the dragoons charged, and Enjolras, Courfeyrac, and...

The band swelled every moment, and near the Rue des Billettes, a tall, grayish-haired man, whose rough bold face Courfeyrac, Enjolras, and Combeferre noticed, though not one of...

A long black shawl of Widow Hucheloup's was thrown over Father Mabœuf: six men made a litter of their muskets, the corpse was laid on them, and they carried it with bare heads a...

After the departure of the bandits the Rue Plumet resumed its calm, nocturnal aspect. What had just taken place in this street would not have astonished a forest, for the thicke...

I. BRIGHT LIGHT II. THE GIDDINESS OF PERFECT BLISS III. THE BEGINNING OF THE SHADOW IV. CAB RUNS IN ENGLISH AND BARKS IN SLANG V. THINGS OF THE NIGHT VI. MARIUS ACTUALLY GIVES C...

I. THE MYSTERIOUS HOUSE II. JEAN VALJEAN A NATIONAL GUARD III. FOLIIS AC FRONDIBUS IV. CHANGE OF GRATING V. THE ROSE PERCEIVES THAT SHE IS AN IMPLEMENT OF WAR VI. THE BATTLE BEG...

I. THE FLAG: ACT FIRST II. THE FLAG: ACT SECOND III. GAVROCHE HAD BETTER HAVE ACCEPTED THE CARBINE OF ENJOLRAS IV. THE BARREL OF GUNPOWDER V. END OF THE VERSES OF JEAN PROUVAIRE...

I. SOLITUDE AND THE BARRACKS COMBINED II. COSETTE'S FEARS III. ENRICHED WITH THE COMMENTS OF TOUSSAINT IV. A HEART UNDER A STONE V. COSETTE AFTER THE LETTER VI. THE OLD PEOPLE A...

I. THE ORIGIN OF THE POETRY OF GAVROCHE AND THE INFLUENCE OF AN ACADEMICIAN UPON IT II. GAVROCHE ON THE MARCH III. JUST INDIGNATION OF A BARBER IV. THE CHILD ASTONISHES THE OLD...

I. HISTORY OF CORINTH FROM ITS FOUNDATION II. PRELIMINARY GAYETIES III. THE NIGHT BEGINS TO FALL ON GRANTAIRE IV. AN ENDEAVOR TO CONSOLE THE WIDOW HUCHELOUP V. PREPARATIONS VI....

I. WELL CUT OUT II. BADLY STITCHED III. LOUIS PHILIPPE IV. CRACKS IN THE FOUNDATION V. FACTS FROM WHICH HISTORY IS DERIVED BUT WHICH HISTORY IGNORES VI. ENJOLRAS AND HIS LIEUTEN...

I. THE SURFACE OF THE QUESTION II. THE BOTTOM OF THE QUESTION III. A BURIAL GIVES OPPORTUNITY FOR A REVIVAL IV. THE EBULLITIONS OF OTHER DAYS V. ORIGINALITY OF PARIS