Classic Audiobook Collection - Les Miserables Volume 4 by Victor Hugo ~ Full Audiobook [drama]

Starting point is 00:00:00 le miserables volume four by victor hugo translated by isabel florence hapgood book one a few pages of history chapter one well cut eighteen thirty one and eighteen thirty two the two years which are immediately connected with the revolution of july form one of the most peculiar and striking moments of history these two years rise like two mountains midway between those which proceed and those which follow them they have a revolution grander. Precipices are to be distinguished there. The social masses, the very sizes of civilization, the solid group of superposed and adhering interests, the century-old profiles of the ancient French formation, appear and disappear in them every instance, athwart the storm clouds of systems, of passions, and of theories. These appearances and disappearances have been designated as movement and resistance. At intervals, truth, that daylight of the human soul can be described shining there. This remarkable epoch is decidedly circumscribed and is beginning

Starting point is 00:01:06 to be sufficiently distant from us to allow of our grasping the principal lines even at the present day. We shall make the attempt. The restoration had been one of those intermediate phases hard to define, in which there is fatigue, buzzing, murmurs, sleep, tumults, and which are nothing else than the arrival of a great nation at a halting place. These epochs are peculiar and misleasing, the politicians who desire to convert them to profit. In the beginning, the nation asks nothing but repose. It thirsts for but one thing, peace. It has but one ambition to be small, which is the translation of remaining tranquil.

Starting point is 00:01:45 Of great events, great hazards, great adventures, great men, thank God we have seen enough. We have them heaped higher than our heads. We would exchange Caesar for Prusias and Napoleon for the King of Ivetot. What a good little king was he. We have marched since daybreak. We have reached the evening of a long and toilsome day. We have made our first change with Mirabeau, the second with Robespierre, and third with Bonaparte, we are worn out.

Starting point is 00:02:12 Each one demands a bed. Devotion which is weary, heroism which has grown old, ambitions which are sated, fortunes which are made, seek, demand, implore, solicit what? A shelter. They haveeth. They take possession of peace, of tranquility, of leisure. Behold, they are content. But at the same time, certain facts arise, compel recognition, and knock at the door in their turn. These facts are the products of revolutions and wars.

Starting point is 00:02:40 They are, they exist, they have the right to install themselves in society, and they do install themselves therein. And most of the time, facts are the stewards of the household and foriers who do nothing but prepare lodging for principles. This, then, is what appears to philosophical politician. At the same time that weary men demand repose accomplished facts to demand guaranteed. Guarantees are the same to facts that reposes to men. This is what England demanded of the stewards after the protector. This is what France demanded of the Bourbons after the empire. These guarantees are a necessity of the time. They must be accorded. Princes grant them, but in reality it is the force of things which gives them. A profound

Starting point is 00:03:26 truth and one useful to know, which the stewards did not suspect in 1662, and which the Bourbons did not even obtain a glimpse of in 1814. The predestined family, which returned to France when Napoleon fell, had the fatal simplicity to believe that it was itself which bestowed, and that what it had bestowed it could take back again. The House of Bourbon possessed the right divine that France possessed nothing, and that the political right conceded in the Charter of Louis XIV, was merely a a branch of the right divine, was detached by the House of Bourbon and graciously given to

Starting point is 00:04:01 the people, until such day as it should please the King to re-assume it. Still the House of Bourbon should have felt, from the displeasure created by the gift, that it did not come from it. This house was churlish to the nineteenth century. It put on an ill-tempered look at every development of the nation. To make use of a trivial word, that is to say, of a popular and true word, it looked glum, but people saw this. it thought it possessed strength because the empire had been carried away before it like a theatrical stage setting it did not perceive that it had itself been brought in in the same fashion it did not perceive that it also lay in that hand which had removed napoleon it thought that it had roots because it was the path it was mistaken it formed a part of the path but the whole path was france the roots of french society were not fixed in the bourbons but in the nation these obscure and lively roots constituted not the right of a family, but the history of a people. They were everywhere, except under the throne.

Starting point is 00:05:03 The House of Bourbon was to France, the illustrious and bleeding not in her history, but was no longer the principal element of her destiny and the necessary base of her politics. She could get along without the Bourbons she had done without them for two and twenty years. There had been a break of continuity. They did not suspect the fact. And how should they have suspected it, they who fancied that Louis XIV, reigns? on the ninth of Dermedor, and that Louis the 18th was reigning at the Battle of Marengo. Never, since the origin of history, had princes been so blind in the presence of facts in the portion of divine authority, which facts contain and promulgate.

Starting point is 00:05:41 Never had that pretension here below, which is called the right of kings, denied, to such a point, the right from on high. A capital error which led this family to lay its hand once more on the guarantees granted in 1814, on the concessions as it termed them. Sad, a sad thing, what it had termed its concessions were our conquest. What it termed our encroachments were our rights. When the hour seemed to it to have come, the restoration, supposing itself victorious over Bonaparte and well-rooted in the country, that is to say, believing itself to be strong

Starting point is 00:06:15 and deep, abruptly decided on its plan of action and risks its stroke. One morning it drew itself up before the face of France, and elevating its voice it contested the collective title and the individual right of the nation to sovereignty, of the citizen to liberty. In other words, it denied to the nation that which made it a nation, and to the citizens that which made him a citizen. This is the foundation of those famous acts which are called the ordinances of July. The restoration fell. It fell justly, but, we admit, it have not been absolutely hostile to all forms of progress. Great things have been accomplished with it alongside. Under the restoration, the nation had grown accustomed to calm discussion,

Starting point is 00:06:59 which had been lacking under the Republic, and to grandeur in peace which had been wanting under the empire. France, free and strong, had offered an encouraging spectacle to the other peoples of Europe. The revolution had had the word under Rovis-Pierre, the canon had the word under Bonaparte. It was under Louis X, that it was the turn of intelligence to have the word. The wind ceased, and the torch was lighted once more. On a lofty height, the pure light of mind could be fiend-fickering. A magnificent, useful, and charming spectacle. For a space of 15 years, those great principles which are so old for the thinker, though new for the statesmen, could be seen at work in perfect peace on the public square. Equality before the law, liberty of conscience, liberty

Starting point is 00:07:46 of speech, liberty of the press, the accessibility of all aptitudes to all function. Thus It proceeded until 1830. The Bourbons were an instrument of civilization which broke in the hands of Providence. The fall of the Burbons was full of grandeur, not on their side, but on the side of the nation. They quitted the throne with gravity, but without authority. Their descent into the night was not one of those solemn disappearances which leave a sombre emotion in history, was neither the spectral calm of Charles I, nor the eagle scream of Napoleon.

Starting point is 00:08:21 They departed, that is all. They laid down the crown and retained no Oriole. They were worthy, but they were not august. They lacked, in a certain measure, the majesty of their misfortune. Charles X, during the voyage from Cherbourg, causing a round table to be cut over into a square table, appeared to be more anxious about imperiled etiquette than about the crumbling monarchy. This diminution saddened devoted men who loved their persons, and serious men who honored their race.

Starting point is 00:08:50 The populace was admirable. the nation attacked one morning with weapons by a sort of royal insurrection, felt itself in the possession of so much force that it did not go into a raid. It defended itself, restrained itself, restored things to their places, the government to law, the bourbonst exile, alas, and then halted. It took the old king Charles X, from beneath that dais which had sheltered Louis X, and set him gently on the ground. It touched the royal personages only with sadness and precaution.

Starting point is 00:09:21 was not one man, was not a few men, it was France, France entire, France victorious and intoxicated with her victory, who seemed to be coming to herself, and who put into practice, before the eyes of the whole world the grave words of Guillaume Duver after the day of the barricade. It is easy for those who are accustomed, skim the favors of the great, and to spring like a bird from bow to bow, from an afflicted fortune to a flourishing one, to show themselves, harsh towards their prince and his adversity. But as for me, the fortune of my king, and especially of my afflicted kings, will always be venerable to me.

Starting point is 00:09:57 Suburbans carried away with them respect, but not regret. As we have just stated, their misfortune was greater than they were. They faded out in the horizon. The Revolution of July instantly had friends and enemies throughout the entire world. The first rushed towards her with joy and enthusiasm, the others turned away, each according to his nature. At the first blush, the princes of Europe, the owls of this dawn, shut their eyes, wounded and stupefied, and only opened them to threaten.

Starting point is 00:10:27 A fright which can be comprehended, a wrath which can be pardoned. This strange revolution had hardly produced a shock. It had not even paid to vanquished royalty the honor of treating it as an enemy and of shedding of blood. In the eyes of despotic governments, who are always interested in having liberty calumniate itself, The Revolution of July committed the fault of being formidable and of remaining gentle. Nothing, however, was attempted or plotted against it. The most discontented, the most irritated, the most trembling saluted it.

Starting point is 00:10:59 Whatever our egotism and our rancor may be, a mysterious respect springs from events in which we are sensible of the collaboration of someone who is working above man. The Revolution of July is the triumph of right overthrowing the fact, a thing which is full of splendor. right overthrowing the fact hence the brilliancy of the revolution of eighteen thirty hence also its mildness right triumphant has no need of being violent right is the just and the true the property of right is to remain eternally beautiful and pure the fact even when most necessary to all appearances even when most thoroughly accepted by contemporaries if it exists only as a fact and if it contain only too little of right or none at all is in fact is in fact that contain only too little of right or none at all is in fact is infallibly destined to become, in the course of time, deformed, impure, perhaps even monstrous. If one desires to learn at one blow, to what degree of hideousness, the fact can attain,

Starting point is 00:11:58 viewed at the distance of centuries, let him look at Machiavelli. Machiavelli is not an evil genius, nor a demon, nor a miserable and cowardly writer. He is nothing but the fact. And he is not only the Italian fact, he is the European fact, the fact of the 16th century. becomes hideous and so he is, in the presence of the moral idea of the nineties. This conflict of right and fact has been going on ever since the origin of society. To terminate this duel to amalgamate the pure idea with the humane reality, to cause right to penetrate specifically into the fact and the fact into the right.

Starting point is 00:12:35 That is the task of sages. End of Book 1, Chapter 1. Chapter 2 of Book 1 of Le Miserables, Volume 4 by Victor Hugo. This is a Libervox recording. All Libervox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visitlibrovox.org. Recording by Emma Joyce. Le Miserables, Volume 4 by Victor Hugo.

Starting point is 00:13:03 Translated by Isabel Florence Hapgood. Book 1, A Few Pages of History. Chapter 2. Badly Sowed. But the task of sages is one thing. The task of clever men is another. The Revolution of 1830 came to a sudden halt. As soon as a revolution has made the coast, the skillful make haste to prepare the shipwrest. The skillful in our century have conferred on themselves the title of statesmen,

Starting point is 00:13:31 so that this word, statesman, has ended by becoming somewhat of a slang word. It must be borne in mind, in fact, that wherever there is nothing but skill, there is necessarily pettiness. To say, the skillful amounts to saying the mediocre. in the same way to say statesman is sometimes equivalent to saying traitors if then we are to believe the skillful revolutions like the revolution of july are severed arteries a prompt ligature is indispensable the right too grandly proclaimed is shaken also right once firmly fixed the state must be strengthened liberty once assured attention must be directed to power here the sages are not as yet separated from the skillful but they begin to to be distrustful. Power, very good, but in the first place, what is power? In the second, whence comes it? The skillful do not seem to hear the murmured objection, and they continue their

Starting point is 00:14:27 maneuvers. According to the politicians, who are ingenious in putting the mask of necessity on profitable fictions, the first requirement of a people after a revolution, when this people forms part of a monarchical continent, is to procure for itself a dynasty. In this way, they say, peace, that is to say, time to dress our wounds and to repair the house, can be had after a revolution. The dynasty conceals the scaffolding and covers the ambulance. Now, it is not always easy to procure a dynasty. If it is absolutely necessary, the first man of genius, or even the first man of fortune who comes to hand suffices for the manufacturing of a king. You have, in the first place, Napoleon, in the second, Etorbede.

Starting point is 00:15:10 But the first family that comes to hand does not suffice to make a dynasty. there is necessarily required a certain modicum of antiquity in a race, and the wrinkle of the centuries cannot be improvised. If we place ourselves at the point of view of the statesmen, after making all allowances, of course, after a revolution what are the qualities of a king which result from it? He may be, and it is useful for him to be a revolutionary, that is to say, a participant in his own person in that revolution, that he should have lent a hand to it, that he should have either compromised or distinguished himself therein, that he should have touched the axe or wielded the sword in it what are the qualities of a dynasty it should be national that is to say revolutionary at a distance not through acts committed but by reason of ideas accepted it should be composed of past and be historic be composed of future and be sympathetic all this explains why the early revolutions contented themselves with finding a man cromwell or napoleon and why the second absolutely insisted on finding a family the house of brunswick or the house of brunswick or the house of Orleans. Royal houses resemble those Indian fig trees, each branch of which, bending over to the earth, takes root and becomes a fig tree itself. Each branch may become a dynasty,

Starting point is 00:16:25 on the sole condition that it shall bend down to the people. Such is the theory of the skillful. Here, then, lies the great art, to make a little rendered to success the sound of a catastrophe in order that those who profit by it may tremble from it also, to season with fear every step that is taken, to augment the curve of the transition to the point of retarding progress, to dull that Aurora, to denounce and retrench the harshness of enthusiasm, to cut all angles and nails, to wad triumph, to muffle upright, to envelope the giant people in flannel and to put it to bed very speedily, to impose a diet on that excess of health, to put Hercules on the treatment of a convalescent, to dilute the event with the expedient, to offer to spirits thirsting for the

Starting point is 00:17:07 ideal that nectar thinned out with a potion, to take one's precaution against too much success, to garnish the revolution with a shade. 1830 practiced this theory, already applied to England by 1688. 1830 is a revolution arrested midway, half of progress, quasi-right. Now logic knows not the almost,

Starting point is 00:17:28 absolutely as the sun knows not the candle. Who arrests revolutions halfway? The bourgeoisie? Why? Because the bourgeoisie is interest which has reached satisfaction. Yesterday it was appetite, today it is plenitude.

Starting point is 00:17:42 tomorrow it will be satiety. The phenomenon of 1814 after Napoleon was reproduced in 1830 after Charles the 10th. The attempt has been made, and wrongly, to make a class of the bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie is simply the contented portion of the people. The bourgeois is the man who now has time to sit down. A chair is not a cast.

Starting point is 00:18:05 But through a desire to sit down too soon, one may arrest the very march of the human race. This has often been the fault of the human race. bourgeoisie. One is not a class because one has committed a fault. Selfishness is not one of the divisions of the social order. Moreover, we must be just to selfishness. The state to which that part of the nation, which is called the bourgeoisie, aspired after the shock of 1830, was not the inertia which is complicated with indifference and laziness, and which contains a little shame. It was not the slumber which presupposes a momentary forgetfulness accessible to dream.

Starting point is 00:18:39 It was the halt. The halt. is a word formed of a singular double and almost contradictory sense, a troop on the march, that is to say, movement, a stand, that is to say, repose. The halt is the restoration of forces, it is repose armed and on the alert, it is the accomplished fact which posts sentinels and holds itself on its guard.

Starting point is 00:19:01 The halt presupposes the combat of yesterday and the combat of tomorrow. It is the partition between 1830 and 1848. What we here call combat may also be designated as problem, progress. The bourgeoisie, then, as well as the statesmen, required a man who should express this word halt, and although because, a composite individuality, signifying revolution and signifying stability, in other terms, strengthening the present by the evident compatibility of the past with the future. This man was already found. His name was Louis-Philippe Diornion. The 221 made Louis-Philippe King, Lafayette undertook the coronation, who called it the best of

Starting point is 00:19:42 Republic. The town hall of Paris took the place of the Cathedral of Riems. This substitution of a half-throne for a whole throne was the work of 1830s. When the skillful had finished, the immense vice of their solution became apparent. All this had been accomplished outside the bounds of absolute right. Absolute right cried, I protest. Then, terrible to say, it retired into the darkness. End of book one, chapter two. of Book 1 of Le Mesaerab, Volume 4, by Victor Hugo. This is a Libravox recording. All Libravox recordings are in the public domain.

Starting point is 00:20:23 For more information, or to volunteer, please visit Libravox.org. Recording by Rachel Weaver. Le Mesaab, Volume 4 by Victor Hugo, translated by Isabel Florence Hapgood. Book 1, A Few Pages of History. Chapter 3. Louis Filippe. Revolutions have a terrible arm and a happy hand. They strike firmly and choose well. Even incomplete, even debased and abused, and reduced to their state of a junior revolution, like the Revolution of 1830, they nearly always retain sufficient providential lucidity to prevent them from

Starting point is 00:21:04 falling amiss. Their eclipse is never an abdication. Nevertheless, let us not boast too loudly. revolutions also may be deceived, and grave errors have been seen. Let us return to 1830. 1830, in its deviation, had good luck. In the establishment which entitled itself Order, after the revolution had been cut short, the king amounted to more than royalty. Louis Philippe was a rare man. The son of a father, to whom history will accord certain attenuating circumstances,

Starting point is 00:21:39 but also as worthy of esteem as that father has. had been of blame, possessing all private virtues and many public virtues, careful of his health, of his fortune, of his person, of his affairs, knowing the value of a minute and not always the value of a year, sober, serene, peaceable, patient, a good man and a good prince, sleeping with his wife, and having in his palace lackeys charged with the duty of showing the conjugal bed to the bourgeois, an ostentation of the regular sleeping apartment which had become useful after the former illegitimate displays of the elder branch knowing all the languages of europe and what is more rare all the languages of all interests and speaking them an admirable representative of the middle class but outstripping it and in every way greater than it possessing excellent sense while appreciating the blood from which he had sprung counting most of all on his intrinsic worth and on the question of his race very particular declaring himself orleans and not bourbon

Starting point is 00:22:51 thoroughly the first prince of the blood royal while he was still only a serene highness but a frank bourgeois from the day he became king diffuse in public concise in private reputed but not proved to be a miser at bottom one of those economists who are readily prodigal at their own fancy or duty lettered but not very sensitive to letters a gentleman but not a chevalier simple calm and strong adored by his family and his household a fascinating talker an undeceived statesman inwardly cold dominated by his family and his household a fascinating talker an undeceived statesman inwardly cold dominated by his immediate interest, always governing at the shortest range, incapable of rancor and gratitude, making use without mercy of superiority on mediocrity, clever in getting parliamentary majorities to put in the wrong those mysterious unanimities which mattered duly under thrones, unreserved, sometimes imprudent in his lack of reserve, but with marvelous attress in that imprudence, fertile in expedience and countenances. In masks.

Starting point is 00:24:07 Making France fear Europe and Europe France. Incontestably fond of his country, but preferring his family. Assuming more domination than authority and more authority than dignity. A disposition, which has this unfortunate property, that as it turns everything into success, it admits of ruse and does not absolutely repudiate baseness, but which has this valuable side, that it preserves politics, from violent shocks, the state from fractures, and society from catastrophes, minute, correct,

Starting point is 00:24:42 vigilant, attentive, sagacious, indefatigable, contradicting himself at times and giving himself the lie, bold against Austria and Ancona, obstinate against England in Spain, bombarding Antwerp, and paying off Pritchard, signing the Marseille with conviction, inaccessible to despondency, to licissitude, to the taste of, for the beautiful and the ideal, to daring generosity, to utopia, to chimeras, to wrath, to vanity, to fear, possessing all the forms of personal intrepidity, a general at Valmei, a soldier at Jamops, attacked eight times by regicide, and always smiling, brave as a grenadier, courageous as a thinker, uneasy only in the face of the chances of

Starting point is 00:25:32 a European shaking up, and unfitted for great political adventures, always ready to risk his life, never his work, distinguishing his will and influence in order that he might be obeyed as an intelligence rather than as a king, endowed with observation and not with divination, not very attentive to minds, but knowing men, that is to say, requiring to see in order to judge, prompt and penetrating good sense practical wisdom easy speech prodigious memory drawing incessantly on this memory his only point of resemblance with caesar Alexander and Napoleon knowing deeds facts details dates proper names ignorant of tendencies passions the diverse geniuses of the crowd the interior aspirations the hidden and obscure uprisings of souls in a word all that can be designated as the invisible currents of consciences, accepted by the surface but little in accord with France lower down, extricating himself by dint of tact, governing too much and not enough,

Starting point is 00:26:45 his own first minister, excellent at creating out of the pettiness of realities, an obstacle to the immensity of ideas, mingling a genuine creative faculty of civilization, of order and organization, an indescribable spirit of proceedings and chicanery, the founder and lawyer of a dynasty, having something of Charlemagne and something of an attorney, in short, a lofty and original figure, a prince who understood how to create authority in spite of the uneasiness of France,

Starting point is 00:27:19 and power in spite of the jealousy of Europe. Louis Philippe will be classed among the eminent men of his century, and would be ranked among the most illustrious governors of history had he loved glory but a little, and if he had had the sentiment of what is great to the same degree as the feeling for what is useful. Louis Philippe had been handsome, and in his old age he remained graceful, not always approved by the nation, he always was so by the masses. He pleased. He had that gift of charming.

Starting point is 00:27:57 lacked majesty, he wore no crown, although a king, and no white hair, although an old man. His manners belonged to the old regime, and his habits to the new, a mixture of the noble and the bourgeois, which suited 1830. Louis-Philippe was transition reigning. He had preserved the ancient pronunciation and the ancient orthography which he placed at the service of opinions modern. He loved Poland and Hungary, but he wrote, Le Polonoie, and he pronounced Le Ungre. He wore the uniform of the National Guard,

Starting point is 00:28:34 like Charles X, and the ribbon of the Legion of Honor, like Napoleon. He went a little to chapel, not at all to the chase, never to the opera. Incorruptible by sacristans, by worshippers in, by ballet dancers. This made a part of his bourgeois popularity. He had no heart.

Starting point is 00:28:55 He went out with his umbrella under his arm, and this umbrella long formed a part of his oral. He was a bit of a mason, a bit of a gardener, something of a doctor. He bled a postillion who had tumbled from his horse. Louis Philippe no more went about without his lancet than did Henry IV without his poniard. The royalist jeered at this ridiculous king, the first who had ever shed blood without the object of healing. For the grievances against Louis Philippe, there is one deduction to be made. There is that which accuses the royalty, that which accuses the reign, that which accuses the king, three columns which all give different totals.

Starting point is 00:29:40 Democratic right confiscated, progress becomes a matter of secondary interest. The protests of the street violently repressed. Military execution of insurrections. The rising passed over by arms. the Rue Transonian, the councils of war, the absorption of the real country by the legal country, on half-shares with 300,000 privileged persons. These are the deeds of royalty. Belgium refused.

Starting point is 00:30:09 Algeria too harshly conquered, and, as in the case of India, by the English, with more barbarism than civilization. The breach of faith to Abd al-Qadr, Blaye, Deutsch, Bott, Pritchardt, Pichard. paid. These are the doings of the reign. The policy which was more domestic than national was the doing of the king. As will be seen, the proper deduction having been made, the king's charge is decreased. This is his great fault. He was modest in the name of France. Whence arises this fault? We will state it. Louis-Philippe was rather too much of a paternal king, that incubation was a incubation. of a family with the objection of founding a dynasty is afraid of everything and does not like to be disturbed. Hence, excessive timidity, which is displeasing to the people, who have the 14th of July in their civil and austerlitz in their military traditions.

Starting point is 00:31:11 Moreover, if we deduct the public duties, which require to be fulfilled first of all, that deep tenderness of Louis-Philippe towards his family was deserved by the family, that domestic group was worth, of admiration. Virtues there dwelt side by side with talents. One of Louis-Philippe's daughters, Marie de Orleans, placed the name of her race among artists, as Charles de Orleans had placed it among poets. She made of her soul a marble, which she named Jean Desaerque. Two of Louis-Philippe's daughters elicited from Metternich this eulogium. They are young people such as our rarely seen and princes such as are never seen. This without any dissimulation, and also without any exaggeration, is the truth about Louis-Philippe. To be prince equality, to bear in his own person the contradiction of the restoration and the revolution, to have that disquieting side of the

Starting point is 00:32:15 revolutionary, which becomes reassuring and governing power, therein lay the fortune of Louis-Philippe in 1830. Never was there a more complete adaptation of a man to an event. The one entered into the other, and the incarnation took place. Louis-Philippe is 1830 made man. Moreover, he had in his favor that great recommendation to the throne, exile. He had been proscribed, a wanderer, poor. He had lived by his own labor. In Switzerland, this heir to the richest princely domains in France had sold an old horse in order to obtain bread. At Richanaut he gave lessons in mathematics while his sister Adelaide did woolwork and sewed. These souvenirs connected with a king rendered the bourgeoisie enthusiastic.

Starting point is 00:33:12 He had, with his own hands, demolished the iron cage of Mount Saint-Marquil, built by Louis XIll 11th and used by Louis XIV. He was the companion of Dumorries. He was the friend of Lafayette. He had belonged to the Jacobines Club. Marabu had slapped him on the shoulder. Downton had said to him, Young man!

Starting point is 00:33:36 At the age of four and twenty, in 93, being then Monsieur de Chartres, he had witnessed from the depth of a box the trial of Louis XVI. So well named that poor tyrant. The blind clairvoyance of the revolution, breaking royalty in the king and the king with royalty did so almost without noticing the man in the fierce crushing of the idea the vast storm of the assembly tribunal the public wrath interrogating carpe not knowing what to reply the alarming stupefied vacillation by the royal head beneath that sombre breath the relative innocence of all in that catastrophe of those who condemned as well as of the man condemned He had looked on those things.

Starting point is 00:34:24 He had contemplated that giddiness. He had seen the centuries appear before the bar of the Assembly Convention. He had beheld behind Louis XVI that unfortunate passerby who was made responsible, the terrible culprit, the monarchy, rise through the shadows, and there had lingered in his soul the respectful fear of these immense justices of the populace, which are almost as impersonal as the justice of God. The trace left in him by the revolution was prodigious. Its memory was like a living imprint of those great years minute by minute. One day in the presence of a witness, whom we are not permitted to doubt,

Starting point is 00:35:08 he rectified, from memory, the whole of the letter A in the alphabetical list of the constituent assembly. Louis Philippe was a king of the broad daylight. While he reigned, the press was free. The tribune was free. Conscience and speech were free. The laws of September are open to sight. Although fully aware of the gnawing power of light on privileges, he left his throne exposed to the light.

Starting point is 00:35:36 History will do justice to him for this loyalty. Louis-Philippe, like all historical men who have passed from the scene, is today put on trial by the human conscience. His case is as yet only in the lower court. The hour when history speaks with its free and venerable accent has not yet sounded for him. The moment has not come to pronounce a definite judgment on this king. The austere and illustrious historian Louis Blanc has himself recently softened his first verdict. Louis Philippe was elected by those two almosts which are called the 221 and 1830,

Starting point is 00:36:15 that is to say, by a half parliament and a half-revolution. And in any case, from the superior point of view where philosophy must place itself, we cannot judge him here, as the reader has seen above, except with certain reservations in the name of the absolute democratic principle. In the eyes of the absolute, outside these two rights, the right of man in the first place, and the right of the people in the second, All is usurpation, but what we can say, even at the present day, that after making these reserves is that to sum up the whole, and in whatever manner he is considered, Louis-Philippe, taken in himself,

Starting point is 00:37:00 and from the point of view of human goodness, will remain to use the antique language of ancient history, one of the best princes who ever sat on a throne. What is there against him? that throne take away louis philippe the king there remains the man and the man is good he is good at times even to the point of being admirable often in the midst of his greatest souvenirs after a day of conflict with the whole diplomacy of the continent he returned at night to his apartments and there exhausted with fatigue overwhelmed with sleep what did he do he took a death sentence and passed the night and passed the night and he was exhausted with fatigue overwhelmed with sleep what did he do he took a death sentence and passed the night night in revising a criminal suit, considering it something to hold his own against Europe, but that it was a still greater matter to rescue a man from the executioner. He obstinately maintained his opinion against his keeper of the seals.

Starting point is 00:38:01 He disputed the ground with the guillotine foot by foot against the Crown attorneys, those chatterers of the law, as he called them. Sometimes the pile of sentences covered his table. examined them all. It was anguished to him to abandon these miserable, condemned heads. One day he said to the same witness to whom we have recently referred, I won seven last night. During the early years of his reign the death penalty was as good as abolished, and the erection of a scaffold was a violence committed against the king. The grieve having disappeared with the elder branch, a bourgeois place of execution was instituted.

Starting point is 00:38:43 under the name of the Barrier-Sin-Jacques. Practical men felt the necessity of a quasi-legitimate guillotine, and this was one of the victories of Casimir Perrier, who represented the narrow sides of the bourgeoisie, over Louis-Philippe, who represented its liberal sides. Louis-Philippe annotated Beccaria with his own hand. After the face-skeem machine, he exclaimed, What a pity that I was not wounded! Then I might have pardoned. On another occasion, alluding to the resistance offered by his ministry, he wrote in connection with a political criminal, who is one of the most generous figures of our day. His pardon is granted.

Starting point is 00:39:25 It only remains for me to obtain it. Louis Philippe was as gentle as Louis VIII, and as kindly as Henry IV. Now, to our mind in history, where kindness is the rarest of pearls, the man who is kindly almost takes precedence of the man who is great. Louis-Philippe, having been severely judged by some, harshly perhaps by others, it is quite natural that a man, himself a phantom at the present day, who knew that king, should come and testify in his favor before history. This deposition, whatever else it may be, is evidently and above all things entirely disinterested. An epitaph penned by a dead man is sincere.

Starting point is 00:40:13 One shade may console another shade. The sharing of the same shadows confers the right to praise it. It is not greatly to be feared that it will ever be said of two tombs in exile. This one flattered the other. End of Book 1, Chapter 3. Recording by Rachel Weaver, Boston, Massachusetts. Chapter 4 of Book 1 of Les Mersraib. Volume 4 by Victor Hugo.

Starting point is 00:40:51 This is a Librevox recording. All Librevox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit levervox.org. Recording by Rachel Weaver. Lame is Aub, Volume 4 by Victor Hugo, translated by Isabel Florence Hapgood. Book 1

Starting point is 00:41:12 A few pages of history. Chapter 4. Cracks Beneath the Foundation At the moment when the drama which we are narrating is on the point of penetrating into the depths of one of the tragic clouds which enveloped the beginning of Louis-Philippe's reign, it was necessary that there should be no equivoke, and it became requisite that this book should offer some explanation with regard to this king. Louis-Philippe had entered into possession of his royal authority without violence, without any direct action on his part by virtue of a revolutionary change. evidently quite distinct from the real aim of the evolution, but in which he, the Duke de Orleans, exercised no personal initiative. He had been born a prince, and he believed himself to have been elected king.

Starting point is 00:42:03 He had not served this mandate on himself. He had not taken it. It had been offered to him. And he had accepted it. Convinced wrongly, to be sure, but convinced nevertheless that the offer was in accordance with right, and that the acceptance of it was in accordance with right. with duty. Hence, his possession was in good faith. Now, we say it in good conscience, Louis-Philippe being in possession in perfect good faith, and the democracy being in good faith in its

Starting point is 00:42:33 attack, the amount of terror discharged by the social conflicts weighs neither on the king nor on the democracy. A clash of principles resembles a clash of elements. The ocean defends the water, the hurricane defends the air. The king defends royalty, the democracy. defends the people. The relative, which is the monarchy, resists the absolute, which is the republic. Society bleeds in this conflict, but that which constitutes its suffering today will constitute its safety later on. And in any case, those who combat are not to be blamed. One of the two parties is evidently mistaken. The right is not, like the Colossus of Rhodes, on two shores at once, with one foot on the Republic and one in the royalty. It is in

Starting point is 00:43:20 Indivisible, and all on one side, but those who are in error are so sincerely. A blind man is no more a criminal than a Vendian is a ruffian. Let us then impute to the fatality of things alone, these formidable collusions. Whatever the nature of these tempests may be, human irresponsibility is mingled with them. Let us complete this exposition. The government of 1840 led a hard life immediately. Born yesterday, it was obliged to fight today. Hardly installed, it was already, everywhere conscious of vague movements of traction on the apparatus of July so recently laid, and so lacking in

Starting point is 00:44:01 solidity. Resistance was born on the morrow, perhaps even it was born on the preceding evening, from month to month the hostility increased, and from being concealed it became patent. The Revolution of July, which gained but little acceptance outside of France by kings, had been diversely interpreted in France, as we have said. God delivers over to Hemen his visible will in events, an obscure text written in a mysterious tongue. Men immediately make translations of it, translations hasty, incorrect, full of errors, of gaps, and of nonsense. Very few minds comprehend the divine language.

Starting point is 00:44:42 The most sagacious, the calmest, the most profound decipher slowly, and when they arrive with their text, the task has long been completed. There are already twenty translations on the public place. From each remaining springs a party, and from each misinterpretation a faction, and each party thinks that it alone has the true text, and each faction that it possesses the light. Power itself is often a faction. There are in revolutions swimmers who go against the current. They are the old parties. For the old parties who clung to heredity by the grace of God, think that revolutions, having sprung from the right to revolt, one has the right to revolt against them. Error. For in these revolutions, the one who revolts is not the people.

Starting point is 00:45:35 It is the king. Revolution is precisely contrary of revolt. Every revolution, being a normal revolution, being a normal revolution, outcome contains within itself its legitimacy, which false revolutionists sometimes dishonor, but which remains even when soiled, which survives even when stained with blood. Revolution spring not from an accident, but from necessity. A revolution is a return from the fictitious to the real, it is because it must be that it is. Nonetheless did the old legitimate parties assail the revolution of 1830 with all the vehemence which arises from false reasoning

Starting point is 00:46:17 errors make excellent projectiles they strike it cleverly in its vulnerable spot in default of a queer ass and its lack of logic they attacked this revolution in its royalty they shouted to it revolution why this king factions are blind men who aim correctly this cry was uttered equally by the Republicans, but coming from them, this cry was logical. What was blindness in the legitimists was clearness of vision in the Democrats. 1830 had bankrupted the people. The enraged democracy reproached it with this. Between the attack of the past and the attack of the future, the establishment of July struggled. It represented the minute at loggerheads, on the one hand, with the monarchial centuries on the other side, the monarchical

Starting point is 00:47:10 centuries, on the other hand, with eternal right. In addition, and besides all this, it was no longer revolution and had become a monarchy. 1830 was obliged to take precedence of all Europe. To keep the peace was an increase of complication. A harmony established contrary to sense is often more onerous than a war. From this secret conflict, always muzzled, but always growing, was born armed peace, that ruinous expedience of civilization which in the harness of the European cabinets is suspicious in itself. The royalty of July reared up, in spite of the fact that it caught it in the harness of European cabinets. Metternich would gladly have put it in kicking straps. Pushed on in France, by progress, it pushed on the monarchies, those loiterers in Europe.

Starting point is 00:48:05 After having been towed, it undertook to tow. meanwhile within her pauperism the proletariat salary education penal servitude prostitution the fate of the woman wealth misery production consumption division exchange coin credit the rights of capital the rights of labor All these questions were multiplied above society, a terrible slope. Outside of political parties properly so-called, another movement became manifest. Philosophical fermentation replied to democratic fermentation. The elect felt troubled as well as the masses, in another manner, but quite as much. Thinkers meditated, while the soil, that is to say, the people, traversed by revolutionary currents, trembled under them with indescribably vague epileptic shocks.

Starting point is 00:49:04 These dreamers, some isolated, others united in families and almost in communion, turned over social questions in a pacific but profound manner, impassive miners who tranquilly pushed their galleries into the depths of a volcano, hardly disturbed by the dull commotion and the furnaces of which they caught glimpses. This tranquility was not the least beautiful spectacle of this agitated epoch. These men left to political parties the question of rights. They occupied themselves with the question of happiness. The well-being of man.

Starting point is 00:49:39 That was what they wanted to extract from society. They raised material questions, questions of agriculture, of industry, of commerce, almost to the dignity of a religion. In civilization, such as it has formed itself a little by the command of God, a great deal by the agency of man, interests combine, unite, an amalgamate, and a manner to form a veritable hard rock in accordance with a dynamic law, patiently studied by economists, those geologists of politics. These men who grouped themselves under different appellations,

Starting point is 00:50:16 but who may all be designated by the generic title of socialists, endeavored to pierce that rock, and to cause it to spout forth the living waters of human felicity. From the question of the scaffold to the question of war, their works embraced everything, to the rights of man, as proclaimed by the revolution, they added the rights of woman and the rights of the child. The reader will not be surprised if, for various reasons, we do not here treat in a thorough manner, from the theoretical point of view, the questions raised by socialism,

Starting point is 00:50:48 we confine ourselves to indicating them. All the problems that the socialist proposed to themselves Cosmagonic visions, reverie, and mysticism being cast aside can be reduced to two principal problems. First problem. To produce wealth. Second problem. To share it. The first problem contains the question of work. The second contains a question of salary.

Starting point is 00:51:16 In the first problem, the employment of forces is in question. In the second, the distribution of enjoyment. From the proper employment of forces results public power. From a good distribution of enjoyments results individual happiness. By a good distribution, not an equal but an equitable distribution must be understood. From these two things combined, the public power without individual happiness within, results social prosperity. Social prosperity means the man happy, the citizen-free,

Starting point is 00:51:54 the nation great. England solves the first of these two problems. She creates wealth admirably. She divides it badly. This solution which is complete on one side only leads her fatally to two extremes. Monstrous opulence, monstrous wretchedness. All enjoyments for some, all privations for the rest,

Starting point is 00:52:19 that is to say for the people. Privilege, exception, monopoly, feudalism. born from toil itself. A false and dangerous situation which sates public power or private misery, which sets the roots of the state in the sufferings of the individual. A badly constituted grandeur in which are combined all the material elements and into which no moral element enters. Communism and agrarian law think that they solve the second problem.

Starting point is 00:52:53 They are mistaken. Their division kills production. Equal partition abolishes emulation and consequently labor. It is a partition made by the butcher which kills that which it divides. It is therefore impossible to pause over these pretended solutions. Slaying wealth is not the same thing as dividing it. The two problems require to be solved together to be well solved. The two problems must be combined and made but one.

Starting point is 00:53:24 Solve only the first of the two problems, you will be Venice, you will be England. You will have, like Venice, an artificial power, or, like England, a material power. You will be the wicked rich man. You will die by an act of violence, as Venice did, or by bankruptcy, as England will fall. And the world will allow to die and fall all that is merely selfishness, all that does not represent for the human race either a virtue or an unlawful. idea. It is well understood here that by the words Venice and England we designate not the peoples but social structures. The oligarchies superposed on nations and not the nations themselves.

Starting point is 00:54:10 The nations always have our respect and our sympathy. Venice as a people will live again. England, the aristocracy, will fall, but England the nation is immortal. That said we continue. Solve the two problems, encourage the wealthy, and protect the poor. Suppress misery. Put an end to the unjust farming out of the feeble by the strong. Put a bridle on the iniquitous jealousy of the man who is making his way against the man who has reached the goal. Adjust mathematically and fraternally, salary to labor. Mingle gratuitous and compulsory education with the growth of childhood, and make of science the base of manliness. Develop minds while keeping arms busy.

Starting point is 00:54:58 Be at one in the same time a powerful people and a family of happy men. Render poverty democratic, not by abolishing it, but by making it universal, so that every citizen without exception may be a proprietor, an easier matter than is generally supposed. In two words, learn how to produce wealth and how to distribute it, and you will have at once moral and material greatness, and you will be worthy to call yourself France. This is what socialism said outside and above a few sex which have gone astray.

Starting point is 00:55:33 This is what it sought in facts. That is what it sketched out in minds. Efforts worthy of admiration, sacred attempts! These doctrines, these theories, these resistances, the unforeseen necessity for the statesmen to take philosophy, into account, confused evidences of which we catch a glimpse, a new system of politics to be created, which shall be in accord with the old world, without too much discord with the new revolutionary ideal, a situation in which it became necessary to use Lafayette to defend

Starting point is 00:56:11 Paulingha, the institution of progress transparent beneath the revolt, the chambers and streets, the competitions to be brought into equilibrium around. him, his faith in the revolution, perhaps an eventual indefinable resignation born of the vague acceptance of a superior definitive right, his desire to remain of his race, his domestic spirit, his sincere respect for the people, his own honesty preoccupied Louis-Philippe almost painfully, and there were moments when, strong and courageous as he was, he was overwhelmed by the difficulties of being a king. He felt under his feet a formidable disaggregation, which was not, nevertheless, a reduction to dust, France being more France than ever. Piles of shadows covered the

Starting point is 00:57:03 horizon. A strange shade, gradually drawing nearer extended little by little over men, over things, over ideas, a shade which came from wraths and systems, everything which had been hastily stifling, was moving and fermenting. At times, the conscience of the honest man resumed its breathing. So great was the discomfort of the air in which sophisms were intermingled with truths. Spirits trembled in the social anxiety like leaves at the approach of a storm. The electric tension was such that, at certain instance, the first-comer, a stranger, brought light. Then the twilight obscurity closed in again, at intervals, deep, and dull mutterings allowed a judgment to be formed as to the quantity of thunder contained by the cloud twenty months had barely elapsed since the revolution of july the year eighteen thirty two had opened with an aspect of something impending and threatening

Starting point is 00:58:06 the distress of the people the laborers without bread the last prince de conned engulfed in the shadows brussels expelling the nassau as paris did the bourbons belgium offering herself to a french prince and giving herself to an english prince the russian hatred of nicholas behind us the demons of the south ferdinand in spain miguel in portugal the earthquakeing in italy metternich extending his hand over balonia france treating austria sharply at ancona at the north no one knew what sinister sound of the hammer nailing up poland in her coffin irritated glances watching france narrowly all over europe england a suspected ally ready to give a push to that which was tottering and to hurl herself on to that which should fall the peerage sheltering itself behind beckaria to refuse four heads to the law the flirty lease erased from the king's carriage the cross torn from notre dame lafayette lessened lafitte ruined benjamin constant dead in indignance casimir perier dead in the exhaustion of his power political and social malady breaking out simultaneously in the two capitals of the kingdom the one in the city of thought the other in the city of toil at paris civil war war, at Lyons' servile war, in the two cities the same glare of the furnace, a crater-like crimson on the brow of the people. The south rendered fanatic, the west troubled, the Duchess

Starting point is 00:59:49 de Berry in Lavendie, plots, conspiracies, risings, cholera added the sombre roar of the tumult of events to the sombre roar of ideas. End of Book 1, Chapter 4. Recording by Rachel Weaver, Boston, Massachusetts. Chapter 5 of Book 1 of Volume 4 of Le Miserables by Victor Hugo. This is a Librevox recording. All Libravox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Librevox.org. by Robert Kuyper. Les Miserables, Volume 4 by Victor Hugo,

Starting point is 01:00:42 translated by Isabel Florence Hapgood. Book 1, A Few Pages of History. Chapter 5. Facts, Quence, History Springs, and which history ignores. Towards the end of April, everything had become aggravated. The fermentation entered the boiling state. Ever since 1830, petty partial revolts had been going on here and there, which were quickly suppressed, but ever bursting forth afresh, the sign of a vast underlying conflagration. Something terrible was in preparation. Glimpses could be caught of the features still indistinct and imperfectly lighted of a possible revolution. France kept an eye on Paris. Paris.

Starting point is 01:01:33 eye on the Foubert-Saint-Antoine. The Foubert-Sentant-Oan, which was in a dull glow, was beginning its abolition. The wine-shops of the Rue de Charon were, although the union of the two epithets seems singular when applied to wine-shops, grave and stormy. The government was there purely and simply called in question. There people publicly discussed the question of fighting or of keeping quiet. There were back shops where working men were made to swear that they would hasten into the street at the first cry of alarm and that they would fight without counting the number of the enemy. This engagement once entered into, a man seated in the corner of the wine shop, assumed a sonorous tone and said, You understand, you have sworn. Sometimes they went

Starting point is 01:02:29 upstairs to a private room on the first floor, and there are scenes that were almost Masonic were enacted. They made the initiated take oaths to render service to himself, as well as to the fathers of families. That was the formula. In the taprooms, subversive pamphlets were read. They treated the government with contempt, says a secret report of that time. Words like the following could be heard there, I don't know the names of the leaders. We folk shall not know the day until two hours beforehand. One workman said, There are 300 of us.

Starting point is 01:03:07 Let each contribute ten sous that will make 150 francs, with which to procure powder and shot. Another said, I don't ask for six months. I don't even ask for two. In less than a fortnight we shall be paralleled with the government. With 25,000 men we can face them. Another said,

Starting point is 01:03:29 I don't sleep at night because I make cartridges all night. From time to time, men of bourgeois appearance and in good coats came and caused embarrassment. And with the air of command shook hands were the most important and then went away. They never stayed more than ten minutes. Significant remarks were exchanged in a low tone. The plot is ripe. The matter is arranged. It was murmured by all who were there.

Starting point is 01:03:59 to borrow the very expression of one of those who were present. The exultation was such that one day a working man exclaimed before the whole wine shop, We have no arms, one of his comrades replied, The soldiers have, thus parodying without being aware of the fact in Bonaparte's proclamation to the army in Italy. When they had anything of a more secret nature on hand, adds one report, they did not communicate it to each other. It is not easy to understand what they could conceal after what they said.

Starting point is 01:04:33 These reunions were sometimes periodical. At certain ones of them, there were never more than eight or ten persons present. They were always the same. In others, anyone entered who wished, and the room was so full that they were forced to stand. Some went thither through enthusiasm and passion, others because it was on their way to their work. as during the revolution there were patriotic women in some of these wine shops who embraced newcomers. Other expressive facts came to light. A man would enter a shop, drink, and go his way with the remark,

Starting point is 01:05:10 Wine merchant, the revolution will pay what is due to you. Revolutionary agents were appointed in a wine shop facing the Rue de Charon. The balloting was carried on in their caps. Working men met at the houses of a fencing master who gave lessons in the rue de cot. There there was a trophy of arms formed of wooden broadswords, canes, clubs, and foils. One day the buttons were removed from the foils.

Starting point is 01:05:39 A workman said, There are 25 of us, but they don't count on me because I am looked upon as a machine. Later on, that machine became quinisette. The indefinite thing is a machine. Things which were brewing gradually acquired a strange and indescribable notoriety. A woman, sweeping off her doorstep, said to another woman, For a long time, there has been a strong force busy making cartridges.

Starting point is 01:06:09 In the open street, proclamation could be seen addressed to the National Guard in the departments. One of these proclamations was signed, Berto, wine merchant. One day a man with his beard worn like a collar and with an Italian accent mounted a stone post at the door of the liquor cellar in the March Le Noire and read aloud a singular document

Starting point is 01:06:35 which seemed to emanate from the occult power groups formed around him and applauded. The passages which touched the crowd most deeply were collected and noted down. Our doctrines are told us. Trammled, our proclamations torn, our bill stickers are spied upon and thrown into prison. The breakdown, which has recently taken place in cottons, has converted to us many mediums. The future of nations is being worked out in our obscure ranks.

Starting point is 01:07:09 Here are the fixed terms. Action or reaction. Revolution or counter-revolution. For, at our epoch, we no longer believe either in Indian. inertia or in immobility. For the people against the people, that is the question. There is no other. On the day when we cease to suit you, break us, but up to that day, help us to march on. All this in broad daylight. Other deeds, more audacious still, were suspicious in the eyes of the people by reason of their very audacity. On the 4th of April 1832, a passerby

Starting point is 01:07:50 mounted the post on the corner which forms the angle of the Rouss Saint-Mercarite and shouted, I am a babubist. But beneath Babuf, the people centered Jiske. Among other things, this man said, Down with property! The opposition of the left is cowardly and treacherous. When it wants to be on the right side, it preaches revolution. It is democratic in order to escape being beaten, and royalists so that it may not have to fight. The Republicans are beasts with feathers.

Starting point is 01:08:23 Distrust the Republicans, citizens of the laboring classes. Silence, citizen spy, cried an artisan. This shall put an end to the discourse. Mysterious incidents occurred. At nightfall, a working man encountered near the canal, a very well-dressed man who said to him, "'Whither are you bound, citizen?' "'Sir,' replied the working man,

Starting point is 01:08:50 I have not the honor of your acquaintance. I know you very well, however. And the man added, Don't be alarmed. I am an agent of the committee. You are suspected of not being quite faithful. You know that if you reveal anything, there is an eye fixed on you.

Starting point is 01:09:10 Then he shook hands with a working man and went away, saying, We shall meet again soon. The police, who were on the alert, collected singular dialogues not only in the wine shops but in the street. Get yourself received very soon, said a weaver to a cabinet maker. Why? There is going to be a shot to fire.

Starting point is 01:09:35 Two ragged pedestrians exchanged these remarkable replies, fraught with evident Jacari. Who governs us? Monsieur Philippe? No, it is the bourgeoisie. The reader is mistaken if he thinks that we take the word jaccarie in a bad sense, the jacquet were the poor. On another occasion, two men were heard to say to each other as they passed by,

Starting point is 01:10:00 we have a good plan of attack. Only the following was caught of a private conversation between four men who were crouching in a ditch of the circle of the Brier de Trone. Everything possible will be done to prevent his walking about Paris anymore. Who was the he? Menacing obscurity. The principal leaders, as they said in the Fubourge, held themselves apart. It was supposed that they met for consultation in a wine shop near the point Saint-Eustice, a certain Ogh, chief of the society aid for tailors,

Starting point is 01:10:39 Rue Monditour, had the reputation of serving as intermediary central between the leaders and the Fubourge Saint-Antoine. Nevertheless, there was always a great deal of mystery about these leaders, and no certain fact can invalidate the singular arrogance of this reply made later on by a man accused before the Court of Peers. Who was your leader? I knew of none, and I recognized none. There was nothing but words, transparent but vague,

Starting point is 01:11:11 sometimes idle reports, rumors, hearsay, Other indications cropped up. A carpenter, occupied in nailing boards to a fence around the ground on which a house was in process of construction in the Rue de Ruehl, found on that plot the torn fragment of a letter, on which were still legible the following lines. The committee must take measures to prevent recruiting in the sections for the different societies. And as a postscript, we have learned that there are guns in the Rue de Foubelle. Poissonier, No. 5, to the number of 5,000 or 6,000 in the house of a gunsmith in that court. The section owns no arms. What excited the carpenter and caused him to show this thing to his neighbors was the fact that a few paces further on he picked up another paper, torn like the

Starting point is 01:12:06 first, and still more significant, of which we reproduce a facsimile because of the historical interest attached to these strange documents. The document is in the form of a table headed with the letters Q, C, D, E, followed by the instructions, learn this list by heart. After so doing, you will tear it up. The men admitted will do the same when you have transmitted their orders to them. Health and fraternity. U. O-G-A-F-E. L. It was only later on that the persons who were in the secret of this find at the time learned the significance of those four capital letters, Quinturians, Centurians, Decurians, Ecclerus, Scouts, and the sense of the letters U, O-G-A-F-E, which was a date and meant April 15, 1832. Under each capital letter were inscribed names,

Starting point is 01:13:09 followed by very characteristic notes. Thus, Q. Bannerelle, eight guns, 83 cartridges, a safe man. C. Bougier, one pistol, 40 cartridges. D, rollet, one foil, one pistol, one pound of powder. E, tessier, one sword, one cartridge box. Exact, terrier.

Starting point is 01:13:37 Eight guns, braves, etc. Finally, this carpenter found, still in the same enclosure, a third paper, on which was written in pencil, but very legibly, this sort of enigmatical list. Unite. Blanchard, Arbre, Sec, Six, Barrae, Suaz, Salocomte, Kosciusco, Aubrey the Butcher, J, J. J. R. Caius Gracius.

Starting point is 01:14:07 Write of revision, Dufon. Fall of the Girondiste, Debrac, Mobouille, Washington, Pinson, one pistol, 86 cartridges, Marseillaise, sovereignty of the people, Michel, Quincambois, sword, hoche, Marceau, Plato, Arbre Seck, Warsaw, Tilly, Cryer of the Popular. The honest bourgeois into whose hands this list fell knew its significance. It appears that this list was the complete nomenclature of the sections of the fourth arrondicement of the Society of the Rights of Man, with the names and dwellings of the chiefs of sections. Today, when all these facts which were obscure are nothing more than history, we may publish them.

Starting point is 01:14:59 It should be added that the foundation of the Society of the Rights of Man seems to have been posterior to the date when this paper was found. Perhaps this was only a rough draft. Still, according to all the remarks and the words, according to written notes, material facts begin to make their appearance. In the Rue Popin Kour, in the house of a dealer in Brickabrach, there were seized seven sheets of grey paper all folded alike lengthwise and in four. These sheets enclosed 26 squares of the same gray paper folded in the form of a cartridge and a card on which was written the following. Salt Peter, 12 ounces. Sulfur, 2 ounces. Sharkole, 2 ounces and a half. Water, 2 ounces. The report of the seizure stated that the drawer exhaled a strong smell of powder.

Starting point is 01:15:57 A mason returning from his day's work left behind him a little. little package on a bench near the bridge at Austerlitz. This package was taken to the police station. It was opened, and in it were found two printed dialogues, signed Lojotier, a song entitled Workmen Band Together and a tin box full of cartridges. One artisan drinking with a comrade made the latter feel him to see how warm he was. The other man felt a pistol under his waistcoat. In a ditch on the boulevard between Pelle-Lachés and the Berriot-D-Torne, at the most deserted spot, some children, while playing, discovered beneath a mass of shavings and refuse bits of wood a bag,

Starting point is 01:16:44 containing a bullet-mould, a wooden punch for the preparation of cartridges, a wooden bowl in which there were grains of hunting powder, and a little cast-iron pot, whose interior presented evident traces of melted, lead. Police agents, making their way suddenly and unexpectedly at five o'clock in the morning, into the dwelling of a certain pardon, who was afterwards a member of the Baricade-Marie section, and got himself killed in the insurrection of April, 1834, found him standing near his bed and holding in his hand some cartridges, which he was in the act of preparing.

Starting point is 01:17:26 towards the hour when working men repose. Two men were seen to meet between the barrier pick-puss and the barrier Charenton, in a little lane between two walls, near a wine-shop, in front of which there was a je de Siam. One drew a pistol from beneath his blouse and handed it to the other. As he was handing it to him, he noticed that the perspiration of his chest had made the powder damp. He primed the pistol and added more powder to what was already in the pan. Then the two men parted.

Starting point is 01:18:03 A certain galley, afterwards killed in the Rubeau-Borg in the affair of April, boasted of having in his house 700 cartridges and 24 flints. The government one day received a warning that arms and 200,000 cartridges had just been distributed in the Foborg. On the following week, 30,000 cartridges were distributed. The remarkable point about it was that the police were not able to seize a single one. An intercepted letter read, The day is not far distant when, within four hours by the clock,

Starting point is 01:18:44 80,000 patriots will be under arms. All this fermentation was public. One might almost say, tranquil. The approaching insurrection was preparing its storm calmly in the face of the government. No singularity was lacking to this still subterranean crisis, which was already perceptible. The bourgeoisie talked peacefully to the working classes of what was in preparation. They said, how is the rising coming along, in the same tone in which they would have said, how is your wife?

Starting point is 01:19:22 A furniture dealer in the room Moreau inquired, Well, when are you going to make the attack? Another shopkeeper said, The attack will be made soon. I know it. A month ago, there were 15,000 of you. Now there are 25,000.

Starting point is 01:19:41 He offered his gun, and a neighbor offered a small pistol, which he was willing to sell for seven francs. Moreover, the revolution, Fever was growing. Not a point in Paris nor in France was exempt from it. The artery was beating everywhere, like those membranes which arise from certain inflammations and form in the human body, the network of secret societies began to spread all over the country. From the associations of the Friends of the People, which was at the same time public and secret, sprang the society of the

Starting point is 01:20:17 rights of man, which also dated from one of the orders of the day, pluvois, year 40, of the Republican era, which was destined to survive even the mandate of the Court of Assizes, which pronounced its dissolution, and which did not hesitate to bestow on its sections significant names like the following. Pikes. Toxin. Signal Canon. Furgian Cap

Starting point is 01:20:48 January 21 The beggars The vagabonds Forward March Robespierre Level Sa Ira The Society of the Rights of Man

Starting point is 01:21:06 engendered the Society of Action These were impatient individuals Who broke away and hastened ahead Other associations sought to recruit themselves from the Great Mother Societies. The members of sections complained that they were torn asunder. Thus the Gallic Society and the Committee of Organization of the Municipalities, Thus the Associations for the Liberty of the Press, for Individual Liberty, for the Instruction of the People Against Indirect Taxes,

Starting point is 01:21:41 then the Society of Equal Working Men, which was divided into three fractions, the levelers, the Communists, the Reformers. Then the Army of the Bastilles, a sort of cohort organized on a military footing, four men commanded by a corporal, ten by a sergeant, 20 by a sub-lieutenant, 40 by a lieutenant. There were never more than five men who knew each other. creation where precaution is combined with audacity and which seems stamped with the genius of Venus. The Central Committee, which was at the head, had two arms, the Society of Action and the Army of the Bastille.

Starting point is 01:22:25 A legitimist association, the Chevaliers of Fidelity, stirred about among these the Republican filiations. It was denounced and repudiated there. The Parisian societies had ramifications in the principal cities, Lyon, Nantes, Lille, Marseille, and each had its society of the rights of man, the Charbonier and the free men. All had a revolutionary society which was called the cougarde. We have already mentioned this word.

Starting point is 01:23:01 In Paris, the fobois Saint-Marsault kept up an equal buzzing with the Foborges Saint-Antoine, and the schools were no less moved than the Fubourge. A café in the Rue Saint-Hiazant and the wine shop of the seven billiards, Rue des Mathurine Saint-Jacques, served as rallying points for the students. The Society of the Friends of the ABC affiliated

Starting point is 01:23:26 to the mutualists of Angiers and to the Cougard of Aix met, as we have seen, in the Café Moussene. These same young men assembled also, as we have stated already, in a restaurant wine shop of the Rue Mondeur, which was called Corinth. These meetings were secret. Others were as public as possible, and the reader can judge of their boldness from these fragments of an interrogatory undergone in one of the ulterior prosecutions. Where was this meeting held? In the Rue de lape? at whose house? In the street? What sections were there? Only one? Which? The manual section. Who was its leader? I. But you are too young to have decided alone upon the bold course of attacking the government. Where did your instructions come from? From the central committee. The army was mined at the same time as the population, as was proved. subsequently by the operations of Bayford, Lunaville, and Epinard.

Starting point is 01:24:38 They counted on the 52nd regiment, on the 5th, on the 8th, on the 37th, and on the 20th light cavalry. In Burgundy and in the southern towns they planted the Liberty Tree, that is to say, a pole surmounted by a red cap. Such was the situation. The Foborgs Saint Antoine, more than any other group of the population, as we have stated in the beginning, accentuated this situation and made it felt. That was the sore point. This old Foborges, peopled like an ant-hill, laborious, courageous, and angry as a hive of bees, was quivering with expectation and with the desire for a tumult.

Starting point is 01:25:25 Everything was in a state of agitation. there, without any interruption, however, of the regular work. It is impossible to convey an idea of this lively yet somber physiognomy. In this foboorges exists poignant distress hidden under attic roofs. There also exist rare and ardent minds. It is particularly in the matter of distress and intelligence, that it is dangerous to have extremes meet. The Fobor's Sant'Antoine had also other causes to tremble,

Starting point is 01:26:02 for it received the counter-shock of commercial crises, of failures, strikes, slack seasons, all inherent to great political disturbances. In times of revolution, misery is both cause and effect. The blow which it deals rebounds upon it. This population full of proud virtue, capable of the highest degree of latent heat, always ready to fly to arms,

Starting point is 01:26:30 prompt to explode, irritated, deep, undermined, seemed to be only awaiting the fall of a spark. Whenever certain sparks float on the horizon chased by the wind of events, it is impossible not to think of the Foubert-Saint-Antoine and of the formidable chance which has placed at the very gates of Paris

Starting point is 01:26:52 that powder-house of suffering and ideas. The wine shops of the Fauberge Antoine, which have been more than once drawn in the sketches which the reader has just perused, possess historical notoriety. In troublous times, people grow intoxicated there more on words than on wine. A sort of prophetic spirit and an afflatus of the future circulates there. Swelling hearts and enlarging souls. The cabarets of the Faubéers-Saint-Antoine resemble those taverns of Mont-Aventine,

Starting point is 01:27:29 erected on the cave of the Sibyl, and communicating with a profound and sacred breath, taverns, where the tables were almost tripods, and where was drunk what Ineus calls the Sibylene wine. The Faubéers-Saint-Antoine is a reservoir of people. Revolutionary agitations create fissures there. through which trickles the popular sovereignty. This sovereignty may do evil. It can be mistaken like any other,

Starting point is 01:28:01 but even when led astray, it remains great. We may say of it, as of the blind cyclops, In gens. In 93, according as the idea which was floated about was good or evil, according as it was the day of fanaticism or of enthusiasm, there leaped, forth from the Fobert-Saint-Antoine, now savage legions, now heroic bands. Savage. Let us explain this word. When these bristling men, who in the early days of the

Starting point is 01:28:37 revolutionary chaos, tattered, howling, wild, with uplifted bludgeon, pike on high, hurled themselves upon ancient Paris in an uproar. What did they want? They wanted an end to oppression, an end to tyranny, an end to the sword, work for men, instruction for the child, social sweetness for the woman,

Starting point is 01:29:04 liberty, equality, fraternity, bread for all, the idea for all, the edenizing of the world. Progress. And that holy, sweet, and good thing, progress they claimed in terrible wise, driven by extremities as they were, half-naked, clubbing fist, a roar in their mouths. They were savages, yes, but the savages of civilization.

Starting point is 01:29:36 They proclaimed right furiously. They were desirous, if only with fear and trembling, to force the human race to paradise. They seemed barbarians, and they were saviors. They demanded light with the mask of night. Facing these men who were ferocious, we admit, and terrifying, but ferocious and terrifying for good ends, there are other men, smiling, embroidered, gilded, beribboned, starred in silk stockings, in white plumes, in yellow gloves, in varnished boots,

Starting point is 01:30:13 who, with their elbows, on a velvet table beside a marble chimneypiece, insist gently on demeanor and the preservation of the past, of the Middle Ages, of divine right, of fanaticism, of innocence, of slavery, of the death penalty, of war, glorifying in low tones and with politeness, the sword, the stake, and the scaffold. For our part, if we were forced to make a choice

Starting point is 01:30:43 between the barbarians of civilization and the civilized men of barbarism, we should choose the barbarians. But, thank heavens, still another choice is possible. No perpendicular fall is necessary in front any more than in the rear, neither despotism nor terrorism. We desire progress with a gentle slope. God takes care of that. God's whole policy consists in rendering slopes less steep. End of Book 1, Chapter 5.

Starting point is 01:31:27 Chapter 6 of Book 1 of Volume 4 of Le Miserable by Victor Hugo. This is a Librevox recording. All Librevox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Librevox.org. Recording by Robert Kuiper. Les Miserables, Volume 4 by Victor Hugo, translated by Isabel Florence Hapgood. Book 1. A few pages of history.

Starting point is 01:32:04 Chapter 6. Angelo Raz and his lieutenants. It was about this epoch when Ange L.S. in view of a post-Apros, in view of Apostrophe, catastrophe, instituted a kind of mysterious census. All were present at a secret meeting at the Café Moussain. Angelo Raz said, mixing his words with a few half-enigmatical but significant metaphors. It is proper that we should know where we stand and on whom we may count. If combatants are required, they must be provided. It can do no harm to have something with which to strike. Passers-by always have more chance of being gored when there are bulls on the road than when there are none. Let us, therefore, reckon a little on the herd.

Starting point is 01:32:52 How many of us are there? There is no question of postponing this task until tomorrow. Revolutionists should always be hurried. Progress has no time to lose. Let us mistrust the unexpected. Let us not be caught unprepared. We must go over all the seams that we have. have made and see whether they hold fast. This business ought to be concluded today.

Starting point is 01:33:19 Cufferle, you will see the polytechnic students. It is their day to go out. Today is Wednesday. Fouilly, you will see those of the glaciers, will you not? Combeferre has promised me to go to Peakbus. There is a perfect swarm and an excellent one there. Bahorel will visit the Estrepade. Prover. The masons are growing. lukewarm, you will bring us news from the lodge of the Rue de Grenville-Saint-Anne Re. Jolie will go to the Dupri Tren's clinical lecture and feel the pulse of the medical school. Bossouille will take a little turn in the court and talk with the young law licensiates. I will take charge of the cougouard myself.

Starting point is 01:34:04 That arranges everything, said Courfé-Fé-Rae. No. What else is there? A very important thing. What is that? asked Corfé Rey. The barrier de main, replied Angel Raz. Angeau Raz remained for a moment as though absorbed in reflection. Then he resumed.

Starting point is 01:34:25 At the barrier domain, there are marble workers, painters, and journeymen in the studios of sculptors. They are an enthusiastic family, but liable to cool off. I don't know what has been the matter with them for some time past. They are thinking of something else. They are becoming extinguished. They pass their time playing dominoes. There is urgent need that someone should go and talk with them a little, but with firmness. They meet at Richfjurs.

Starting point is 01:34:59 They are to be found there between twelve and one o'clock. Those ashes must be fanned into a glow. For that errand, I had counted on that abstracted Marius, who is. is a good fellow on the whole, but he no longer comes to us. I need someone for the barrier domain. I have no one. What about me? said Grantaire. Here am I. You, I. You indoctrinate Republicans, you warm up hearts that have grown cold in the name of principle? Why not? Are you good for anything? I have a vague ambition in that direction, said Grantaire. You do not believe in everything.

Starting point is 01:35:48 I believe in you. Grantaire will do me a service? Anything. I'll black your boots. Well, don't meddle with our affairs. Sleep yourself sober from your absinthe. You are an ingrate, Angéoraz. You the man to go to the barrier domain?

Starting point is 01:36:07 You capable of it? I am capable of descending the rue de Greece, of crossing the Place Saint-Michel, of sloping through the rue Monsieur le Prince, of taking the route of Vosgerard, of passing the Carmelites, of turning into the rue d'Assaz, of reaching the rue de chert-medie, of leaving behind me the Concier de Guerre, of pacing the rue de domain of passing the barrier and entering Richfers. I am capable of that. My shoes are capable of that. Do you know anything of those comrades who meet at Richfers? Not much. We only address each other as thou. What will you say to them? I will speak to them of Robespierre, Pardy, of Dantan, of principles. You! I. But I don't receive justice. When I said about it, I am terrible. I have read Prudum. I know the social contract. I know my constitution of the year two by heart. The liberty of one citizen ends, where the liberty of another citizen begins. Do you take me for a brute? I have an old bank bill

Starting point is 01:37:31 of the republic in my drawer, the rights of man, the sovereignty of the people, saprieste. I I am even a bit of a hebertist. I can talk the most superb twaddle for six hours by the clock, watch in hand. Be serious, said Angeau Raz. I am wild, replied Grantaire. Angeolras meditated for a few moments and made the gesture of a man who has taken a resolution. Grandeur, he said gravely, I consent to try you. You shall go to the barrier domain. Grand Terre lived in furnished lodgings very near the Café Moussin. He went out, and five minutes later he returned. He had gone home to put on a robespierre waistcoat.

Starting point is 01:38:19 Red, said he as he entered, and he looked intently at Angelo Raz. Then, with the palm of his energetic hand, he laid the two scarlet points of the waistcoat across his breast. And stepping up to Anjolras, he whispered in his ear, Be easy. He jammed his hat on resolutely and departed. A quarter of an hour later, the back room of the Café Moussin was deserted. All the friends of the ABC were gone, each in his own direction, each to his own task. Anjolras, who had reserved the Couguard of Aix for himself, was the last to leave.

Starting point is 01:39:00 Those members of the Couguard of Aix, who were in Paris then, met on the plain of Issee, in one of the abandoned quarries which are so numerous in that side of Paris. As Angel Raz walked toward this place, he passed the whole situation in review in his own mind. The gravity of events was self-evident. When facts, the premonitory symptoms of latent social malady, move heavily, the slightest complication stops and entangles them. A phenomenon whence rises ruin and new births,

Starting point is 01:39:36 Angeau Raz decried a luminous uplifting beneath the gloomy skirts of the future. Who knows? Perhaps the moment was at hand. The people were again taking possession of right, and what a fine spectacle. The revolution was again majestically taking possession of France and saying to the world,

Starting point is 01:39:57 The sequel to tomorrow. Anjou Raz was content. The furnace was being heated. He had at that moment a poutreau. train of friends scattered all over Paris. He composed in his own mind with Cambifres' philosophical and penetrating eloquence, Fouillet's cosmopolitan enthusiasm, Courférez's dash, Bahorel's smile, Jean-Prover's melancholy, joly science, Boussé's sarcasms, a sort of electric spark which took fire nearly everywhere at once, all hands to work.

Starting point is 01:40:36 Surely the result would answer to the effort. This was well. This made him think of Grand Terre. Hold, said he to himself. The barrier domain will not take me far out of my way. What, if I were to go on as far as Richfers? Let us have a look at what Grand Terre is about, and see how he is getting on. One o'clock was striking at the Beau-Girard steeple when Angéoraz reached the Richefor's smoking room. He pushed open the door, entered, folded his arms, letting the door fall to and strike his shoulders, and gazed at that room filled with tables, men, and smoke. A voice broke forth from the mist of smoke,

Starting point is 01:41:23 interrupted by another voice. It was Grantaire holding a dialogue with an adversary. Grantaire was sitting opposite another figure at a marble St. Anne table, strewn with grains of bran and dotted with dominoes. He was hammering the table with his fist, and this is what Anjolaz heard. Double six, fours! The pig I have no more! You are dead, a two! Six! Three, one. It's my move! Four points. Not much. It's your turn. I've made an enormous mistake.

Starting point is 01:42:01 You are doing well. Fifteen. Seven more. That makes me twenty-two. Twenty-two. You weren't expecting that double-six. If I had placed it at the beginning, the whole play would have been changed. A two again.

Starting point is 01:42:18 One. One, well. Five. I haven't any. It was your play, I believe. Yes? Blank. What lucky has. You are lucky. Two. One. Neither five nor one. Now that's bad for you. Domino. Plague, take it. End of chapter six of book one. This is Libravox recording.

Starting point is 01:42:58 All Libravox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Libravox.org. Recording by Maylo Lé Miserables, Volume 4 by Victor Hugo, translated by Isabel Florence Hapgood. Book 2, Eponine Chapter 1, The Larks Meadow Marius had witnessed the unexpected termination of the ambush upon whose track he had set Javert, but Javert had no sooner quitted the building, bearing off his

Starting point is 01:43:32 prisoners in three hackney coaches, then Marius also glided out of the house. It was only nine o'clock in the evening. Marius betook himself to Corferac. Corferac was no longer the imperturbable inhabitant of the Latin Quarter. He had gone to live in the Rue de la Verre for for political reasons. This quarter was one where, at that epoch, insurrection liked to install itself. Marius said to Corfadak, I have come to sleep with you. Corfadak dragged a mattress off his bed, which was furnished with two, spread it out on the floor and said, there.

Starting point is 01:44:13 At seven o'clock on the following morning, Marius returned to the hovel, paid the quarter's rent which he owed to Maambulgong, had his books, his bed, his table, and his table, and his commode and his two chairs loaded on a hand-cart and went off without leaving his address. So that when Javert returned in the course of the morning, for the purpose of questioning Marius as to the events of the preceding evening, he found only Maan Bougon, who answered, moved away. Maan Bougon was convinced that Marius was to some extent, an accomplice of the robbers who had been seized the night before.

Starting point is 01:44:50 Who would ever have said it? she exclaimed to the portresses of the quarter, a young man like that, who had the air of a girl. Marius had two reasons for this prompt change of residence. The first was, that he now had a horror of that house, where he had beheld so close at hand, and in its most repulsive and most ferocious development, a social deformity which is, perhaps, even more terrible than the wicked rich man, the wicked poor man.

Starting point is 01:45:23 The second was, that he did not wish him, wished to figure in the lawsuit which would ensue in all probability and be brought in to testify against the Nadir. Javier thought that the young man, whose name he had forgotten, was afraid and had fled, or perhaps, had not even returned home at the time of the ambush. He made some efforts to find him, however, but without success. A month passed, then another. Marius was still with Corferac. He had learned. from a young licentiate in law, an habitual frequenter of the cause, that Thénardier was in close confinement. Every Monday, Marius had five francs handed in to the clerk's office of Laforts

Starting point is 01:46:09 for Thénardier. As Marius had no longer any money, he borrowed the five francs from Corfadac. It was the first time in his life that he had ever borrowed money. These periodical five francs were a double riddle to Corfadac, who lent, and to Thénardier who received them. To whom can they go, thought Kofedak. Whence can this come to me? Thénardier asked himself. Moreover, Marius was heartbroken.

Starting point is 01:46:39 Everything had plunged through a trap-door once more. He no longer saw anything before him. His life was again buried in mystery, where he wandered fumblingly. He had, for a moment, be held very close at hand, in that obscurity, the young girl whom he loved, the old man who seemed to be her father, those unknown beings, who were his only interest and his only hope in this world, and, at the very moment when he thought himself on the point of grasping them,

Starting point is 01:47:09 a gust had swept all these shadows away. Not a spark of certainty and truth had been emitted even in the most terrible of collisions. No conjecture was possible. He no longer knew even the name that he thought he, you. It certainly was not a Réciul. And the Lark was a nickname. And what was he to think of the old man? Was he actually in hiding from the police? The white-haired workmen, whom Marius had encountered in the vicinity of the invalids, recurred to his mind. It now seemed probable that the working man and Monsieur LeBlanc were one and the same person. So he disguised himself? That man had his

Starting point is 01:47:53 heroic and his equivocal sides. Why had he not called for help? Why had he fled? Was he, or was he not, the father of the young girl? Was he, in short, the man whom Thénardier thought that he recognized? Thénardier might have been mistaken. These form so many insoluble problems. All this, it is true, detracted nothing from the angelic charms of the young girl of the Luxembourg. rending distress. Marius bore a passion in his heart and night over his eyes. He was thrust onward, he was drawn, and he could not stir. All had vanished, save love. Of love itself, he had lost the instincts and the sudden illuminations. Ordinarily, this flame which burns us lights us also a little, and casts some useful gleams without. But Marius no longer even heard these

Starting point is 01:48:52 mute counsels of passion. He never said to himself, what if I were to go to such a place? What if I were to try such and such a thing? The girl whom he could no longer call Ur-Sul was evidently somewhere. Nothing warned Marius in what direction he should seek her. His whole life was now summed up in two words, absolute uncertainty within an impenetrable fog. To see her once again, he still aspired to this, but he no longer expected it. To crown all, his poverty had returned. He felt that icy breath close to him, on his heels. In the midst of his torments and long before this, he had discontinued his work, and nothing is more dangerous than discontinued work. It is a habit which vanishes,

Starting point is 01:49:45 a habit which is easy to get rid of, and difficult to take up again. A certain amount of dreaming is good, like a narcotic in discreet doses. It lulls to sleep the fevers of the mind at labour, which is sometimes severe, and produces in the spirit a soft and fresh vapour which corrects the over-harsh contours of pure thought, fills in gaps here and there, binds together and rounds off the angles of the ideas. But too much dreaming sinks and drowns. Woe to the brain-worker who allows himself to fall entirely from thought into reverie. He thinks that he can reascend with equal ease, and he tells himself that,

Starting point is 01:50:30 after all, it is the same thing. Error. Thought is the toil of the intelligence, reverie, its voluptuousness. To replace thought with reverie is to confound a poison with a food. Marius had begun in that way, as the reader will remember. Passion had supervened, and had finished the work of precipitating him into shimmerers without object or bottom. One no longer emerges from oneself except for the purpose of going off to dream. Idle production, tumultuous and stagnant gulf.

Starting point is 01:51:05 And, in proportion as labour diminishes, needs increase. This is a law. Man, in a state of reverie, is generally prodigal and slack. The unstrung mind cannot hold life within close bounds. There is, in that mode of life,

Starting point is 01:51:24 good mingled with evil for if innovation is baleful generosity is good and healthful but the poor man who is generous and noble and who does not work is lost resources are exhausted needs crop up fatal declivity down which the most honest and the firmest as well as the most feeble and most vicious are drawn and which ends in one of two holds suicide or crime By dint of going outdoors to think, the day comes when one goes out to throw oneself in the water. Excess of reverie breeds men like Ecus and Lebrat. Marius was descending this declivity at a slow pace, with his eyes fixed on the girl whom he no longer saw. What we have just written seems strange, and yet it is true. The memory of an absent being kindles in the darkness of the heart. The more it has disappeared, the more it beams.

Starting point is 01:52:28 The gloomy and despairing soul sees this light on its horizon, the star of the inner night. She, that was Marius's whole thought. He meditated of nothing else. He was confusedly conscious that his old coat was becoming an impossible coat, that his new coat was growing old, that his shirts were wearing out, that his hat was wearing out, that his boots were giving out, and he said to himself, If I could but see her once again before I die. One sweet idea alone was left to him, that she had loved him, and that her glance had told

Starting point is 01:53:07 him so, that she did not know his name, but that she did know his soul, and that, wherever she was, however mysterious the place, she still loved him, perhaps. Who knows whether she were not thinking of him as he was thinking of her? Sometimes, in those inexplicable hours, such as are experienced by every heart that loves, though he had no reasons for anything but sadness, and yet felt an obscure quiver of joy, he said to himself, It is her thoughts that are coming to me. Then he added, perhaps my thoughts reach her also. This illusion, at which he shook his head a moment later, was sufficient, nevertheless,

Starting point is 01:53:52 to throw beams which at times reached. resembled hope into his soul. From time to time, especially at that evening hour, which is the most depressing to even the dreamy, he allowed the purest, the most impersonal, the most ideal of the reveries which filled his brain, to fall upon a notebook which contained nothing else. He called this writing to her. It must not be supposed that his reason was deranged, quite the contrary. He had lost the faculty of working and of moving firmly towards any fixed goal, but he was endowed with more clear-sightedness and rectitude than ever. Marius surveyed by a calm and real, although peculiar light, what passed before his eyes,

Starting point is 01:54:41 even the most indifferent deeds and men. He pronounced just criticism on everything, with a sort of honest dejection and candid disinterestedness. His judgment, which was almost wholly disassociated from hope, held itself aloof and soared on high. In this state of mind, nothing escaped him, nothing deceived him, and every moment he was discovering the foundation of life, of humanity, and of destiny. Happy, even in the midst of anguish, is he to whom God has given a soul worthy of love and of unhappiness. he who has not viewed the things of this world and the heart of man under this double light has seen nothing and knows nothing of the true the soul which loves and suffers is in a state of sublimity however day followed day and nothing new presented itself it merely seemed to him that the sombre space which still remained to be traversed by him was growing shorter with every instant he thought that he already distinctly perceived the brink of the bottomless abyss what he repeated to himself shall i not see her again before then

Starting point is 01:56:01 when you have ascended the rue st jacques left the barrier on one side and followed the old inner boulevard for some distance you reach the rue de la sante then the glacier and a little while before arriving at the little river of the corbellons you come to a sort of field which is the only spot in the long and monotonous chain of the boulevards of paris where rie d'er would be tempted to sit down there is something indescribable there which exhales grace a green meadow traversed by tightly stretched lines from which flutter rags drying in the wind and an old market gardener's house built in the time of louis the thirteenth with its great roof oddly pierced with dormer windows, dilapidated palisades, a little water amid poplar trees, women, voices, laughter. On the horizon, the pantheon, the pole of the deaf-mutes, the Val de Gras, black, squat, fantastic, amusing, magnificent, and, in the background, the severe square crests of the towers of Notre Dame.

Starting point is 01:57:17 As the place is worth looking at, no one goes thither. Hardly one cart or waggoner passes in a quarter of an hour. It chanced that Marius's solitary strolls led him to this plot of ground near the water. That day there was a rarity on the boulevard, a passerby. Marius, vaguely impressed with the almost savage beauty of the place, asked this passerby, What is the name of this spot? The person replied. it is the lark's meadow and he added it was here that ulbach killed the shepherdess of ivri but after the word lark marius heard nothing more these sudden congealments in the state of reverie which a single word suffices to evoke do occur the entire thought is abruptly condensed around an idea and it is no longer capable of perceiving anything else the lark was the appellation which had replaced

Starting point is 01:58:17 Erasul in the depths of Marius' melancholy. Stop, said he, with a sort of unreasoning stupor peculiar to these mysterious asides, This is her meadow, I shall know where she lives now. It was absurd, but irresistible. And every day he returned to that meadow of the lark. End of Book 2, Chapter 1. Chapter 2 of Book 2 of Le Miserables, Volume 4. 4 by Victor Hugo.

Starting point is 01:58:51 This is a Libravox recording. All Libravox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Librevox.org. Recording by May Lowe Les Miserables, Volume 4 by Victor Hugo. Translated by Isabel Florence Hapgood. Book 2, Eponine Chapter 2

Starting point is 01:59:15 Embryonic Formation of Crimes in the incubation of prisons. Javert's triumph in the Gorbo-Hovil seemed complete, but had not been so. In the first place, and this constituted the principal anxiety, Javert had not taken the prisoner-prisoned. The assassinated man who flees is more suspicious than the assassin, and it is probable that this personage, who had been so precious a capture for the ruffians, would be no less fine a prize for the authorities. And then, Montparnas had escaped Javert.

Starting point is 01:59:53 Another opportunity of laying hands on that devil's dandy must be waited for. Montparnas had, in fact, encountered Eponine as she stood on the watch under the trees of the boulevard, and had led her off, preferring to play Nemorin with the daughter, rather than Shindahans with the father. It was well that he did so, He was free. As for Eponine, Javert had caused her to be seized, a mediocre consolation. Eponine had joined Azelma at Le Madelanets.

Starting point is 02:00:26 And finally, on the way from the Gorbo House to La Force, one of the principal prisoners, Clacksoe, had been lost. It was not known how this had been affected. The police agents and the sergeants could not understand it at all. He had converted himself into the police. vapor, he had slipped through the handcuffs, he had trickled through the crevices of the carriage, the effiacra was cracked and he had fled. All that they were able to say was that on arriving at the prison there was no Clucksoo. Either the fairies or the police had had a hand in it. Had

Starting point is 02:01:06 Cluckso melted into the shadows like a snowflake in water? Had there been unavowed connivance of the police agents. Did this man belong to the double enigma of order and disorder? Was he concentric with infraction and repression? Had this sphinx his forepaws in crime and his hind paws in authority? Javert did not accept such combinations, and would have bristled up against such compromises, but his squad included other inspectors besides himself,

Starting point is 02:01:39 who were more initiated than he, perhaps, although they were his subordinates in the secrets of the prefecture, and Cluck-Soo had been such a villain that he might make a very good agent. It is an excellent thing for ruffianism, and an admirable thing for the police to be on such intimate juggling terms with the knight. These double-edged rascals do exist. However that may be, Clack-Soo had gone astray and was not found again. Javier appeared to be more than. more irritated than amazed at this. As for Marius, that booby of a lawyer, who would probably become frightened and whose name

Starting point is 02:02:21 Javert had forgotten, Javert attached very little importance to him. Moreover, a lawyer can be hunted up at any time, but was he a lawyer after all? The investigation had begun. The magistrate had thought it advisable not to put one of these men of the band of patron minette in close confinement in the hope that he would chatter. This man was Brugon, the long-haired man of the Rue du Petit Banquire. He had been let loose in the Charlemagne courtyard, and the eyes of the watchers were fixed on him. This name of Brugon is one of the souvenirs of La Force.

Starting point is 02:03:06 In that hideous courtyard called the court of the Batimont Neuve, new building, which the administration called the court St. Bernard, and which the robbers called the Fossau-Lion, the Lion's ditch, on that wall covered with scales and leprosy, which rose to the left to a level with the roofs, near an old door of rusty iron, which led to the ancient chapel of the ducal residence of La Forse, then turned in a dormitory for ruffians.

Starting point is 02:03:36 There could still be seen, 12 years ago, a sort of fortress roughly carved in the stone with a nail, and beneath it this signature, Brugon, 1811. The Brugon of 1811 was the father of the Brugon of 1832. The latter, of whom the reader caught but a glimpse at the Gorbaud House, was a very cunning and very adroit young spark, with a bewildered and plaintive air. It was in consequence of this plaintive heir that the magistrate had released him, thinking him more useful in the Charlemagne yard than in close confinement.

Starting point is 02:04:18 Robbers do not interrupt their profession because they are in the hands of justice. They do not let themselves be put out by such a trifle as that. To be in prison for one crime is no reason for not beginning on another crime. They are artists, who have one picture in the salon, and who toil none the law. on a new work in their studios. Brugon seemed to be stupefied by prison. He could sometimes be seen standing by the hour together, in front of the sutler's window in the Charlemagne yard,

Starting point is 02:04:50 staring like an idiot at the sordid list of prices, which began with garlic, 62 centimes, and ended with cigar, five centimes. Or he passed his time in trembling, chattering his teeth, saying that he had a fever, and inquiring whether one of the eight and twenty beds in the fever ward was vacant. All at once, towards the end of February 1832, it was discovered that Brugesong, that somnolent fellow,

Starting point is 02:05:20 had had three different commissions executed by the errandmen of the establishment, not under his own name, but in the name of three of his comrades, and they had cost him in all fifty sous, an exorbitant outlay which attracted the attention of the prison corporal. Inquiries were instituted and on consulting the tariff of commissions posted in the convicts parlor, it was learned that the 50 sous could be analysed as follows. Three commissions, one to the Pantheon, ten sous, one to Val de Gras, 15 sous, and one to the Bariel de Grenel, 25 sous.

Starting point is 02:05:59 This last was the dearest of the whole tariff. Now at the Pantheon, at the Pantheon, at the the Valdigras and at the Barrier de Granel were situated the domiciles of the three very redoubtable prowlers of the barriers, Cri deniers, alias Bizarre, Glorio, an ex-convict, and Barr Caros, upon whom the attention of the police was directed by this incident. It was thought that these men were members of Petro Minet. of those leaders, Babe and Guelmer, had been captured. It was supposed that the messages, which had been addressed, not to houses but to people who

Starting point is 02:06:42 are waiting for them in the street, must have contained information with regard to some crime that had been plotted. They were in possession of other indications. They laid hand on the three prowlers, and supposed that they had circumvented some one or other of Bruchon's machinations. About a week after these measures had been taken, one night, as the superintendent of the watch, who had been inspecting the lower dormitory in the Batimondeuve, was about to drop his chestnut in the box, this was the means adopted to make sure that the watchman performed their duties

Starting point is 02:07:17 punctually. Every hour, a chestnut must be dropped into all the boxes nailed to the doors of the dormitories. A watchman looked through the peephole of the dormitory, and beheld Brugon, sitting on his bed and writing something by the light of the hall lamp. The Guardian entered. Brugon was put in a solitary cell for a month, but they were not able to seize what he had written. The police learned nothing further about it. What is certain is that on the following morning, Postilion was flung from the Charlemagne Yard into the Lion's Ditch, over the five-story building which separated the two courtyards. What prisoners call Apostillion is a pallet of bread artistically moulded which is sent into Ireland, that is to say,

Starting point is 02:08:05 over the roofs of a prison, from one courtyard to another. Etymology, over England, from one land to another, into Ireland. This little pellet falls in the yard. The man who picks it up, opens it and finds in it a note addressed to some prisoner in that yard. If it is a prisoner who finds the treasure, he forwards the note to its destination. If it is a keeper, or one of the prisoners secretly sold, who are called sheep in prisons and foxes in the galleys, the note is taken to the office and handed over to the police. On this occasion, the postilion reached its address, although the person to whom it was addressed was, at that moment, in solitary confinement. This person was no other than Babé, one of the fours,

Starting point is 02:08:56 heads of Petron Minet. The postilion contained a roll of paper on which only these two lines were written. Babé, there is an affair in the Rue Plume, a gate on a garden. This is what Brugon had written the night before. In spite of male and female searches, Bébetonaged to pass the note on from La Force to the sole petrielle, to a good friend whom he had, and who who was shut up there. This woman, in turn, transmitted the note to another woman of her acquaintance, a certain Mignon, who was strongly suspected by the police, though not yet arrested. This Mignon, whose name the reader has already seen, had relations with the Thénardier, which will be described in detail later on, and she could, by going to see Eponine,

Starting point is 02:09:50 serve as a bridge between the Sol Petrielle and Les Madelanettes. It happened, at precisely that moment, as proofs were wanting in the investigation directed against the Nadiel in the matter of his daughters, Eponine and Eselma were released. When Eponine came out, Manion, who was watching the gate of the Madelanets, handed her Brugon's note to Barbé, charging her to look into the matter. Eponine went to the Rue Brumé, recognised the gate and the garden, observed the house, spied, lurked, and, a few days later, brought to Mignon, who delivers in the Rue-Cloche-Perre, a biscuit, which Mignon transmitted to Babe's mistress in the Sol Petriere.

Starting point is 02:10:36 A biscuit, in the shady symbolism of prisons, signifies nothing to be done. So that in less than a week from that time, as Brugon and Babé met in the circle of La Force, the one on his way to the examination, the other on his way from it, well asked brujon the rupee biscuit replied babet thus did the fetus of crime engendered by brujon in la force miscarry this miscarriage had its consequences however which were perfectly distinct from brujon's programme the reader will see what they were often when we think we are knotting one thread we are tying quite another end of book two chapter two chapters three and four of book two of le miserable volume four by victor hugo this is a librivox recording all librivox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit librivox dot org recording by may lowe le miserable volume four by victor hugo translated by isabel florence have good book two eponine chapter three apparition to father mabeau marius no longer went to see anyone but he sometimes encountered father mouboe by chance while marius was slowly descending those melancholy steps which may be called the cellar stairs and which lead to places without light where the happy can be heard walking overhead mabeau was descending on his side

Starting point is 02:12:21 the flora of courtillets no longer sold at all the experiments on indigo had not been successful in the little garden of outstilitz which had a bad exposure monsieur marlbeau could cultivate there only a few plants which looked at least which had had a bad exposure m mabeau could cultivate there only a few plants which love shade and dampness nevertheless he did not become discouraged he had obtained a corner in the jardin de plants with a good exposure to make his trials with indigo at his own expense for this purpose he had pawned his copper plates of the flora he had reduced his breakfast to two eggs and he left one of these for his old servant to whom he had paid no wages for the last fifteen months. And often, his breakfast was his only meal. He no longer smiled with his infantile smile. He had grown morose and no longer received visitors. Marius did well not to dream of going thither. Sometimes, at the hour when Monsieur Mabo was on his way to the Gerdin de Plante, the old man and the young man passed each other on the boulevard de l'Oppital. They did not speak, and only exchanged. changed a melancholy sign of the head.

Starting point is 02:13:36 A heartbreaking thing it is that there comes a moment when misery loses bonds. Two men, who have been friends, become two chance passes by. Royale the bookseller was dead. Monsieur Mabeau no longer knew his books, his garden, or his indigo. These were the three forms which happiness, pleasure and hope had assumed for him. This sufficed him for his living. He said to himself, When I shall have made my balls of bluing, I shall be rich.

Starting point is 02:14:09 I will withdraw my copper plates from the pawn shop. I will put my flora in vogue again with trickery, plenty of money and advertisements in the newspapers, and I will buy, I know well where, a copy of Pierre de Medin's Art Naviguerre, with woodcuts, edition of 1655. In the meantime, he toiled all day over his, plot of indigo, and at night he returned home to water his garden and to read his books.

Starting point is 02:14:38 At that epoch, Monsieur Mabo was nearly eighty years of age. One evening he had a singular apparition. He had returned home while it was still broad daylight. Mother Plutarch, whose health was declining, was ill and in bed. He had dined on a bone, on which a little meat lingered, and a bit of bread that he had found on the kitchen table, and had seated himself on an overturned stone post, which took the place of a bench in his garden. Near this bench there rose, after a fashion in orchid gardens, a sort of large chest, of beams and planks, much dilapidated, a rabbit hutch on the ground floor,

Starting point is 02:15:22 a fruit closet on the first. There was nothing in the hutch, but there were a few apples in the fruit closet, the remains of the winter's provision. Monsieur Mabeau had set himself to turning over and reading, with the aid of his glasses, two books of which he was passionately fond, and in which, a serious thing at his age, he was interested. His natural timidity rendered him accessible to the acceptance of superstitions in a certain degree. The first of these books was the famous treatise of President Del Ancres,

Starting point is 02:15:57 the inconstance of demont the other was a quarto by mutor de la rubordiere so le diablo de vaille dee de vares and the goblin de la this last mentioned old volume interested him all the more because his garden had been one of the spots haunted by goblins in former times the twilight had begun to whiten what was on high and to blacken all below As he read, over the top of the book which he held in his hand, Father Mubour was surveying his plants, and among others, a magnificent rhododendron, which was one of his consolations. Four days of heat, wind, and sun without a drop of rain had passed. The stalks were bending, the buds drooping, the leaves falling. All this needed water. The rhododendron was particularly sad.

Starting point is 02:16:54 Father Mabal was one of those persons for whom plants have souls. The old man had toiled all day over his indigo plot. He was worn out with fatigue, but he rose, laid his books on the bench, and walked, all bent over and with tottering footsteps, to the well. But when he had grasped the chain, he could not even draw it sufficiently to unhook it. Then he turned round, and cast a glance of anguish towards heaven, which was becoming studded with stars. The evening had that serenity which overwhelms the troubles of man beneath an indescribably mournful and eternal joy. The night promised to be as arid as the day had been.

Starting point is 02:17:36 Stars everywhere, thought the old man, not the tiniest cloud, not a drop of water. And his head, which had been upraised for a moment, fell back upon his breast. He raised it again, and once more looked at the sky, murmuring, a tear of dew, a little pity. He tried again to unhook the chain of the well, and could not. At that moment, he heard a voice saying, Father Mabal, would you like to have me water your garden for you? At the same time, a noise, as of a wild animal passing, became audible in the hedge, and he beheld emerging from the shrubbery, a sort of tall, slender girl, who drew herself up in front of him and stared boldly at him. She had less the air of a human being than of a form which had just blossomed forth from the twilight. Before Father

Starting point is 02:18:33 Mabo, who was easily terrified, and who was, as we have said, quick to take alarm, was able to reply by a single syllable, this being, whose movements had a sort of odd abruptness in the darkness, had unhooked the chain, plunged in and withdrawn the bucket, and filled the water in, pot, and the Goodman beheld this apparition, which had bare feet and a tattered petticoat, running about among the flower beds distributing life around her. The sound of the watering pot on the leaves filled Father Mabo's soul with ecstasy. It seemed to him that the rhododendron was happy now. The first bucketful emptied, the girl drew a second, then a third.

Starting point is 02:19:16 She watered the whole garden. There was something about her as she thus ran about among paths, where her outline appeared perfectly black, waving her angular arms, and with her fichu all in rags, that resembled a bat. When she had finished, Father Mubour approached her with tears in his eyes, and laid his hand on her brow. "'God will bless you,' said he. "'You are an angel since you take care of the flowers.' "'No,' she replied.

Starting point is 02:19:47 i am the devil but that's all the same to me the old man exclaimed without either waiting for or hearing her response what a pity that i am so unhappy and so poor and that i can do nothing for you you can do something said she what tell me where monsieur marius lives the old man did not understand what monsieur marius he raised his glassy eyes and seemed to him. to be seeking something that had vanished. A young man who used to come here. In the meantime, Monsieur Mabo had searched his memory. Ah, yes, he exclaimed. I know what you mean.

Starting point is 02:20:30 Wait, Monsieur Marius, the Baron Marius Pontmercy, parbleu. He lives, or rather, he no longer lives. Ah, well, I don't know. As he spoke, he had bent over to train a branch of rhododendron,

Starting point is 02:20:47 and he continued. Hold, I know now. He very often passes along the boulevard and goes in the direction of the glacier, Rue Krulebarbe, the meadow of the lark. Go there. It is not hard to meet him. When Monsieur Maboose straightened himself up, there was no longer anyone there. The girl had disappeared. He was decidedly terrified. Really, he thought, if my garden had not been watered, I should. should think that she was a spirit. An hour later, when he was in bed, it came back to him, and as he fell asleep, at that confused moment when thought, like that fabulous bird which

Starting point is 02:21:31 changes itself into a fish in order to cross the sea, little by little assumes the form of a dream in order to traverse slumber. He said to himself in a bewildered way, In sooth, that greatly resembles what Rubaudier narrates of the goblins. Could it have been a goblin? chapter four an apparition to marius some days after this visit of a spirit to father mubal one morning it was on a monday the day when marius borrowed the hundred sous peace from corphadac for thanadier marius had put this coin in his pocket and before carrying it to the clerk's office he had gone to take a little stroll in the hope that this would make him work on his return it was always thus however as soon as he rode to the clerk's office he had gone to take a little stroll in the hope that this would make him work on his return it was always thus however as soon as he rode He seated himself before a book and a sheet of paper in order to scribble some translation. His task at that epoch consisted in turning into French a celebrated quarrel between Germans, The Garns and Savigny controversy.

Starting point is 02:22:38 He took Savigny, he took Garns, read four lines, tried to write one, could not, saw a star between him and his paper, and rose from his chair saying, I shall go out, that will put me in spirits. and off he went to the lark's meadow. There he beheld more than ever the star, and less than ever, Savigny and Garns. He returned home, tried to take up his work again, and did not succeed. There was no means of re-knotting a single one of the threads which were broken in his brain. Then he said to himself, I will not go out to-morrow, it prevents my working, and he went out every day.

Starting point is 02:23:19 He lived in the lark's meadow more than in Corfeyrac's lodgings. That was his real address, Boulevard de la Saint, at the seventh tree from the glue cru le barge. That morning, he had quitted the seventh tree and had seated himself on the parapet of the river de Gobelon. A cheerful sunlight penetrated the freshly unfolded and luminous leaves. He was dreaming of her, And his meditation, turning to a reproach, fell back upon himself.

Starting point is 02:23:53 He reflected dolefully on his idleness, his paralysis of soul which was gaining on him, and of that night which was growing more dense every moment before him, to such a point that he no longer even saw the sun. Nevertheless, athwart this painful extrication of indistinct ideas which was not even a monologue, so feeble had action become in him, that he had no longer the force to care to despair. Athwart this melancholy absorption, sensations from without did reach him.

Starting point is 02:24:28 He heard behind him, beneath him, on both banks of the river, the laundresses of the goblon, beating their linen, and above his head the birds chattering and singing in the elm trees. On the one hand, the sound of liberty, the careless happiness of the leisure which has wings, On the other, the sound of toil.

Starting point is 02:24:51 What caused him to meditate deeply and almost reflect were two cheerful sounds. All at once, in the midst of his dejected ecstasy, he heard a familiar voice saying, Come, here he is! He raised his eyes and recognised that wretched child who had come to him one morning, the elder of the Thénardier daughters, Eponin. He knew her name now. Strange to say, she had grown poorer and prettier, two steps which it had not seemed within her power to take.

Starting point is 02:25:26 She had accomplished a double progress, towards the light and towards distress. She was barefooted and in rags, as on the day when she had so resolutely entered his chamber, only her rags were two months older now, the holes were larger, the tatters more sordered. It was the same harsh voice, the same brow dimmed and wrinkled with tan, the same free, wild, and vacillating glance. She had, besides, more than formally, in her face that indescribably terrified and lamentable something which sojourn in a prison adds to wretchedness. She had bits of straw and hay in her hair, not like Ophelia through having gone mad from

Starting point is 02:26:11 the contagion of Hamlet's madness, but because she had slept in the loft of some stable. And in spite of it all, she was beautiful. What a star out thou, O youth. In the meantime, she had halted in front of Marius with a trace of joy in her livid countenance, and something which resembled a smile. She stood for several moments as though incapable of speech. So I have met you at last, she said at length.

Starting point is 02:26:42 Father Mubo was right. It was on this boulevard. how I have hunted for you if you only knew do you know I have been in the jug a fortnight they let me out seeing that there was nothing against me and that moreover I had not reached years of discretion I lack two months of it oh how I have hunted for you these six weeks so you don't live down there anymore no said Marius ah I understand because of that affair those take takedowns are disagreeable, you cleared out.

Starting point is 02:27:17 Come now, why do you wear old hats like this? A young man like you ought to have fine clothes. Do you know, Monsieur Marius, Father Mabot calls you embatton Mardius, I don't know what. It isn't true that you are a baron. Barons are old fellows. They go to the Luxembourg in front of the chateau, where there is the most son, and they read the Cotidian for a Sioux. I once carried a letter to a baron of that sort.

Starting point is 02:27:43 of that sort, he was over a hundred years old. Say, where do you live now?" Marius made no reply. Ah, she went on, you have a hole in your shirt, I must sew it up for you. She resumed with an expression which gradually clouded over. You don't seem glad to see me. Marius held his peace. She remained silent for a moment, then exclaimed,

Starting point is 02:28:11 but if i choose nevertheless i could force you to look glad what demanded marius what do you mean ah you used to call me thou she retorted well then what dost thou mean She bit her lips. She seemed to hesitate, as though a prey to some sort of inward conflict. At last she appeared to come to a decision. So much the worse, I don't care. You have a melancholy air. I want you to be pleased. Only promise me that you will smile.

Starting point is 02:28:48 I want to see you smile and hear you say, Ah, well, that's good. Poor Mr. Marius, you know, you promised me that you would give me anything I like. Yes, only speak. She looked Marius full in the eye and said, I have the address. Marius turned pale. All the blood flowed back to his heart.

Starting point is 02:29:12 What address? The address that you asked me to get, she added as though with an effort, the address you know very well. Yes, stammered Marius. Of that young lady. This word uttered, she sighed deeply. Marius sprang from the parapet on which he had been sitting, and seized her hand distractedly.

Starting point is 02:29:37 Oh, well, lead me thither. Tell me. Ask of me anything you wish. Where is it? Come with me, she responded. I don't know the street or number very well. It is in quite the other direction from here, but I know the house well. I will take you to it. She withdrew her hand, and went on. in a tone which could have rent the heart of an observer, but which did not even graze Marius in his intoxicated and ecstatic state. Oh, how glad you are. A cloud swept across Marius's brow.

Starting point is 02:30:12 He seized Eponine by the arm. Swear one thing to me. Swear, said she. What does that mean? Come, you want me to swear? And she laughed. Your father, promise me, Eponine, swear to me that you will not give this address to your own.

Starting point is 02:30:27 father." She turned to him to stupefied air. "'Epponine! How do you know that my name is Epoene?' "'Promise what I tell you.' But she did not seem to hear him. "'That's nice. You have called me Ephonine.' Marius grasped both her arms at once. "'But answer me, in the name of heaven! Pay attention to what I am saying to you. Swear to me that you will not tell your father this address that you know.' my father said she ah yes my father be at ease he is in close confinement besides what do i care for my father but you do not promise me exclaimed marius

Starting point is 02:31:10 let go of me she said bursting into a laugh how you do shake me yes yes i promised that i swear that to you what is that to me i will not tell my father the address there is that right is that a is. Nor to anyone, said Marius. Nor to anyone. Now, resumed Marius, take me there. Immediately? Immediately. Come along.

Starting point is 02:31:39 Ah, how pleased he is, said she. After a few steps she halted. You were following me too closely, Monsieur Marius. Let me go on ahead and follow me so without seeming to do it. A nice young man like you must not be seen with a woman like me. No tongue can express all that lay in that word, woman, thus pronounced by that child. She proceeded a dozen paces and then halted once more. Marius joined her.

Starting point is 02:32:13 She addressed him sideways and without turning towards him. By the way, you know that you promised me something? Marius fumbled in his pocket. All that he owned in the world was the five francs in the same. intended for Thénardia the father. He took them and laid them in Eponine's hand. She opened her fingers and let the coin fall to the ground and gazed at him with a gloomy air. I don't want your money, said she. End of Book 2, chapters 3 and 4. Chapters 1 and 2 of Book 3 of Les Miserables, Volume 4 by Victor Hugo.

Starting point is 02:32:55 This is a Librivox recording. All Libre Vox records. Recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Librivox.org. Recording by Algae Pug. Le Miserables Volume 4 by Victor Hugo, translated by Isabel Florence Hepgood. Book 3, The House in Aruplemer, chapters 1 and 2. Chapter 1, The House with the Secret. About the middle of the last century, a chief justice in the Parliament of Paris, having a mistress and concealing the fact, for at that period the Grand Seniors displayed their mistresses and the bourgeois concealed them, had a little house built in the Fobour Saint-Germain in the deserted Rue Blomé, which is now called Rue Plume, not far from the spot, which was then designated as Combares des Anemois.

Starting point is 02:33:57 this house was composed of a single-storied pavilion two rooms on the ground floor two chambers on the first floor a kitchen downstairs a boudoir upstairs an attic under the roof the whole preceded by a garden with a larger gate opening on the street This garden was about an acre and a half in extent. This was all that could be seen by passes by, but behind the pavilion there was a narrow courtyard. At the end of the courtyard, a low building consisting of two rooms and a cellar, a sort of preparation destined to conceal a child and nurse in case of need. This building communicated in the rear by a masked door

Starting point is 02:34:41 which opened by a secret spring, with a long narrow paved winding corridor open to the sky hemmed in with two lofty walls, which, hidden with wonderful art, and lost, as it were, between garden enclosures and cultivated land, all of whose angles and detours it followed, ended in another door, also with a secret lock which opened a quarter of a league away, almost in another quarter, in the solitary extremity of the Rue de Babylon, through this the chief justice entered so that even those who were spying on him and following him would merely have observed that the justice betook himself every day in a mysterious way somewhere and would never have suspected that to go to the rue de babylon was to go to the rue blomé thanks to clever purchases of land the magistrate had been able to make a secret sewer-like passage on his own property and consequently without interference

Starting point is 02:35:42 Later on he had sold in little parcels for gardens and market gardens the lots of ground adjoining the corridor, and the proprietors of these lots on both sides thought they had a party wall before their eyes, and did not even suspect the long paved ribbon winding between two walls amid their flower beds and their orchards. Only the birds beheld this curiosity. It is probable that the linets and tom-tits of the last century gossiped a great deal about the chief justice. The pavilion, built of stone in the taste of Monsard, wanescoated and furnished in the Wotto style, Rakaya on the inside, old-fashioned on the outside, walled in with a triple hedge of flowers, had something discreet, coquettish and solemn about it, as befits the caprice of love and magistracy.

Starting point is 02:36:37 This house and corridor, which have now disappeared, were in existence 15 years ago. In 93, a coppersmith had purchased the house with the idea of demolishing it, but had not been able to pay the price. The nation made him bankrupt, so that it was the house which demolished the coppersmith. After that, the house remained uninhabited and fell slowly to ruin, as does every dwelling to which the presence of man does not communicate life. It had remained fitted with its old furniture, was always for sale or to let,

Starting point is 02:37:14 and the ten or a dozen people who passed through the Rue Plumet were warned of the fact by a yellow and illegible bit of writing which had hung on the garden wall since 1819. Towards the end of the restoration, these same passes by might have noticed that the bill had disappeared, and that even the shutters on the first floor were open. The house was occupied, in fact. The windows had short curtains, a sign that there was a woman about.

Starting point is 02:37:44 In the month of October, 1829, a man of a certain age had presented himself and had hired the house just as it stood, including, of course, the back building and the lane which ended in the Rue de Babylon. He had had the secret openings of the two doors to this passage repaired. The house, as we have just mentioned, was still very nearly furnished with the Justice's old fitting. The new tenant had ordered some repairs, had added what was lacking here and there, had replaced the paving stones in the yard, bricks in the floors, steps in the stairs, missing bits in the in the inlaid floors and the glass in the lattice windows,

Starting point is 02:38:25 and had finally installed himself there with a young girl and an elderly maid-servant, without commotion, rather like a person who was slipping in, than like a man who was entering his own house. The neighbours did not gossip about him, for the reason that there were no neighbours. This unobtrusive tenant was Jean Valjean, the young girl, was Cosette. The servant was a woman named Toussaint, who Jean Valjean had saved from the hospital and from wretchedness, and who was elderly, a stammerer, and from the provinces, three qualitative. which had decided jean valjean to take her with him he had hired the house under the name of m fauchelevent independent gentleman in all that has been related heretofore the reader has doubtless been no less prompt than than than adieu to recognize jean valjean why had jean valjean quitted the convent of the petit picpoo what had happened nothing had happened it will be remembered that jean valjean

Starting point is 02:39:30 Valjean was happy in the convent, so happy that his conscience finally took the alarm. He saw Cosette every day. He felt paternity spring up and develop with him him more and more. He brooded over the soul of that child. He said to himself that she was his, that nothing could take her from him, that this would last indefinitely, that she would certainly become a nun, being there too gently incited every day, that thus the convent would say. henceforth the universe for her as it was for him, that he should grow old there, and that she should grow up there, that she would grow old there, and that he should die there. That, in short, delightful hope, no separation was possible.

Starting point is 02:40:18 On reflecting upon this, he fell into perplexity. He interrogated himself. He asked himself if all that happiness were really his, if it were not composed of the happiness of another, of the happiness of that child which he, an old man, was confiscating and stealing, if that were not theft. He said to himself that this child had a right to know life before renouncing it,

Starting point is 02:40:44 that to deprive her in advance, and in some sort without consulting her of all joys, under the pretext of saving her from all trials, to take advantage of her ignorance of her isolation, in order to make an artificial vocation germinate in her, was to rob a human being of its nature and to lie to God. And who knows if when she came to be aware of all this some day and found herself a nun to her sorrow, Cosette would not come to hate him.

Starting point is 02:41:15 Alas, almost selfish thought, and less heroic than the rest, but which was intolerable to him. He resolved to quit the convent. He resolved on this. He recognised with anguish, the fact that it was necessary. As for objections, there were none. Five years sojourned between these four walls of disappearance

Starting point is 02:41:36 had necessarily destroyed or dispersed the elements of fear. He could return tranquilly among men. He had grown old, and all had undergone a change. Who would recognise him now? And then, to face the worst, there was danger only for himself, and he had no right to condemn Cosette to the cloister for the reason that he had been condemned to the galleys.

Starting point is 02:42:00 Besides, what is danger in comparison with the right? Finally, nothing prevented his being prudent and taking his precautions. As for Cosette's education, it was almost finished and complete. His determination once taken, he waited an opportunity. It was not long in presenting itself. Old Fauchelevent died. Jean Valjean demanded an audience with the revered prioress and told her that having come into a little inheritance

Starting point is 02:42:32 at the death of his brother, which permitted him henceforth to live without working, he should leave the service of the convent and take his daughter with him. But that, as it was not just that Cosette, since she had not taken the vows, should have received her education gratuitously. He humbly begged the Reverend Prioress to see fit that he should offer to the community as indemnity for the five years which Cosette had spent there the sum of five thousand francs. It was thus that Jean Valjean quitted the convent of the perpetual adoration. On leaving the convent, he took into his own arms the little valise the key to which he still wore on his person

Starting point is 02:43:13 and would permit no porter to touch it. This puzzled Cosette because of the odour of embalming which proceeded from it. let us state at once that this trunk never quitted him more he always had it in his chamber it was the first and only thing sometimes that he carried off in his moving when he moved about cosette laughed at it and called this valise is inseparable saying i am jealous of it nevertheless john valjean did not reappear in the open air without profound anxiety he discovered the house in the rue plumet and hid himself from sight there henceforth he was in a possession of the name ultim fauchelevent at the same time he hired two other apartments in paris in order that he might attract less attention than if he would remain always in the same quarter and so that he could at need take himself off the slightest disquietude which should assail him and in short so that he might not again be caught unprovided as on the night when he had so miraculously escaped from javert these two apartments were very pitiable poor in appearance and in two quarters which were far remote from each other the one in the rue de le west the other in the rue de lom-armes he went from time to time now to the rue de lom-armes and now to the rue de l'est to pass a month or six weeks without taking tussain he had himself served by the porters and gave himself out as a gentleman from the suburbs living on his funds and having a little temporary resting-place in town

Starting point is 02:44:58 this lofty virtue had three domiciles in paris for the sake of escaping from the police chapter two jean valjean as a national guard however properly speaking he lived in the Rue Plumet, and he had arranged his existence there in the following fashion. Cosette and the servant occupied the pavilion. She had the big sleeping room with the painted pier glasses, the boudoir with the gilded fillets, the Justices' drawing room furnished with tapestries and vast armchairs. She had the garden. Jean Valjean had a canopy bed of antique damask in three colours

Starting point is 02:45:39 and a beautiful Persian rug purchased in the Rue de Figuere, at mother gauches put into cosette's chamber in order to redeem the severity of these magnificent old things he had amalgamated with this bric-a-brac all the gay and graceful little pieces of furniture suitable to young girls and a tajere a bookcase filled with gilt-edge books an inkstand a blotting book paper a work-table encrusted with mother-of-pearl a silver gilt dressing-case a toilet service in japanese porcel long damasked curtains with a red foundation and three colours like those on the bed hung at the windows of the first floor on the ground floor the curtains were of tapestry all winter long cosette's little house was heated from top to bottom jean valjean inhabited the sort of porter's lodge which was situated at the end of the back courtyard with a mattress on a folding bed a white wood table two straw chairs an earthenware wood-womened and earthenware wood-house and earthenware wood-house and earthenware wood-house and a man. water jug, a few old volumes on a shelf, his beloved Belize in one corner, and never any fire. He dined with Cosette, and he had a loaf of black bread on the table for his own use. When Toussaint came, he had said to her,

Starting point is 02:47:00 It is a young lady who is mistress of this house. And you, Monsieur, Toussaint replied in amazement. I am a much better thing than a master. I am the father. Cosette had been taught housekeeping in the housekeeper. the convent and she regulated their expenditure which was very modest every day Jean Valjean put his arm through cosettes and took her for a walk he led her to the Luxembourg to the least frequented walk and every Sunday he took her to mass

Starting point is 02:47:29 of Saint-Jacques de Ho-Pas because that was a long way off as was a very poor quarter he bestowed arms largely there and the poor people surrounded him in church, which had drawn upon him to Nadier's epistle, to the benevolent gentleman of the church of Saint-Jacques de Ho-Pas. He was fond of taking Cosette to visit the poor and the sick. No stranger ever entered the house in the Rue Plumet. To Saint brought their provisions, and Jean Valjean went himself for water to a fountain nearby on the boulevard. Their wood and wine were put into a half-subterranean hollow lined with rockwork, which lay near the Rue de Babylon, and which had formerly served the Chief Justice as a grotto,

Starting point is 02:48:13 for at the epoch of follies and little houses, no love was without a grotto. In the door opening on the Rue de Babylon, there was a box destined for the reception of letters and papers, only, as the three inhabitants of the pavilion in a Rue Plumet received neither papers nor letters, the entire usefulness of that box, formerly the go-between of a love affair,

Starting point is 02:48:37 and the confidante of a love-lorn lawyer, was now limited to the tax collector's notices and the summons of the guard. For M. Fosci-Levant, independent gentleman, belonged to the National Guard. He had not been able to escape through the fine meshes of the census of 1831. The municipal information collected at the time had even reached the convent of the Petit Picpoo, a sort of impenetrable and holy cloud, whence Jean Valjean had emerged in venerable guise, and consequently,

Starting point is 02:49:09 worthy of mounting guard in the eyes of the town hall. Three or four times a year, Jean Valjean donned his uniform and mounted guard. He did this willingly, however. It was a correct disguise which mixed him with everyone, and yet left him solitary. Jean Valjean had just attained his 60th birthday, the age of legal exemption. But he did not appear to be over 50. Moreover, he had no desire to escape his sergeant major. nor to quibble with the Comte de la Bal.

Starting point is 02:49:42 He possessed no civil status. He was concealing his name. He was concealing his identity. So he concealed his age. He concealed everything. And, as we have just said, he willingly did his duty as a national guard. The sum of his ambition lay in resembling any other man

Starting point is 02:50:00 who paid his taxes. This man had for his ideal within the angel, without the bourgeois. Let us note one detail, however. When Jean Valjean went out with Cosette, he dressed as the reader has already seen and had the air of a retired officer. When he went out alone, which was generally at night,

Starting point is 02:50:22 he was always dressed in a working man's trousers and blouse and wore a cap which concealed his face. Was this precaution or humility? Both. Cosette was accustomed to the enigmatical side of her destiny, and hardly noticed her father's peculiarities. As for Toussaint, she venerated Jean Valjean and thought everything he did right.

Starting point is 02:50:47 One day her butcher, who had caught a glimpse of Jean Valjean, said to her, That's a queer fesh. She replied, he's a saint. Neither Jean Valjean nor Cosette nor Toussaint ever entered or emerged except by the door on the rue de Babylon. Unless seen through the garden gate, it would have been difficult to guess that they lived in a rue plumet.

Starting point is 02:51:09 That gate was always closed. Jean Valjean had left the garden uncultivated in order not to attract the tension. In this, possibly, he made a mistake. End of Book 3, Chapters 1 and 2. Recording by Algae Pug, Perth, Western Australia. Chapters 3 and 4 of Book 3 of Les Miserables, Volume 4, by VIII. Victor Hugo. This is a Librivox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in a public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Algae Pugue.

Starting point is 02:51:53 The Miserable Volume 4 by Victor Hugo, translated by Isabel Florence Hepgood. Book 3. The House in the Rue Plume, Chapters 3 and 4. Chapter 3 Follies Akfrondibus The garden thus left to itself For more than half a century had become extraordinary and charming

Starting point is 02:52:16 The passes-by of 40 years ago halted to gaze at it Without a suspicion of the secrets Which it hid in its fresh and verdant depths More than one dreamer of that epoch Often allowed his thoughts and his eyes To penetrate indiscreetly Between the bars of that ancient padlocked gate

Starting point is 02:52:34 twisted tottering fastened to two green and moss-covered pillars an oddly crowned with a pediment of undecipherable arabesque. There was a stone bench in one corner, one or two mouldy statues, several lattices which had lost their nails with time, were rotting on the wall, and there were no walks nor turf, but there was enough grass everywhere. Gardening had taken its departure and nature had returned, weeds abounded which was a great piece of luck for a poor corner of land the festival of gilly flowers was something splendid nothing in this garden obstructed the sacred effort of things towards life venerable growth reigned there among them the trees had bent over towards the nettles the plant had sprung upward the branch had inclined that which crawls on the earth had gone in search of that which expands in the air that which floats on the wind

Starting point is 02:53:33 had bent over towards that which trails in the moss trunks bows leaves fibres clusters tendrils shoots spines thorns had mingled crossed married confounded themselves in each other vegetation in a deep and close embrace had celebrated and accomplished there under the well-pleased eye of the creator in that enclosure three hundred feet square the holy mystery of fraternity symbol of the human fraternity. This garden was no longer a garden. It was a colossal thicket. That is to say, something as impenetrable as a forest, as peopled as a city, quivering like a nest, somber like a cathedral, fragrant like a bouquet, solitary as a tomb, living as a throne. In Florial, this enormous thicket, free behind its gate and within its four walls, entered upon the secret labour of German, illumination, quivered in the rising sun, almost like an animal which drinks in the breaths of cosmic love, and which feels the sap of April rising and boiling in its veins, and shakes to the wind its enormous, wonderful green locks, sprinkled on the damp earth, on the defaced statues, on the crumbling steps of the pavilion, and even on the pavement of the deserted street, flowers like stars, dew like pearls, fecundity, beauty, life. joy perfumes at midday a thousand white butterflies took refuge there and it was a

Starting point is 02:55:10 divine spectacle to see that living summer snow whirling about there in flakes amid the shade there in those gay shadows of verdure a throng of innocent voices spoke sweetly to the soul and what the twittering forgot to say the humming completed in the evening a dreamy vapor exhaled from the garden and enveloped it A shroud of mist, a calm and celestial sadness covered it. The intoxicating perfume of the honeysuckles and the convolvulus poured out from every part of it, like an exquisite and subtle poison. The last appeals of the woodpeckers and the wagtails were audible as they dozed among the branches.

Starting point is 02:55:52 One felt the sacred intimacy of the birds and the trees. By day the wings rejoiced the leaves. By night, the leaves protect the wings. In winter the thicket was black, gripping, bristling, shivering, and allowed some glimpse of the house. Instead of flowers on the branches and dew in the flowers, the long silvery tracks of the snails were visible on the cold, thick carpet of yellow leaves. But in any fashion, under any aspect at all seasons, spring, winter, summer, autumn, this tiny enclosure breathes forth melancholy, contemplation, solitude, liberty, the absence of man, the presence of God. And the rusty old gate had the air of saying,

Starting point is 02:56:41 This garden belongs to me. It was of no avail the pavements of Paris were there on every side, the classic and splendid hotels of the Rue de Varenne a couple of paces away, the dome of the invalid close at hand, the chamber of deputies not far off, the carriages of the Rue de Borgenia, and the Rue de Saint Dominique rumbled luxuriously in vain in the vicinity, in vain did the yellow, brown, white and red omnibuses cross each other's course

Starting point is 02:57:11 at the neighbouring crossroads. The Rue demer was the desert, and the death of the former proprietors, the revolution which had passed over it, the crumbling away of ancient fortunes, absence, forgetfulness, 40 years of abandonment and widowhood, had sufficed to restore to this privileged spot ferns, mullions, hemplock, yarrow, tall weeds, great crimped plants with large leaves of pale green cloth, lizards, beetles, uneasy and rapid insects, to cause to spring forth from the depths of the earth and to reappear between those four walls a certain indescribable and savage grandeur. and for nature which disconcerts the petty arrangements of man and which sheds herself always thoroughly where she diffuses herself at all

Starting point is 02:58:04 in the ant as well as in the eagle to blossom out in a petty Parisian garden with as much rude force and majesty as in a virgin forest of the new world nothing is small in fact anyone who is subject to the profound and penetrating influence of nature knows this. Although no absolute satisfaction is given to philosophy, either to circumscribe the cause or to limit the effect, the contemplator falls into those unfathomable ecstasies caused by these decompositions of force terminating in unity. Everything toils at everything. Algebra is applied to the cloud. The radiation of the star profits the rose. No thinker would venture to affirm that the perfume of the hawthorn is useless to the

Starting point is 02:58:52 constellations. Who then can calculate the course of a molecule? How do we know that the creation of worlds is not determined by the fall of grains of sand? Who knows the reciprocal ebb and flow of the infinitely great and the infinitely little, the reverberations of causes in the precipices of being and the avalanches of creation? The tiniest worm is of importance. The great is little, the little is great. Everything is balanced in necessity, alarming vision for the mind. There are wonderful relations between beings and things. In that inexhaustible whole, from the sun to the grub, nothing despises the other, all have need of each other. The light does not bear away terrestrial perfumes into the Asia depths without knowing what it is doing.

Starting point is 02:59:44 The night distributes stellar essences to the sleeping flowers, birds that fly have round their leg the thread of the infinite. Germination is complicated with the bursting forth of a meteor and with a peck of a swallow cracking its egg, and it places on one level the birth of an earthworm and the advent of Socrates. Where the telescope ends, the microscope begins. Which of the two possesses the larger field of vision? Choose.

Starting point is 03:00:14 A bit of mould is a pleade of flowers. A nebula is an antel of stars. stars. The same promiscuousness and yet more unprecedented exists between the things of the intelligence and the facts of substance. Elements and principles mingle, combined, wed, multiply with each other, to such a point that material and the moral world are brought eventually to the same clearness. The phenomenon is perpetually returning upon itself. In the vast cosmic exchanges the universal life goes and comes in unknown quantities, rolling entirely in invisible mystery over fluvia, employing everything, not losing a single dream, not a single

Starting point is 03:00:59 slumbering an animalcule here, crumbling to bits a planet there, oscillating and winding, making of light of force and of thought an element disseminated and invisible, dissolving all except that geometrical point, the eye, bringing everything back to the sole atom, expanding everything in God, entangling all activity from summit to base, in the obscurity of a dizzy mechanism, attaching the flight of an insect to the movement of the earth, subordinating, who knows? Were it only by the identity of the law, the evolution of the comet in the firmament, to the whirling of the infusoria in the drop of water.

Starting point is 03:01:43 A machine is made of mind, enormous gearing, the prime motor of which is the net, and whose final wheel is the zodiac. Chapter 4. Change of Gate It seems that this garden, created in olden days to conceal wanton mysteries, had been transformed and become fitted to sheltered-chaste mysteries. There were no longer either arbours, or bowling greens, or tunnel.

Starting point is 03:02:11 or grottoes. There was a magnificent, disheveled obscurity falling like a veil over all. Paphos had been made over into Eden. It is impossible to say what element of repentance had rendered this retreat wholesome. This flower girl now offered her blossom to the soul. This coquettish garden, formerly decidedly compromised, had returned to virginity and modesty. A justice assisted by a gardener, a good man who thought that he was a good man. continuation of Le Moyne and another good man who thought that it was the continuation of the Nautre had turned it about, cut, ruffled, decked, moulded it to gallantry. Nature had taken possession of it once more, had filled it with shade, and had arranged it for love.

Starting point is 03:03:00 There was also in the solitude a heart which was quite ready. Love had only to show himself. He had here a temple composed of verdure, grass, moss, the sight of birds, tender shadows, agitated branches, and a soul made of sweetness, of faith, of candour, of hope, of aspiration, and of illusion. Cosette had left the convent when she was still almost a child. She was a little more than 14, and she was at the ungrateful age. We've already said that with the exception of her eyes, she was homely rather than pretty. She had no ungraceful feature, but she was awkward,

Starting point is 03:03:41 thin, timid and bold at once, a grown-up little girl in short. Her education was finished, that is to say, she had been taught religion, and even and above all, devotion, then history, that is to say the thing that bears that name in convents. Geography, grammar, the participle, the kings of France, a little music, a little drawing, etc. But in all other respects she was utterly ignorant, which is a great charm and a great peril.

Starting point is 03:04:13 The soul of a young girl should not be left in the dark. Later on, mirages that are too abrupt and too lively are formed there, as in a dark chamber. She should be gently and discreetly enlightened, rather with the reflection of realities than with their harsh and direct light. A useful and graciously austere half-light which dissipates puerile fears and obviates falls. There is nothing but the maternal instinct, that admirable intuition composed of the memories of the virgin and the experience of the woman, which knows how this half-flight is to be created, and of what it should consist. Nothing supplies the place of this instinct. All the nuns in the world are not worth as much as one mother in the formation of a young girl's soul. Cosette had had no mother, she had only had many mothers, in the plural.

Starting point is 03:05:07 as for jean valjean he was indeed all tenderness all solicitude but he was only an old man and he knew nothing at all now in this work of education in this grave matter of preparing a woman for life what science is required to combat that vast ignorance which is called innocence nothing prepares a young girl for passions like the convent the convent turns the thought in the direction of the unknown the heart thus thrown back upon itself works downward within itself, since it cannot overflow and grows deep, since it cannot expand. Hence visions, suppositions, conjectures, outlines of romances, a desire for adventures, fantastic constructions, edifices built wholly in the inner obscurity of the mind, sombre and secret abodes where the passions immediately find a lodgment as soon as the open gate permits them to enter. The convent is a compression. which in order to triumph over the human heart should last during the whole life.

Starting point is 03:06:13 On quitting the convent, Cosette could have found nothing more sweet and more dangerous than the house in the Rue Plumet. It was the continuation of solitude with the beginning of liberty, a garden that was closed, but a nature that was acrid, rich, voluptuous and fragrant. The same dreams as in the convent, but with glimpses of young men, a grating but one that opened on the street. Still, when she arrived there, we repeat, she was only a child. Jean Valjean gave this neglected garden over to her.

Starting point is 03:06:47 Do what you like with it, he said. This amused Cosette. She turned over all the clumps and all the stones. She hunted for beasts. She played in it while awaiting the time when she would dream in it. She loved this garden for the insects that she found beneath her feet amid the grass. while awaking the day when she would love it for the stars that she would see through the boughs above her head. And then she loved her father, that is to say, Jean Valjean, with all her soul,

Starting point is 03:07:17 with an innocent filial passion which made the good man a beloved and charming companion to her. It will be remembered that M. Madeline had been in a habit of reading a great deal. Jean Valjean had continued this practice. He had come to converse well. He possessed the secret riches and eloquence of a true and humble mind which has spontaneously cultivated itself. He retained just enough sharpness to season his kindness. His mind was rough and his heart was soft. During her conversation in the Luxembourg, he gave her explanations of everything, drawing on what he had read and also on what he had suffered.

Starting point is 03:07:58 As she listened to him, Cosette's eyes wandered vaguely about. This simple man sufficed for Cosette's thoughts, the same as the wild garden sufficed for her eyes. When she had had a good chase after the butterflies, she came pounding up to him and said, Ah, how I have run! He kissed her brow. Cosette adored the good man. She was always at his heels. Where Jean Valjean was, their happiness was.

Starting point is 03:08:28 Jean Valjean lived neither in the pavilion nor the garden. She took greater pleasure in the paved-backed courtyard than in the enclosure filled with flowers, and in his little lodge furnished with straw-seated chairs than in the great drawing-room hung with tapestry, against which stood tufted easy chairs. Jean Valjean sometimes said to her, smiling at his happiness in being importuned, Do go to your own quarters, leave me alone a while. She gave him those charming and tender scoldings, which are so graceful, when they come from a daughter to her father.

Starting point is 03:09:04 Father, I am very cold in your rooms. Why did you have a carpet here and a stove? Dear child, there are so many people who are better than I and who have not even a roof over their heads. Then why is there a fire in my rooms and everything that is needed? Because you're a woman and a child. But must men be cold and feel uncomfortable? Certain men?

Starting point is 03:09:30 That is good. shall come here so often that you will be obliged to have a fire and again she said to him father why do you eat horrible bread like that because my daughter well if you eat it i will eat it too then in order to prevent cosette eating black bread jean valjean ate white bread cosette had but a confused recollection of her childhood she prayed morning and evening for the mother whom she had never known the thenardiers of her remained with her as two hideous figures in a dream. She remembered that she had gone one day at night to fetch water in a forest. She thought that it had been very far from Paris. It seemed to her that she had begun to live in an abyss, and that it was Jean Valjean who had rescued her from it. Her childhood produced upon her the effect of a time when there had been nothing around her but millipeds, spiders and serpents. When she meditated in the evening before falling asleep,

Starting point is 03:10:31 as she had not a very clear idea that she was Jean Valjean's daughter and that he was her father, she fancied that the soul of her mother had passed into that good man and had come to dwell near her. When he was seated, she leaned her cheek against his white hair and dropped a silent tear, saying to herself, perhaps this man is my mother. Cosette, although this is a strange statement to make in the profound ignorance of a girl brought up in a convent, maternity, being also absolutely unintelligible to virginity, had ended by fancying that she had had as little mother as possible. She did not even know her mother's name.

Starting point is 03:11:14 Whenever she asked Jean Valjean, Jean Valjean remained silent. If she repeated her question, he responded with a smile. Once she insisted, the smile ended in a tear. This silence on the part of Jean Valjean covered Fontaine with dark, was it prudence? Was it respect? Was it a fear that he should deliver this name to the hazards of another memory than his own? So long as Cosette had been small, Jean Valjean had been willing to talk to her of her mother. When she became a young girl, it was impossible for him to do so. It seemed to him that he no longer dared. Was it because of Cosette? Was it because of Fontaine?

Starting point is 03:11:58 he felt a certain religious horror at letting that shadow into Cosette's thought and of placing a third in their destiny the more sacred this shade was to him the more did it seem that it was to be feared he thought of Fontaine and felt himself overwhelmed with silence through the darkness

Starting point is 03:12:18 he vaguely perceived something which appeared to have its finger on its lips had all the modesty which had been in Fontaine and which had violently quitted her during her lifetime returned to rest upon her after her death, to watch an indignation over the peace of that dead woman and in its shyness to keep her in her grave? Was Jean Valjean unconsciously submitting to the pressure? We who believe in death are not among the number who will reject this mysterious explanation.

Starting point is 03:12:49 Hence the impossibility of uttering even for Cosette, the name of Fontaine. One day Cosette said to him, father I saw my mother in a dream last night she had two big wings my mother must have been almost a saint during her life through martyrdom replied Jean Valjean however Jean Valjean was happy when Cosette went out with him she leaned on his arm proud and happy in the plenitude of her heart

Starting point is 03:13:17 John Valjean felt his heart melt with him with delight at all these sparks of a tenderness so exclusive so wholly satisfied with himself alone. The poor man trembled, inundated with angelic joy. He declared to himself ecstatically that this would last all their lives. He told himself that he really had not suffered sufficiently to merit so radiant a bliss, and he thanked God in the depth of his soul for having permitted him to be loved thus, he, a wretch, by that innocent being.

Starting point is 03:13:52 End of Book 3, Chapter 3 and 4. Recording by Algae Pug, Perth, Western Australia. Chapters 5 and 6 of Book 3 of Le Miserables, Volume 4, by Victor Hugo. This is a Libravox recording. All Libravox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Libravox.org. Recording by Dave Dwight Le Miseron, Volume 4 by Victor Hugo, translated by Isabel Florence Hapgood, book 3.

Starting point is 03:14:26 The House in the Rue Plyme Chapter 5 The Rose perceives that it is an engine of war One day, Cosette chanced to look at herself in her mirror, and she said to herself, Really? It seemed to her almost as she was pretty. This threw her in a singularly troubled state of mind. Up to that moment, she had never thought of her face. She saw herself in her mirror, but she did not look at herself.

Starting point is 03:14:55 And then she had so often been told her face. told that she was homely. Jean Valjean alone said gently, No, indeed. No, indeed. At all events, Cosette had always thought herself homely, and had grown up in that belief with the easy resignation of childhood. And here, all at once, was her mirror saying to her, as Jean Valjean had said,

Starting point is 03:15:18 No, indeed. That night she did not sleep. What if I were pretty, she thought? How odd it would be if I were pretty. And she recalled those of her companions, whose beauty had produced a sensation in the combat. And she said to herself, what? Am I to be like, mademoiselle, so-and-so? The next morning she looked at herself again, not by accident this time. And she was assailed with doubts.

Starting point is 03:15:45 Where did I get such an idea, said she? No, I am ugly. She had not slept well, that was all. Her eyes were sunken and she was pale. She had not felt very joyous on the pretext. preceding evening in the belief that she was beautiful, but it made her very sad not to be able to believe in it any longer. She did not look at herself again, and for more than a fortnight she tried to dress her hair with her back turned to the mirror. In the evening after dinner,

Starting point is 03:16:14 she generally embroidered in wool or did some convent needlework in the drawing room, and Jean Valjean read beside her. Once she raised her eyes from her work, and she was rendered quite uneasy by the manner in which her father was gazing at her. On another occasion, she was passing along the street, and it seemed to her that someone behind her, whom she did not see, said, a pretty woman, but badly dressed. Bye, she thought, he does not mean me. I am well-dressed and ugly. She was then wearing a plush hat and her merino gown.

Starting point is 03:16:51 At last, one day when she was in the garden, she heard Pearl to Song. saying, do you notice how pretty Cosette is growing, sir? Cosette did not hear her father's reply. But Toussaint's words caused a sort of commotion within her. She fled from the garden, ran up to her room, flew to the looking glass. It was three months since she had looked at herself and gave vent to a cry. She had just dazzled herself. She was beautiful and lovely.

Starting point is 03:17:22 She could not help agreeing with Toussaint and her mirror. Her figure was formed, her skin had grown white, her hair was lustrous, an unaccustomed splendor had been lighted in her blue eyes. The consciousness of her beauty burst upon her in an instant, like the sudden advent of daylight. Other people noticed it also. Tassan had said so. It was evidently she, of whom the passerby had spoken. There could no longer be any doubt of that. She descended to the garden again, thinking herself a cool.

Starting point is 03:17:54 Queen, imagining that she heard the birds singing, though it was winter, seeing the guy gilded, the sun among the trees, flowers in the thickets, distracted, wild, and inexpressible delight. Jean Valjean, on his side, experienced a deep and undefinable oppression at heart. In fact, he had, for some time past, been contemplating with terror that beauty which seemed to grow more radiant every day on Cosette's sweet face. The dawn that was smiling for all was gloomy for him. Cosette had been beautiful for a tolerably long time before she became aware of it herself.

Starting point is 03:18:38 But from the very first day, that unexpected light, which was rising slowly and enveloping the whole of the young girl's person, wounded Jean Valjean's somber eye. He felt that it was a change in a happy life, a life so happy that he did not dare to move for fear of disarranging something. This man who had passed through all manner of distresses,

Starting point is 03:19:02 who was still all bleeding from the bruises of fate, who had been almost wicked and who had become almost a saint, who, after having dragged the chains of the galleys, was now dragging the invisible but heavy chain of indefinite misery. This man whom the law had not released from its grasp, and who could be seized at any moment, brought back from the obscurity of his virtue to the broad daylight of public opprobrium. This man accepted all, excused all, pardoned all, and merely asked of providence of man,

Starting point is 03:19:34 of the law, of society, of nature, of the world, one thing, that Cosette might love him. That Cosette might continue to love him, that God would not prevent the heart of the child from coming to him and from remaining with him. Be loved by Cosette, He felt that he was healed, rested, appeased, loaded with benefits, recompensed, crowned. Beloved by Cosette, it was well with him. He asked nothing more. Had anyone said to him, do you want anything better? He would have answered, no.

Starting point is 03:20:09 God might have said to him, do you desire heaven? And he would have replied, I should lose by it. Everything which could affect this situation, if only on the surface, made him shudder like the beginning of something new. He had never known very distinctly himself what the beauty of a woman means, but he understood instinctively that it was something terrible. He gazed with terror on this beauty, which was blossoming out ever more triumphant and superb beside him, beneath his very eyes on the innocent and formidable brow of that child from the depths of her holiness of his old age, of his misery, of his reprobation.

Starting point is 03:20:52 He said to himself, How beautiful she is! What is to become of me? There, moreover, lay the difference between his tenderness and the tenderness of a mother. What he beheld with anguish, a mother would have gazed upon with joy.

Starting point is 03:21:09 The first symptoms were not long in making their appearance. On the very morrow of the day on which she had said to herself, decidedly I am beautiful. Cosette began to pay a face. attention to her toilet. She recalled the remark of that passerby, pretty but badly dressed. The breath of an oracle, which had passed beside her and had vanished, after depositing in her heart one of the two gems which are destined later on to fill the whole life of woman, coquetry. Love is the other. With faith in her beauty, the whole feminine soul expanded within her.

Starting point is 03:21:43 She conceived a horror for her Marinos and shame for her plush hat. Her father had never refused her anything. She had once acquired the whole science of the bonnet, the gown, the mantle, the boot, the cuff, the stuff, which is in fashion, the color which is becoming, that science, which makes of the Parisian woman something so charming, so deep, and so dangerous. The words heady woman were invented for the Parisienne. In less than a month, little cosette and the tabah of the rue de bourbonne, was not only one of the prettiest, but one of the best-dress women in Paris, a great deal more. She would have liked to encounter her passer-by to see what he would say, and to teach him a lesson. The truth is that she was ravishing in every respect, and that she

Starting point is 03:22:30 distinguished the difference between a bonnet from Jerome and one from Herbal, in the most marvelous way. Jean Valjean watched these ravages with anxiety. He who felt that he could never do anything but crawl, walk at the most, beheld wings sprouting on Cosette. Moreover, from the mere inspection of Cosette's toad, a woman would have recognized the fact that she had no mother. Certain little proprieties, certain special conventionalities were not observed by Cosette. A mother, for instance, would have told her that a young girl does not dress in Damasque. The first day that Cosette went out in her black damask gown and mantle and her white crape bonnet, She took Jean Valjean's arm, gay, radiant, rosy, proud, dazzling.

Starting point is 03:23:19 Father, she said, how do you like me in disguise? Jean Valjean replied in a voice which resembled the bitter voice of an envious man. Charming. He was the same as usual during their walk. On their return home, he asked Cosette. Won't you put on the other gown and bonnet again? You know the ones I mean. This took place in Cosette's chamber.

Starting point is 03:23:40 Cosette turned towards the war. where her cast-off schoolgirl's clothes were hanging. That disguise, said she, Father, what do you want me to do with it? Oh, no, the idea. I shall never put on those horrors again. With that machine on my head, I have the air of Madame Mad Dog. Jean Valjean heaved a deep sigh.

Starting point is 03:24:05 From that moment forth, he noticed the Cosette, who had always heretofore asked to remain at home, saying, father, I enjoy myself more here with you. Now was always asking to go out. In fact, what is the use of having a handsome face in a delicious costume if one does not display them? He also noticed that Cosette had no longer the same taste for the back garden. Now she preferred the garden

Starting point is 03:24:33 and did not dislike to promenade back and forth in front of the railed fence. Jean Valjean, who was shy, never set foot in the garden. He kept to his backyard, like a dog. Cosette, in gaining the knowledge that she was beautiful, lost the grace of ignoring it. An exquisite grace for beauty, enhanced by ingenuousness, is ineffable, and nothing is so adorable as a dazzling and innocent creature

Starting point is 03:25:00 who walks along, holding in her hand the key to paradise, without being conscious of it. But what she had lost in an ingenuous grace, she gained impensive and serious charm. Her whole person, permeated with the joy of youth, of innocence, and of beauty, breathed forth a splendid melancholy. It was at this epoch that Marius, after the lapse of six months, saw her once more at the Luxembourg. Chapter 6. The battle begun. Cosette in her shadow, like Marius and his, was all ready to take fire.

Starting point is 03:25:38 Destiny, with its mysterious and fatal patience, slowly drew together these two beings, all charged and all languishing, with the stormy electricity of passion, these two souls which were laden with love, as two clouds are laden with lightning, and which it were bound to overflow and mingle in a look like the clouds in a flash of fire. The glance had been so much abused in love romances that it has finally fallen into disrepute. One hardly dares to say nowadays that two beings fell in love because they looked at each other. That is the way people do fall in love, nevertheless, and the only way. The rest is nothing, but the rest comes afterwards.

Starting point is 03:26:20 Nothing is more real than these great shocks which two souls convey to each other by the exchange of that spark. At that particular hour, when Cosette unconsciously darted that glance which troubled Marius, Marius had no suspicion that he had also launched a look which disturbed Cosette. He caused her the same good and the same evil. She had been in the habit of seeing him for a long time, and she had scrutinized him as girls scrutinize and see while looking elsewhere. Marius still considered Cosette ugly, when she had already begun to think Marius handsome, but as he paid no attention to her, the young man was nothing to her.

Starting point is 03:27:02 Still, she could not refrain from saying to herself that he had beautiful hair, beautiful eyes, handsome teeth, a charming tone of voice when she heard him conversing with his comrades, that he held himself badly when he walked, if you like, but with a grace that was all his own, that he did not appear to be at all stupid, that his whole person was noble, gentle, simple, proud, and that, in short, though he seemed to be poor, yet his error was fine. On the day when their eyes met at last, and said to each other those first obscured, and ineffable things which the glance lisp. Cosette did not immediately understand.

Starting point is 03:27:45 She returned thoughtfully to the house in the rue de lois, where Jean Valjean, according to his custom, had come to spend six weeks. The next morning, on waking, she thought of that strange young man, so long, indifferent, and icy, who now seemed to pay attention to her, and it did not appear to her

Starting point is 03:28:03 that his attention was the least in the world agreeable to her. She was, on the contrary, somewhat incensed at this handsome and disdainful individual. A substratum of war stirred within her. It struck her, and the idea caused her a wholly childish joy that she was going to take her revenge at last. Knowing that she was beautiful, she was thoroughly conscious, though in an indistinct fashion, that she possessed a weapon. women play with their beauty as children do with a knife. They wound themselves. The reader will recall Marius's hesitations, his palpitations, his terrors.

Starting point is 03:28:46 He remained on his bench and did not approach. This vexed cosette. One day, she said to Jean Valjean, Father, let us stroll about a little in that direction, seeing that Marius did not come to her, she went to him. In such cases, all women were. resemble Maheme. And then, strange to say, the first symptom of true love in a young man is timidity. In a young girl, it is boldness. This is surprising, and yet nothing is more simple. It is the two sexes

Starting point is 03:29:20 tending to approach each other and assuming each the other's qualities. That day, Cosette's glance drove Marius beside himself, and Marius' glance set Cosette to tremble. Marius, Marius' went away confident, and Cosette uneasy. From that day forth, they adored each other. The first thing that Cosette felt was a confused and profound melancholy. It seemed to her that her soul had become black since the day before. She no longer recognized it. The whiteness of soul and young girls, which is composed of coldness and gaiety, resemble snow. It melts in love, which is its sun. Cosette did not know. what love was. She had never heard the word uttered in its terrestrial sense. On the books of

Starting point is 03:30:10 profane music which entered the convent, Amor, love, was replaced by timbre, drum, or pandor. This created enigmas which exercised the imaginations of the big girls such as, ah, how delightful is the drum? Or, hideate is not a pandor. But Cosette had left the convent too early, to have occupied herself much with the drum. Therefore, she did not know what name to give to what she now felt. Is anyone the less ill because one does not know the name of one's malady? She loved with all the more passion because she loved ignorantly. She did not know whether it was a good thing or a bad thing,

Starting point is 03:30:53 useful or dangerous, eternal or temporary, allowable or prohibited. She loved. She would have been greatly astonished had anyone said to her, you do not sleep, but that is forbidden. You do not eat? Why, that is very bad. You have oppressions and palpitations of the heart? That must not be. You blush and turn pale when a certain being clad in black appears at the end of a certain green wall. But that is abominable. She would not have understood, and she would have replied, what fault is there of mine in a matter in which I have no power and of which I know nothing? It turned out that the love which presented itself was exactly suited to the state of her soul. It was a sort of admiration at a distance, a mute contemplation, the deification of a stranger. It was the apparition of youth to youth.

Starting point is 03:31:50 The dream of nights become a reality, yet remaining a dream. the longed-for phantom realized and made flesh at last, but having as yet neither name, nor fault, nor spot, nor exigence, nor defect, in a word, the distant lover who lingered in the ideal, a shimmera, but with a form. Any nearer and more palpable meeting would have alarmed Cosette at this first stage, when she was still half immersed in the exaggerated mists of the cloister. She had all the fears of children and all the fears of nuns combined. The spirit of the convent, with which she had been permeated for the space of five years,

Starting point is 03:32:33 was still in the process of slow evaporation from her person and made everything tremble around her. In this situation, he was not a lover. He was not even an admirer. He was a vision. She set herself to adoring Marius as something charming, luminous, and impossible. As extreme innocence borders on extreme coquetry. She smiled at him with all frankness. Every day she looked forward to the hour for their walk with impatience.

Starting point is 03:33:02 She found Marius there. She felt herself unspeakably happy and thought in all sincerity that she was expressing her whole thought when she said de Jean Valjean. What a delicious garden the Luxembourg is. Marius and Cosette were in the dark as to one another. They did not address each other. other. They did not salute each other. They did not know each other. They saw each other. And like the stars of heaven, which are separated by millions of leagues, they lived by gazing at each other. It was thus that Cosette gradually became a woman and developed, beautiful and loving,

Starting point is 03:33:41 with a consciousness of her beauty and in ignorance of her love. She was a coquette to boot through her ignorance. End of book three, chapters five and six. Recording by Dave Dwight, Southern Illinois. Chapter 7 of Book 3 of Le Miserab, volume 4 by Victor Hugo. This is a Librevox recording. All Libravox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Libravox.org. Recording by Dave Dwight. Les Miserables, volume 4, by Victor Hugo, translated by Isabel Florence Havegood. Book 3, The House in the Rue Plumet.

Starting point is 03:34:32 Chapter 7. To one sadness, oppose a sadness and a half. All situations have their instincts. Old and eternal mother nature warned Jean Valjean in a dim way of the presence of Marius. Jean Valjean shuddered to the very bottom of. his soul. Jean Valjean saw nothing, knew nothing, and yet he scanned with obstinate attention, the darkness in which he walked, as though he felt on one side of him something in the process of construction, and on the other something which was crumbling away. Marius also warned, and, in accordance with the deep law of God, by that same mother nature, did all he could to keep out of sight,

Starting point is 03:35:20 of the father. Nevertheless, it came to pass that Jean Valjean sometimes despied him. Marius's manners were no longer in the least natural. He exhibited ambiguous prudence and awkward daring. He no longer came quite close to them as formerly. He seated himself at a distance and pretended to be reading. Why did he pretend that? Formerly, he had come in his old coat. Now he wore his new one every day. Jean Valjean was not sure that he did not have his hair curled. His eyes were very queer. He wore gloves. In short, Jean Valjean cordially detested this young man. Cossette allowed nothing to be divined.

Starting point is 03:36:06 Without knowing just what was the matter with her, she was convinced that there was something in it, and that it must be concealed. There was a coincidence between the taste for toilet, which had recently come to Cosette, and the habit of new clothes developed by that stranger, which was very repugnant to Jean Valjean. It might be accidental, no doubt, certainly, but it was a menacing accident. He never opened his mouth to Cosette about this stranger. One day, however, he could not refrain from so doing, and with that vague despair which suddenly

Starting point is 03:36:49 cast the lead into the depths of its despair, he said to her, What a very pedantic air that young man has. Cosette, but a year before, only an indifferent little girl would have replied, Why, no, he is charming. Ten years later, with the love of Marius in her heart, she would have answered, a pedant and insufferable to the sight. You are right. The moment in life, and the heart,

Starting point is 03:37:19 which she had then attained, she contented herself with a replying, with supreme calmness. That young man, as though she now beheld him for the first time in her life. How stupid I am, thought Jean Valjean. She had not noticed him. It is I who have pointed him out to her. Oh, the simplicity of the old, oh, the depth of children. It is one of the laws of those fresh years of suffering and trouble, of those vivacious conflicts between a first love and the first obstacles, that the young girl does not allow herself to be caught in any trap whatever, and that the young man falls into every one. Jean Valjean had instituted an undeclared war against Marius, which Marius, with the sublime stupidity,

Starting point is 03:38:16 of his passion and his age did not divine. Jean Valjean laid a host of ambushes for him. He changed his hour, he changed his bench, he forgot his handkerchief, he came alone to the Luxembourg. Marius dashed headlong into all these snares, and to all the interrogation marks planted by Jean Valjean in his pathway. He ingenuously answered, yes.

Starting point is 03:38:42 But Cosette remained immured in her apparent unconcern and her imperturbable tranquility. So that vonjean Valjean arrived at the following conclusion, that Nini is madly in love with Cosette. But Cosette does not even know that he exists. Nonetheless, did he bear in his heart a mournful tremor? The minute when Cosette would love might strike at any moment. Does not everything begin with indifference?

Starting point is 03:39:15 only once did cosette make a mistake and alarm him he rose from his seat to depart after a stay of three hours and she said what already jean valjean had not discontinued his trips to the luxembourg as he did not wish to do anything out of the way and as above all things he feared to arouse cosette but during the hours which were so sweet to the lovers while cosette was sending her smile to the intoxicated marius who perceived nothing else now, and who saw nothing in all the world but an adored and radiant face, Jean Valjean was fixing on Marius, flashing in terrible eyes. He who had finally come to believe himself incapable of a malevolent feeling experienced moments when Marius was present, in which he thought he was becoming savage and ferocious once more, and he felt the old depths of his soul, which had formerly contained so much wrath opening once more and rising up against that young man. It almost seemed to him that unknown craters were forming in his bosom.

Starting point is 03:40:27 What? He was there, that creature. What was he there for? He came creeping about, smelling out, examining, trying. He came saying, hey, why not? He came to prowl about his, Jean Valjean's life. to prowl about his happiness with the purpose of seizing it and bearing it away. Jean Valjean added, yes, that's it. What is he in search of? An adventure. What does he want? A love affair.

Starting point is 03:41:02 A love affair. And I? What? I have been first the most wretched of men and then the most unhappy. And I have traversed 60 years of life. on my knees. I have suffered everything that a man can suffer. I have grown old without having been young. I have lived without a family, without relatives, without friends, without life, without children. I have left my blood on every stone, on every bramble, on every milepost, along every wall.

Starting point is 03:41:37 I have been gentle, though others have been hard to me, and kind, although others have been malicious. I have become an honest man once more in spite of everything. I have repented of the evil that I have done and have forgiven the evil that has been done to me. And at the moment when I receive my recompense, at the moment when it is all over, at the moment when I am just touching the goal, at the moment when I have what I desire, it is well, it is good, I have paid, I have earned. earned it. All this is to take flight. All this will vanish and I shall lose Cosette. And I shall lose my life, my joy, my soul, because it was his pleased a great booby to come and lounge at the Luxembourg.

Starting point is 03:42:33 Then his eyes filled with a sad and extraordinary gleam. It was no longer a man gazing at a man. an enemy surveying an enemy. It was a dog scanning, a thief. The reader knows the rest. Marius pursued his senseless course. One day, he followed Cosette to the rue de la. Another day, he spoke to the porter. The porter on his side spoke and said to Jean Valjean, Monsieur, who is that curious young man who is asking for you? On the morrow, Jean Valjean, bestowed on Marius, that glance which Marius at last perceived. A week later, Jean Valjean had taken his departure. He swore to himself that he would never again set foot either in the Luxembourg or in the Routelais.

Starting point is 03:43:32 Cosette did not complain. She said nothing. She asked no questions. She did not seek to learn his reasons. She had already reached the point where she was afraid. of being divined and of betraying herself. Jean Valjean had no experience of these miseries, the only miseries which are charming

Starting point is 03:43:52 and the only ones with which he was not acquainted. The consequence was that he did not understand the grave significance of Cosette's silence. He merely noticed that she had grown sad, and he grew gloomy. On his side and on hers, inexperience had joined issue. Once he made a trial, he asked Cosette.

Starting point is 03:44:15 Would you like to come to the Luxembourg? A ray illuminated Cosette's pale face. Yes, said she. They went thither. Three months had elapsed. Marius no longer went there. Marius was not there. On the following day, Jean Valjean asked Cosette again.

Starting point is 03:44:37 Would you like to come to the Luxembourg? She replied, sadly and gently. No. Jean Valjean was hurt by this sadness and heartbroken at this gentleness. What was going on in that mind which was so young and yet already so impenetrable? What was on its way there within? What was taking place in Cosette's soul? Sometimes, instead of going to bed, Jean Valjean remained seated on his palate, with his head in his hands, and he passed. whole nights asking himself, what has cosette in her mind? And in thinking of the things that she might be thinking about, oh, at such moments, what mournful glances did he cast towards that cloister,

Starting point is 03:45:29 that chased peak, that abode of angels, that inaccessible glacier of virtue, how he contemplated with despairing ecstasy that convent gardened, full of ignored flowers and cloistered virgins, where all perfumes and souls mount straight to heaven. How he adored that Eden, forever closed against him, whence he had voluntarily and madly emerged, how he regretted his abnegation and his folly, and having brought Cosette back into the world, poor hero of sacrifice, seized and hurled to the earth by his very self-devotion. How he said to himself, What have I done? However, nothing of all this was perceptible to Cosette.

Starting point is 03:46:21 No ill-temper, no harshness. His face was always serene and kind. Jean Valjean's manners were more tender and more paternal than ever. if anything could have betrayed his lack of joy, it was his increased suavity. On her side, Cosette languished. She suffered from the absence of Marius as she had rejoiced in his presence, peculiarly without exactly being conscious of it. When Jean Valjean ceased to take her on their customary strolls, a feminine instinct murmured confusedly at the bottom of her heart. that she must not seem to set store on the Luxembourg garden,

Starting point is 03:47:07 and that if this proved to be a matter of indifference to her, her father would take her thither once more. But days, weeks, months elapsed. Jean Valjean had tacitly accepted Cosette's tacit consent. She regretted it. It was too late. So Marius had disappeared. All was over. the day on which she returned to the Luxembourg.

Starting point is 03:47:36 Marius was no longer there. What was to be done? Should she ever find him again? She felt an anguish at her heart, which nothing relieved, and which augmented every day. She no longer knew whether it was winter or summer, whether it was raining or shining, whether the birds were singing, whether it was the season for dahlias or daisies, whether the Luxembourg was now more charming than the tuileries, whether the linen which the laundress brought home, would starch too much or not enough, whether Toussaint had done her marketing well or ill,

Starting point is 03:48:14 and she remained dejected, absorbed, attentive to but a single thought, her eyes vague and staring, as when one gazes by night at a black and fathomless spot where an apparition has vanished. However, she did not allow Jean Valjean to perceive anything of this, except her pallor. She still wore her sweet face for him. The pallor sufficed, but too thoroughly, to trouble Jean Valjean. Sometimes, he asked her, What is the matter with you? She replied, there is nothing the matter with me.

Starting point is 03:48:54 And after a silence, when she divined that he was sad also, she would add, and you, father, is there anything wrong with you? With me? Nothing, said he. These two beings, who had loved each other so exclusively, and with so touching in affection, and who had lived so long for each other, now suffered side by side, each on the other's account, without acknowledging it to each other, without anger toward each other, and with a smile. End of book three, chapter seven.

Starting point is 03:49:34 Recording by Dave Dwight, Southern Illinois. Chapter 8 of Book 3 of Le Miserab, Volume 4 by Victor Hugo. This is a Librevox recording. All Libravox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visitlibrovox.org. Recording by Dave Dwight. Robb, Volume 4 by Victor Hugo, translated by Isabel Florence Hapgood. Book 3, The House in the Rue Plumet. Chapter 8, The Chain Gang

Starting point is 03:50:11 Jean Valjean was the more unhappy of the two. Youth, even in its sorrows, always possesses its own peculiar radiance. At times, Jean Valjean suffered so greatly that it became Purin. It is the property of grief to cause the childish side of man to reappear. He had an incongerable conviction that Cosette was escaping from him. He would have liked to resist, to retain her, to arouse her enthusiasm by some external and brilliant matter. These ideas, pure-ow, as we have just said, and at the same time senile, conveyed to him by their very childishness a tolerably just notion of the influence of gold-lace on the

Starting point is 03:50:55 imaginations of young girls. He wants chance to see a good girl. general on horseback in full uniform passed along the street. Comte Coutard, the Commandant of Paris. He envied that gilded man. What happiness it would be, he said to himself, if he could put on that suit, which was an incontestable thing, and if Cossette could behold him thus, she would be dazzled. And when he had Cossette on his arm and passed the gates of the Tories, the guard would

Starting point is 03:51:27 present arms to him. and that would suffice for Cosette and would dispel her idea of looking at young men. An unforeseen shock was added to these sad reflections. In the isolated life in which they led, and since they had come to dwell in the Ruebe, they had contracted one habit. They sometimes took a pleasure trip to see the sunrise,

Starting point is 03:51:52 a mild species of enjoyment which befits those who are entering life and those who are quitting it. For those who love solitude, a walk in the early morning is equivalent to a stroll by night, with the cheerfulness of nature added. The streets are deserted and the birds are singing. Cosette, a bird herself, liked to rise early. These matutinal excursions were planned on the preceding evening. He proposed, and she agreed.

Starting point is 03:52:19 It was arranged like a plot. They set out before daybreak, and these trips were so many small delights for Cosette. These innocent eccentricities pleased young people. Jean Valjean's inclination led him, as we have seen, to the least frequented spots, to solitary nooks, to forgotten places. There then existed, in the vicinity of the barriers of Paris, a sort of poor meadows, which were almost confounded with the city, where grew in summer sickly grain, and which in autumn, after the harvest had been gathered, presented the appearance, not of having been reaped, but peeled. Jean Valjean loved to haunt these fields.

Starting point is 03:53:05 Cosette was not bored there. It meant solitude to him and liberty to her. There she became a little girl once more. She could run and almost play. She took off her hat, laid it on Jean Valjean's knees, and gathered bunches of flowers. She gazed at the butterflies on the flowers, but did not catch them.

Starting point is 03:53:26 gentleness and tenderness are born with love, and the young girl who cherishes within her breast a trembling and fragile ideal has mercy on the wing of a butterfly. She wove garlands of poppies, which she placed on her head, and which crossed and penetrated with sunlight, glowing until they flamed, formed for her rosy face a crown of burning embers. Even after their life had grown sad, they kept up their cusses. of early strolls one morning in October therefore tempted by the serene perfection of the autumn of 1831 they set out and found themselves at break of day near the barrier domain it was not dawn it was daybreak a delightful and stern moment a few constellations here and there in the deep pale azure the earth all black the heavens all white a quiver amid the blades of grass, everywhere the mysterious chill of twilight.

Starting point is 03:54:33 A lark, which seemed mingled with the stars, was caroling at a prodigious height, and one would have declared that the hymn of pettiness calmed immensity. In the east, Duval de Grace projected its dark mass on the clear horizon with the sharpness of steel. Venus dazzlingly brilliant was rising behind, that dome and had the air of a soul making its escape from a gloomy edifice. All was peace and silence. There was no one on the road. A few stray laborers of whom they

Starting point is 03:55:09 barely caught a glimpse were on their way to work along the side paths. Jean Valjean was sitting in a crosswalk on some planks deposited at the gate of a timber yard. His face was turned towards the highway, his back towards the light. He had forgotten the sun, which was on the point of rising. He had sunk into one of those profound absorptions in which the mind becomes concentrated, which imprison even the eye, and which are equivalent to four walls. There are meditations, which may be called vertical. When one is at the bottom of them, time is required to return to earth.

Starting point is 03:55:51 Jean Valjean had plunged into one of these reveries. He was thinking of Kosephi. of the happiness that was possible if nothing came between him and her, of the light with which she filled his life, a light which was but the emanation of her soul. He was almost happy in his reverie. Cosette, who was standing beside him, was gazing at the clouds as they turned rosy.

Starting point is 03:56:16 All at once, Cosette exclaimed, "'Father, I think someone was coming yonder.' Jean-Lau-Jean raised his eyes. Cosette was right. The causeway, which leads to the ancient barrier-domain, is a prolongation, as the reader knows, of the rue de serre, and is cut at right angles by the inner boulevard. At the elbow of the causeway, and the boulevard, at the spot where it branches, they heard a noise which it was difficult to account for at that hour, and a sort of confused pile made its appearance. Some shapeless thing which was coming from the boulevard was turning into the road. It grew larger. It seemed to move in an orderly manner, though it was bristling and quivering.

Starting point is 03:57:01 It seemed to be a vehicle, but its load could not be distinctly made out. There were horses, wheels, shouts, whips were cracking. By degrees the outlines became fixed, although based in shadows. It was a vehicle, in fact, which had just turned from the boulevard into the highway, and which was directing its course towards the barrier near which sat Jean Valje. a second of the same aspect followed then a third then a fourth seven chariots made their appearance in succession the heads of the horses touching the rear of the wagon in front figures were moving on these vehicles flashes were visible through the dusk as though there were naked swords there a clanking became audible which resembled the rattling of chains and as this something advanced the sound of voices waxed louder and it turned into a terrible thing such as a emerges from the cave of dreams. As it drew nearer, it assumed a form, and was outlined behind the trees with the pallid hue of an apparition. The mass grew white. The day, which was slowly dawning,

Starting point is 03:58:10 cast a wan light on this swarming heap, which was at once both sepulchral and living. The heads of the figures turned into the faces of corpses, and this is what it proved to be. Seven wagons were driving in a file along the road. the first six were singularly constructed they resembled cooper's drays they consisted of long ladders placed on two wheels and forming barrows at their rear extremities each dray or rather let us say each ladder was attached to four horses harnessed tandem on these ladders strange clusters of men were being drawn in the faint light these men were to be divined rather than seen twenty-four on each vehicle twelve on a side back to back back, facing the passers-by, their legs dangling in the air. This was the manner in which these men were traveling, and behind their backs, they had something which clanked, and which was a chain, and on their necks something which shone, and which was an iron collar. Each man had his collar,

Starting point is 03:59:13 but the chain was for all, so that if these four-and-twenty men had occasion to alight from the dray and walk, they were seized with a sort of inexorable unity, and were obliged. to wind over the ground with the chain for a backbone, somewhat after the fashion of millipeds. In the back and front of each vehicle, two men with muskets stood erect, each holding one end of the chain under his foot. The iron necklets were square. The seventh vehicle, a huge rack-sided baggage wagon without a hood, had four wheels and six horses, and carried a sonorous pile of iron boilers, cast-iron pot. braziers and chains, among which were mingled several men who were pinioned and stretched at full

Starting point is 04:00:02 length and who seemed to be ill. This wagon, all lattice work, was garnished with dilapidated hurdles, which appeared to have served for former punishments. These vehicles kept to the middle of the road. On each side marched a double hedge of guards of infamous aspect, wearing three-cornered hats like the soldiers under the directory, shabby, covered with spots and holes, muffled in uniforms of veterans and the trousers of undertakers men, half gray, half blue, which were almost hanging in rags with red epaulets, yellow shoulder belts, short sabres, muskets, and cudgels. They were a species of soldier black guards. These myrmidons seemed composed of the abjectness of the beggar and the authority of the executioner.

Starting point is 04:00:49 The one who appeared to be their chief held a postilion's whip in his hand. All these details blurred by the dimness of dawn became more and more clearly outlined as the light increased. At the head and in the rear of the convoy rode mountain genetarms serious and with sword in fist. The procession was so long that when the first vehicle reached the barrier, the last was barely debauching from the boulevard. A throng sprung, it is impossible to say whence, and formed in a twinkling, as is frequently the case. in Paris, pressed forward from both sides of the road and looked on. In the neighboring lanes, the shouts of people calling to each other and the wooden shoes of market gardenings hastening up to gaze were audible. The men massed upon these drays allowed themselves to be jolted along

Starting point is 04:01:43 in silence. They were livid with the chill of morning. They all wore linen trousers and their bare feet were thrust into wooden shoes. The rest of their costume was a fantasy of a wretcher. their accoutrements were horribly incongruous. Nothing is more funeral than the harlequin in rags. Battered felt hats, tarpaulin caps, hideous woolen nightcaps, and side by side with a short blouse, a black coat broken at the elbow, many wore women's headgear, others had baskets on their heads,

Starting point is 04:02:17 hairy breasts were visible, and through the rent in their garments, tattooed designs could be descried. temples of love, flaming hearts, cupids, eruptions, and unhealthy red blotches could also be seen. Two or three had a straw rope attached to the crossbar of the dray, and suspended under them like a stirrup, which supported their feet. One of them held in his hand and raised to his mouth something which had the appearance of a black stone and which he seemed to be annoyed. It was bread which he was eating. There were no eyes there that were not either.

Starting point is 04:02:53 dry, dulled, or flaming with an evil light. The escort troop cursed. The men in chains did not utter a syllable. From time to time, the sound of a blow became audible, as the cudgels descended on shoulder blades or skulls. Some of these men were yawning. Their rags were terrible. Their feet hung down, their shoulders oscillated, their heads clashed together, their fetters clanked, their eyes glared ferociously, their fists clenched or fell open inertly like the hands of corpses. In the rear of the convoy ran a band of children screaming with laughter. This file of vehicles, whatever its nature was, was mournful. It was evident that tomorrow, that in our hands, a pouring rain might descend,

Starting point is 04:03:39 that it might be followed by another and another, and that their dilapidated garments would be drenched, that once soaked these men would not get dry again, that once chilled, they would not again get warm, that their linen trousers would be glued to their bones by the downpour, that the water would fill their shoes, that no lashes from the whips would be able to prevent their jaws from chattering, that the chain would continue to bind them by the neck,

Starting point is 04:04:04 that their legs would continue to dangle, and it was impossible not to shudder at the sight of these human beings, thus bound and passive beneath the cold clowns of autumn, and delivered over to the rain to the black, to all the furies of the air like trees and stones. Blows from the cudgel were not omitted, even in the case of the sick men, who lay there nodded with ropes and motionless on the seventh wagon,

Starting point is 04:04:31 and who appeared to have been tossed like sacks, filled with misery. Suddenly the sun made its appearance. The immense light of the Orient burst forth, and one would have said that it had set fire to all those ferocious heads. Their tongues were unloosed, A conflagration of grins, oaths, and songs exploded. The broad horizontal sheet of light severed the file in two parts,

Starting point is 04:04:55 illuminating heads and bodies, leaving feet and wheels in the obscurity. Thoughts made their appearance on these faces. It was a terrible moment. Visible demons with their masks removed, fierce souls laid bare. Though lighted up, this wild throng remained in gloom. Some who were gay had in their mouths, wills through which they blew vermin over the crowd, picking out the women. The dawn accentuated these lamentable profiles with the blackness of its shadows. There was not one of these creatures who was

Starting point is 04:05:29 not deformed by reason of wretchedness, and the whole was so monstrous that one would have said that the sun's brilliancy had changed into the glare of the lightning. The wagon-load, which headed the line, had struck up a song, and were shouting at the top of their voices with a haggard joviality, a pupary of desoliers, then famous, called the Vestle. The trees shivered mournfully in the cross-lanes, countenances of bourgeois, listened in an idiotic delight to these coarse strains droned by spectres. All sorts of distress meant in this procession as in chaos. Here were to be found the facial angles of every sort of beast, old men,

Starting point is 04:06:17 youths, baldheads, gray beards, cynical monstrosities, sour resignation, savage grins, senseless attitudes, snouts surmounted by caps, heads like those of young girls with corkscrew curls on the temples, infantile visages, and by reason of that, horrible thin skeleton faces, to which death alone was lacking. On the first card was a negro, who had been a slave in all probability, and who could make a comparison of his chains. The frightful leveler from below, shame, had passed over these brows. At that degree of abasement, the last transformations were suffered by all, in their extremist depths and ignorance, converted into dullness, was the equal of intelligence converted into despair.

Starting point is 04:07:08 There was no choice possible between these men who appeared to the eye as the flower of the mud. it was evident that the person who had the ordering of that unclean procession had not classified them. These beings had been fettered and coupled palmel in alphabetical disorder, probably, and loaded haphazard on those carts. Nevertheless, horrors, when grouped together, always end by evolving a result. All additions of wretched men give a sum total. Each chain exhaled a common soul, and each drayload has its own physiognomy. By the side of the one where they were singing, there was one where they were howling.

Starting point is 04:07:49 A third, where they were begging. One could be seen in which they were gnashing their teeth. Another load menaced the spectators, another blasphemed God. The last was as silent as the tomb. Dante would have thought that he beheld his seven circles of hell on the march. The march of the damned to their tortures, performed in sinister wise, not on the formidable and flaming chariot of the apocalypse, but what was more mournful than that, on the gibbet cart. One of the guards, who had a hook on the end of his cudgel, made a pretense from time to time of stirring up this mass of human filth. An old woman in the crowd pointed them out to her little boy five years old, and said to him, rascal, let that be a warning to you. As the songs and blasphemies

Starting point is 04:08:39 increased, the man who appeared to be the captain of the escort cracked his whip. And at that signal, a fearful dull and blind flogging, which produced the sound of hail, fell upon the seven railroads. Many roared and foamed at the mouth, which redoubled the delight of the street urchins who had hastened up, a swarm of flies on these wounds. Jean Valjean's eyes had assumed a frightful expression. They were no longer eyes. They were those deep and glassy objects which replaced the glance in the case of certain wretched men, which seemed unconscious of reality. and in which flames the reflection of terrors and of catastrophes.

Starting point is 04:09:20 He was not looking at a spectacle. He was seeing a vision. He tried to rise, to flee, to make his escape. He could not move his feet. Sometimes the things that you see sees upon you and hold you fast. He remained nailed to the spot, petrified, stupid, asking himself, a thwart confused and inexpressible anger. what the sepulchral persecution signified, and whence had come that pandemonium which was pursuing him.

Starting point is 04:09:53 All at once he raised his hand to his brow, a gesture habitual to those whose memory suddenly returns. He remembered that this was, in fact, the usual itinerary, that it was customary to make this detour in order to avoid all possibility of encountering royalty on the road de Fontainebleau, and that five and thirty years before he had himself passed through that barrier. Cosette was no less terrified, but in a different way she did not understand what she beheld did not seem to her to be possible. At length she cried, Father, what are those men in those carts? Jean Valjean replied, convicts,

Starting point is 04:10:39 Where are they going? To the galleys. At that moment, the cudgeling, multiplied by a hundred hands, became zealous, blows with the flat of the sword were mingled with it. It was a perfect storm of whips and clubs. The convicts bent before it. A hideous obedience was evoked by the torture, and all held their peace, darting glances like chained wolves.

Starting point is 04:11:06 Cosette trembled in every limb. She resumed, "'Father, are they still men?' sometimes answered the unhappy man it was the chain-gang in fact which had set out before daybreak from biesetre and had taken the road to manse in order to avoid fontainebleau where the king then was this caused the horrible journey to last three or four days longer but torture may surely be prolonged with the object of sparing the royal personage aside of it jean valjean John returned home utterly overwhelmed. Such encounters are shocks, and the memory that they leave behind them resembles a thorough shaking up.

Starting point is 04:11:54 Nevertheless, Jean-Lau-Jean did not observe that, on his way back to the Rue de Belveron was cosette. The latter was plying him with other questions on the subject of what they had just seen. Perhaps he was too much absorbed in his own dejection to notice her words and reply to them. but when Cosette was leaving him in the evening to betake herself to bed, he heard her say in a low voice as though talking to herself. It seems to me that if I were to find one of those men in my pathway, oh my God, I should die merely from the sight of him close at hand.

Starting point is 04:12:33 Fortunately, chance ordained that on the morrow of that tragic day, there was some official solemnity, apropos if I know not what, Fits in Paris, a review in the Champ de Mar, jousts in the scene, theatrical performance in the Champs Alicis, fireworks at the Arc de la Troix, illuminations everywhere. Jean Valjean did violence to his habits

Starting point is 04:12:56 and took Cosette to see these rejoicings for the purpose of diverting her from the memory of the day before and of effacing beneath the smiling tumult of all Paris, the abominable thing which had passed before her. The review with which the festival was spiced

Starting point is 04:13:15 made the presence of uniforms perfectly natural. Jean Valjean donned his uniform of a national guard with the vague inward feeling of a man who is betaking himself to shelter. However, this trip seemed to attain its object. Cosette, who made it her law to please her father, and to whom, moreover, all spectacles were a novelty, accepted this diversion with the light and easy, good grace of youth and did not pout too disdainfully at that flutter of enjoyment called a public

Starting point is 04:13:46 feat, so that Jean Valjean was able to believe that he had succeeded, and that no trace of that hideous vision remained. Some days later, one morning when the sun was shining brightly, and they were both on the steps leading to the garden, another infraction of the rules, which Jean Valjean seemed to have imposed upon himself, and the custom of remaining in her chamber which melancholy had caused Cosette to adopt, Cosette, in a rapper, was standing erect in that negligent attire of early morning which envelops young girls in an adorable way, and which produces the effect of a cloud drawn over a star, and, with her head bathed in light, rosy, after good sleep, submitting to the gentle glances of the tender old man, she was picking a daisy to pieces.

Starting point is 04:14:38 Cosette did not know the delightful legend, I love a little, passionately, etc. Who was there who could have taught her? She was handling the flower instinctively, innocently, without a suspicion that to pluck a daisy apart is to do the same by heart. If there were a fourth and smiling grace called melancholy, she would have worn the air of that grace.

Starting point is 04:15:06 Jean Valjean was fascinated by the contemplation of those tiny fingers on that flower and forgetful of everything in the radiance emitted by that child. A red breast was warbling in the thicket on one side. White cloudlets floated across the sky so gaily that one would have said that they had just been set at liberty. Cosette went on attentively tearing the leaves from her flower. she seemed to be thinking about something. But whatever it was, it must be something charming.

Starting point is 04:15:42 All at once, she turned her head over her shoulder with the delicate languor of a swan, and she said to Jean Valjean, Father, what are the galleys like? End of Book 3, Chapter 8. Recording by Dave Dwight, Southern Illinois. Book 4 of Les Miserable Volume 4 by Victor Hugo

Starting point is 04:16:05 This is a Librivox recording All Librivox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer Please visit Librivox.org Recording by AlgaePag Le Miserables volume 4 by Victor Hugo Translated by Isabel Florence Hepgood

Starting point is 04:16:28 Book 4 Sucker from Below may turn out to be Sucker from on High Chapter 1, A Wound Without Healing Within. Thus their life clouded over by degrees. But one diversion, which had formerly been a happiness, remained to them, which was to carry bread to those who were hungry, and clothing to those who were cold. Cosette often accompanied Jean Valjean on his visits to the poor,

Starting point is 04:16:58 on which they recovered some remnants of their former free intercourse, and sometimes, when the day had been a good one, they had assisted many in distress, and cheered and warmed many little children, Cosette was rather merry in the evening. It was at this epoch that they paid their visit to the Jean'srette den. On the day following that visit, Jean Valjean made his appearance in the pavilion in the morning,

Starting point is 04:17:24 calm as was his wont, but with a large wound on his left arm, which was much inflamed in very angry, which resembled a burn and which he explained in some way or other. This wound resulted in his being detained in the house for a month with fever. He would not call in the doctor. When Cosette urged him, Call the dog doctor, said he.

Starting point is 04:17:48 Cosette dressed the wound morning and evening with so divine an air and such angelic happiness at being of use to him that Jean Valjean felt all his former joy returning. His fears and anxieties dissipating. and he gazed at Cosette saying, Oh, what a kindly wound! Oh, what a great misfortune! Cosette, on perceiving that her father was ill,

Starting point is 04:18:13 had deserted the pavilion and again taken a fancy to the little lodging and the back courtyard. She passed nearly all her days beside Jean Valjean and read to him the books which he desired. Generally they were books of travel. Jean Valjean was undergoing a new birth. His happiness was reviving in these ineffable rays, the Luxembourg, the prowling young stranger, Cosette's coldness. All these clouds upon his soul were growing dim.

Starting point is 04:18:42 He had reached the point where he said to himself, I imagined all that, I am an old fool. His happiness was so great that the horrible discovery of the Tenadiers made in the Jean-Drette-Hauvel, unexpected as it was, had, after a fashion, glided over him unnoticed. He had succeeded in making his escape. All trace of him was lost. What more did he care for? He only thought of those wretched beings to pity them.

Starting point is 04:19:11 Here they are in prison, and henceforth they'll be incapacitated for doing any harm, he thought. But what a lamentable family in distress. As for the hideous vision of the Barrier du Men, Cosette had not referred to it again. Sister Saint-Meschild had taught Cosette music in the convent. cosette had the voice of a linnet with a soul and sometimes in the evening in a wounded man's humble abode she warbled melancholy songs which delighted jean valjean spring came the garden was so delightful at that season of the year that jean valjean said cosette you never go there i want you to stroll in it how's you like father said cosette

Starting point is 04:19:55 and for the sake of obeying her father she resumed her walks in the garden generally alone for as we have mentioned jean valjean who was probably afraid of being seen through the fence hardly ever went there jean valjean's wound had created a diversion when cosette saw that her father was suffering less that he was convalescing and that he appeared to be happy she experienced a contentment which she did not even perceive so gently and naturally had it come Then, it was in the month of March, the days were growing longer, the winter was departing, the winter always bears away with it a portion of our sadness. Then came April, that daybreak of summer, fresh as dawn always is, gay like every childhood. A little inclined to weep at times like the newborn being that it is. In that month, nature has charming gleams which pass from the sky, from the trees, from the meadows and the flowers into the heart of man.

Starting point is 04:20:57 Cosette was still too young to escape the penetrating influence of that April joy which bore so strong a resemblance to herself. Insensibly, and without her suspecting the fact, the blackness departed from her spirit. In spring, sad souls grow light as light falls into cellars at midday. Cosette was no longer sad. However, though this was so, she did not account for it to herself. In the morning, about ten o'clock after breakfast, when she had succeeded in enticing her father into the garden for a quarter of an hour,

Starting point is 04:21:33 and when she was pacing up and down in the sunlight in front of the steps, supporting his left arm for him, she did not perceive that she laughed every moment and that she was happy. Jean Valjean, intoxicated, beheld her growing fresh and rosy once more. oh what a good wound he repeated in a whisper and he felt grateful to the thenardiers his wound once healed he resumed his solitary twilight strolls it is a mistake to suppose that a person can stroll alone in that fashion in the uninhabited regions of paris without meeting with some adventure chapter two mother plutarch finds no difficulty in explaining a phenomenon one evening little gavroche had had nothing to eat he remembered that he had not dined on the preceding day either this was becoming tiresome he resolved to make an effort to secure some supper

Starting point is 04:22:32 he strolled out beyond the salpeterre into deserted regions that is where windfalls are to be found where there is no one one always finds something he reached a settlement which appeared to him to be the village of ostelitz on one of his preceding lounges he had noticed there an old garden haunted by an old man and an old woman and in that garden a passable apple-tree beside the apple-tree stood a sort of fruit-house which was not secure fastened and where one might contrive to get an apple. One apple is a supper. One apple is life. That which was Adam's ruin might prove Gavroche's salvation. The garden abutted on a solitary unpaved lane, bordered with brushwood while awaiting the arrival of houses. The garden was separated from it by a hedge. Gavroche directed his steps towards this garden. He found the lane, he recognised the apple tree, he verified the fruit house, he examined the hedge. A hedge means merely one stride. The day was declining. There was not even a cat in the lane.

Starting point is 04:23:42 The hour was propitious. Gavroche began the operation of scaling the hedge, then suddenly paused. Someone was talking in the garden. Gavroche peeped through one of the brakes in the hedge. A couple of paces distant at the foot of the hedge on the other side, exactly at the point where the gap which he was meditating would have been made, there was a sort of recumbent stone which formed a bench, and on this bench was seated the old man of the garden, while the old woman was standing in front of him. The old woman was grumbling.

Starting point is 04:24:15 Gavroche, who was not very discreet, listened. Monsieur Mabeuf, said the old woman. Meperf, thought Gavroche. That name is a perfect farce. The old man, who was thus addressed, did not stir. The old woman repeated, Monsieur Mabeuf. The old man, without raising his eyes from the ground,

Starting point is 04:24:36 made up his mind to answer. Or is it Mother Plutarch? Mother Plutarch, thought Kavroche, another farcical name. Mother Plutarch began again, and the old man was forced to accept the conversation. The landlord is not pleased. Why? We owe three-quarters rent.

Starting point is 04:24:56 In three months, we shall owe him for four quarters. He says that he will turn you out to sleep. I will go. The green grocer insists on being paid. She will no longer leave her faggots. What will you warm yourself with this winter? We shall have no wood. There is the sun.

Starting point is 04:25:16 The butcher refuses to give credit. He will not have us buy any more meat. That is quite right. I do not digest meat well. It is too heavy. What shall we have for dinner? Bread. The baker demands a settlement and says, no money, no bread. It is well. What will you eat? We have apples in the apple room. But, monsieur, we can't live like that without money. I have none. The old woman went away. The old man remained alone. He fell into thought.

Starting point is 04:25:50 Gavroche became thoughtful also. It was almost dark. The first result of Gavroche's meditation was that instead of scaling the hedge, he crouched down under it. The branches stood apart a little at the foot of the thicket. Come, exclaimed Gervos mentally. Here's a nook. And he curled up in it.

Starting point is 04:26:11 His back was almost in contact with Father Mabirf's bench. He could hear the octogenarian breathe. Then, by way of dinner, he tried. to sleep. It was a cat nap with one eye open. While he dozed, Gavroche kept on the watch. The twilight pallor of the sky blanched the earth, and the lane formed a livid line between two rows of dark bushes. All at once, in this whitish band, two figures made their appearance. One was in front, the other some distance in the rear. Here come two creatures, muttered Gavroche. The first form seemed to be some elderly bourgeois, who was bent and the rest.

Starting point is 04:26:50 thoughtful, dressed more than plainly, and who was walking slowly because of his age, and strolling about in the open evening air. The second was straight, firm, slender. It regulated its pace by that of the first, but in the voluntary slowness of its gait, suppleness and agility were discernible. This figure had also something fierce and disquieting about it. The whole shape was that of what was then called an elegant. The hat was a good shape, the coat was a good shape, the coat black, well cut, probably a fine cloth and well fitted in at the waist. The head was held erect with a sort of robust grace, and beneath the hat the pale profile of a young man could be made out in the dim light.

Starting point is 04:27:34 The profile had a rose in its mouth. This second form was well known to Gavroche. It was Montparnasse. He could have told nothing about the other, except that he was a respectable old man. Gavroche immediately began to take observation. one of these two pedestrians evidently had a project connected with the other gavroche was well placed to watch the course of events the bedroom had turned into a hiding place at a very opportune moment montparnasse on the hunt at such an hour in such a place betokened something threatening gervosh felt his gammon's heart moved with compassion for the old man what was he to do interfere one weakness coming to the aid of another it would be merely a laughing matter for Montparnasse, Gavroche did not shut his eyes to the fact that the old man

Starting point is 04:28:24 in the first place and the child in the second would make but two mouthfuls for that redoubtable ruffian 18 years of age. While Gavroche was deliberating, the attack took place, abruptly and hideously, the attack of the tiger on the wild ass, the attack of the spider on the fly. Montparnasse suddenly tossed away his rose, bounded upon the old man, seized him by the collar grasped and clung to him and gavroche with difficulty restrained a scream a moment later one of these men was underneath the other groaning struggling with a knee of marble upon his breast only it was not just what gavroche had expected the one who lay on the earth was montparnasse the one who was on top was the old man all this took place a few paces distant from gavroche the old man had received the shock had returned it, and that in such a terrible fashion, that in a twinkling, the assailant and he assailed at exchange roles.

Starting point is 04:29:26 "'He is a hearty veteran,' thought Gavroche. He could not refrain from clapping his hands, but it was applause wasted, I did not reach the competence, absorbed and deafened as they were, each by the other as their breath mingled in the struggle. Silence ensued. Montparnasse ceased his struggles. Gavroche indulged in this aside. can he be dead?

Starting point is 04:29:50 The good man had not uttered a word nor given vent to a cry. He rose to his feet and Kavroche heard him say to Montparnas Goer up. Montpennas rose, but the good man held him fast. Mompinus's attitude

Starting point is 04:30:04 was the humiliated and furious attitude of the wolf who has been caught by a sheep. Kavroche looked on and listened making an effort to reinforce his eyes with his ears. He was enjoying himself immensely. he was repaid for his conscientious anxiety in a character of a spectator he was able to catch on the wing a dialogue which borrowed from the darkness an indescribably tragic accent the good man questioned mompunas replied how old are you nineteen you are strong and healthy why do you not work it bores me what is your trade an idler speak seriously could nothing be done for you what would you

Starting point is 04:30:48 like to be? A thief. A pause ensued. The old man seemed absorbed in profound thought. He stood motionless and did not relax his hold on Montparnasse. Every moment the vigorous and agile young ruffian indulged in the twitchings of a wild beast caught in a snare. He gave a jerk, tried a crook of the knee, twisted his limbs desperately and made efforts to escape. The old man did not appear to notice it and held both his arms with one hand, with the sovereign indifference of absolute force. The old man's reverie lasted for some time, then, looking steadily at Montparnasse, he addressed him in a gentle voice, in the midst of the darkness where they stood, a solemn harangue, of which Cavroche did not lose a single syllable.

Starting point is 04:31:37 My child, you are entering through indolence on one of the most laborious of lives. Ah, you declare yourself to be an idler. Prepare to talk. There is a certain formidable machine. Have you seen it? It is the rolling mill. You must be on your guard against it. It is crafty and ferocious. If it catches hold of the skirt of your coat, you'll be drawn in bodily. That machine is laziness. Stop while there is yet time and save yourself. Otherwise, it is all over with you. In a short time, you will be among the gearing. Once entangled, Hope for nothing more. Toil, lazy bones, there is no more repose for you. The iron hand of implacable toil has seized you. You do not wish to earn your living, to have a task, to fulfil a duty. It bores you to be like other men?

Starting point is 04:32:36 Well, you will be different. Labour is the law. He who rejects it will find all we his torment. You do not wish to be a working man. You will be a slave. toil lets go of you on one side only to grasp you again on the other you do not desire to be its friend you shall be its negro slave ah you would have none of the honest weariness of men you shall have the sweat of the dam where others sing you will rattle in your throat you will see afar off from below other men at work it will seem to you that they are resting the labourer the harbourer the harbourer the harbourer the harbourer The harvester, the sailor, the blacksmith, will appear to you in glory like the blessed spirits in paradise.

Starting point is 04:33:25 What radiance surrounds the forge? To guide the plough, to bind the sheaves is joy. The bark at liberty in the wind, what delight! Do you, lazy idler, delve, drag on, roll, march, drag your halter, you are a beast of burden in the team of hell. ah to do nothing is your object well not a week not a day not an hour shall you have free from oppression you will be able to lift nothing without anguish every minute that passes will make your muscles crack what is a feather to others will be a rock to you The simplest things will become steep acclivities. Life will become monstrous all about you. To go, to come, to breathe will be just so many terrible labours.

Starting point is 04:34:19 Your lungs will produce on you the effect of weighing a hundred pounds. Whether you shall walk here rather than there will become a problem that must be solved. Anyone who wants to go out simply gives his door a push, and there he is in the open air. If you wish to go out, you will be obliged to pierce your wall. What does everyone who wants to step into the street do? He goes downstairs. You will tear up your sheets, little by little. You will make of them a rope.

Starting point is 04:34:52 Then you will climb out of your window, and you will suspend yourself by that thread over an abyss. And it will be night amid storm, rain, an hurricane. And if the rope is too short, but one way of descending will remain. to you, to fall, to drop haphazard into the Gulf from an unknown height. On what? On what is beneath? On the unknown? Or you will crawl up a chimney flu at the risk of burning. Or you will creep through a sewer pipe at the risk of drowning. I do not speak of the holes you will be obliged to mask.

Starting point is 04:35:29 Of the stones which you will have to take up and replace 20 times a day. Of the plaster that you will have to hide in your straw palate. A lock presents itself. The bourgeois has in his pocket a key made by a locksmith. If you wish to pass out, you'll be condemned to execute a terrible work of art. You will take a large sou. You will cut it into two plates. With what tools? You will have to invent them. That is your business. Then you will hollow out the interior of these plates, taking great care of the outside, and you will make on the edges a thread, so that they can be adjusted one upon the other like a box in its cover. The top and bottom, thus screwed together, nothing will be suspected.

Starting point is 04:36:16 To the overseers, it will be only a sue. To you, it will be a box. What will you put in this box? A small bit of steel. A watch-spring in which you have cut teeth, and which will form a saw. With this saw, long as a pin and concealed in a soo, you will cut the bolt of the lock, you will sever the bolts, the padlock of your chain, and the bar at your window, and the fetter on your leg. This masterpiece finished, this prodigy accomplished, all these miracles of art, address, skill, and patience executed,

Starting point is 04:36:55 what will be your recompense if it becomes known that you are the author? The dungeon. There is your future. What precipices are idleness and pleasure? Do you know that to do nothing is a melancholy resolution? To live in idleness on the property of society? To be useless? That is to say, pernicious.

Starting point is 04:37:19 This leads straight to the depth of wretchedness. Woe to the man who desires to be a parasite. He will become vermin. Ah, so it does not please you to work. Ah! You have but one thought, to drink well, to eat well, to sleep well. You will drink water. You will eat black bread.

Starting point is 04:37:43 You will sleep on a plank with a fetter whose cold touch you will feel on your flesh all night long, riveted to your limbs. You will break those fetters. You will flee. That is well. You will crawl on your belly through the brushwood. and then you will eat grass like the beasts of the forest and you will be recaptured and then you will pass years in a dungeon riveted to a wall groping for your jug that you may drink gnawing at a horrible loaf of darkness which dogs would not touch eating beans that worms have eaten before you you will be a wood-louse in a cellar ah have pity on yourself you miserable young child who were sucking at nurse less than 20 years ago,

Starting point is 04:38:31 and who have no doubt a mother still alive. I conjure you, listen to me, I entreat you. You desire fine black cloth, varnished shoes, to have your hair curled and sweet-smelling oils on your locks, to please low women, to be handsome. You'll be shaven clean, and you will wear a red blouse and wooden shoes. You want rings on your fingers.

Starting point is 04:38:59 You will have an iron necklet on your neck. If you glance at a woman, you'll receive a blow. And you will enter there at the age of 20. And you will come out at 50. You'll enter young, rosy, fresh with brilliant eyes and all your white teeth and your handsome, youthful hair. You will come out broken, bent, wrinkled, toothless, horrible with white locks. Ah, my poor child, you are on the wrong road.

Starting point is 04:39:30 Idleness is counselling you badly. The hardest of all work is thieving. Believe me, do not undertake that painful profession of an idle man. It is not comfortable to become a rascal. It is less disagreeable to be an honest man. Now go and ponder on what I have said to you. By the way, what did you want at me? my purse?

Starting point is 04:39:57 Here it is. And the old man, releasing Montparnasse, put his purse into the latter's hand. Mon Penas weighed it for a moment, after which he allowed it to slide gently into the back pocket of his coat, with the same mechanical precaution as though he had stolen it. All this having been said and done, the good man turned his back and tranquilly resumed his stroll. The blockhead, muttered Montpanas. Who was this good man? the reader has no doubt already divined montpennas watched him with amazement as he disappeared in the dusk this contemplation was fatal to him

Starting point is 04:40:35 while the old man was walking away gavroche drew near gavroche had assured himself with a side-long glance that father mabbeve was still sitting on his bench probably sound asleep then the gammon emerged from his thicket and began to crawl after montpennas in the dark as the latter stood there motionless. In this manner he came up to Montparnasse without being seen or heard, gently insinuated his hand into the back pocket of that frock coat of fine black cloth, seized the purse, withdrew his hand, and having recourse once more to his

Starting point is 04:41:10 crawling, he slipped away like an adder through the shadows. Montparnas, who had no reason to be on guard, and who was engaged in thought for the first time in his life, perceived nothing. When Gavroche had once once more attained the point where Father Mbeth was, he flung the purse over the hedge and fled as fast as his legs would carry him.

Starting point is 04:41:32 The purse fell on Father Mbeth's foot. This commotion roused him. He bent over and picked up the purse. He did not understand in the least, and opened it. The purse had two compartments. In one of them there was some small change. In the other lay six Napoleons. Monsieur Mabef, in great alarm, referred the matter to his own.

Starting point is 04:41:53 referred the matter to his housekeeper. There has fallen from heaven, said Mother Plutarch. End of book four. Recording by Algae Pug, Perth, Western Australia. Book 5th, Chapter 1 of Le Miserop. This is a Libravox recording. All Libravox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to learn how to volunteer, please visitlibrovox.org.

Starting point is 04:42:22 This recording is performed. by sophia bravo of miami florida book fifth the end of which does not resemble the beginning chapter i solitude and the barracks combined from le mazre mizraub by victor hugo translated by isabel florence hapgood cosette's grief which had been so pardnian and lively four or five months previously had without her being conscious of the fact entered upon its convalescence nature spring, youth, love for her father, the gaiety of the birds and flowers, caused something almost resembling forgetfulness, to filter gradually, drop by drop, into that soul which was so virgin and so young. Was the fire wholly extinct there? Or was it merely that layers of ashes had formed? The truth is that she hardly felt the painful and burning spot any longer. One day she suddenly thought of Marius. "'Why?' said she.

Starting point is 04:43:28 "'I no longer think of them.' That same week she had noticed a very handsome officer of Lancers, with a wasp-like waist, a delicious uniform, the cheeks of a young girl, a sword under his arm, waxed mustaches, and a glazed shop-gap, passing the gate. Moreover, he had light hair, prominent blue eyes, a round face, was vain, insolent and good-looking, quite the reverse of Marius. He had a cigar in his mouth. Cosette thought that this officer, doubtless, to the regiment and barracks in the Rue de Valle. On the following day, she saw him pass again. She took note of the hour.

Starting point is 04:44:12 From that time forth was a chance? She saw him pass nearly every day. The officer's comrades perceived that there was, in that badly kept garden, behind that malicious Rococo fence, a very pretty creature, who was almost always there, when the handsome lieutenant, who was not unknown to the reader and whose name was Teodun Gilnomah, passed by. See here, they said to him, there's a little creature there who's making eyes at you. Look!

Starting point is 04:44:44 Have I the time? replied the Lancer, to look at all the girls who look at me? This was at the precise moment when Marius was descending heavily towards Acony, and was saying, If I could but see her, before I die! Had his wish been realized, had he beheld Cosette at the moment, gazing at the Lancaster,

Starting point is 04:45:08 he would not have been able to utter a word, and he would have expired with grief. Whose fault was it? No one of those temperaments which bury themselves in sorrow, and there abide. Cosette was one of those persons who plunged to sorrow and emerged from it again.

Starting point is 04:45:27 cosette was moreover passing through that dangerous period that fatal phase of feminine brevity abandoned to itself in which the isolated heart of a young girl resembles the tendrils of the vine which cling as chance directs to the capital of a marble column or to the post of a wine-shop a rapid and decisive moment critical for every orphan be she rich or poor her wealth does not prevent a bad choice misalliances are made in very high circles real misalliance is that of souls and as many an unknown young man without name without birth without fortune is a marble column which bears up a temple of grand sentiments and grand ideas so such and such a man of the world satisfied and opulent who has polished boots and varnished words if looked at not outside but inside a thing which is reserved for his wife is nothing more than a block obscurely haunted by violent unclean and vinyas passions the post of a drinking shop what did cosette's soul contain passion calmed and lulled to sleep something limpid brilliant troubled to a certain depth and gloomy lowered down the image of the handsome officer was reflected in the surface Did a souvenir thinker in the depths quite at the bottom? Possibly. Cozette did not now.

Starting point is 04:46:52 A singular incident, supervened. End of chapter. Chapter 2. Cosette's apprehensions. During the first fortnight in April, Jean Valjean took a journey. This, as the reader knows, happened from time to time,

Starting point is 04:47:09 at very long intervals. He remained absent a day or two days at the utmost. Where did he go? no one knew not even cosette once only on the occasion of one of these departures she had accompanied him in a hackney-coach as far as a little blind alley at the corner of which she read impasse de la there he alighted and the coach took cosette back to the rue de babylon it was usually when money was lacking in the house that jean valjean took these little trips so jean valjean was absent he had said i shall return in three days. That evening, Kozap was alone in the drawing room. In order to get rid of her Anui, she had opened her piano organ, and had begun to sing, accompanying herself the while, the chorus from Eurythene, Hunters stray in the wood, which is probably the most beautiful

Starting point is 04:48:04 thing in all the sphere of music. When she had finished, she remained wrapped in thought. All at once it seemed to her that she had heard the sound of footsteps in the garden. It could not be her father, who was absent it could not be tussain she was in bed and it was ten o'clock at bent she stepped to the shutter of the drawing-room which was closed and laid her ear against it it seemed to her that it was the tread of a man and that he was walking very softly she mounted rapidly to the first floor to her own chamber opened a small wicket in her shutter and peeped into the garden the moon was at the full everything could be seen as plainly as by day There was not one there. She opened the window. The garden was absolutely calm, and all that was visible was that the street was deserted, as usual. Cosette thought that she had been mistaken.

Starting point is 04:49:00 She thought that she had heard a noise. It was a hallucination produced by the melancholy and magnificent chorus of Weber, which lays open before the mind terrified depths, which trembles before the gaze like a dizzy forest, and in which one hears the cackling of dead branches beneath the uneasy tread of the huntsmen, of whom one catches a glimpse through the twilight. She thought no more about it. Moreover, Cosette was not very timid by nature.

Starting point is 04:49:28 There flowed in her veins some of the blood of the bohemian and the adventuress who runs barefoot. It will be remembered that she was more of a lark than a dove. There was a foundation of wilderness and bravery in her. On the following day, at an earlier hour, towards night, nightfall, she was strolling in the garden. In the midst of the confused thoughts which occupied her, she fancied that she caught for an instant a sound similar to that of the preceding evening, as though someone were walking beneath the trees in the dusk, and not very far from her. But she told herself that nothing so closely resembled a step on the grass as the friction

Starting point is 04:50:05 of two branches which have moved from side to side, and she paid no heed to it. Besides, she could see nothing. She emerged from the thicket. She had still to cross a small lawn to regain the steps. The moon, which had just risen behind her, cast Cosette's shadow in front of her upon this lawn, as she came out from the shrubbery. Cosette halted an alarm. Beside her shadow, the moon outlined distinctly upon the turf another shadow, which was particularly startling and terrible, a shadow which had a round hat. It was the shadow of a man, who must have been standing on the border of the clump of shrubbery, a few paces in the rear of Cosette. She stood for a moment without the power to speak, or cry, or call, or stir, or turn her head.

Starting point is 04:50:55 Then she summoned up all her courage and turned round resolutely. There was none in there. She glanced on the ground. The figure had disappeared. She re-entered the thicket, searched the corners boldly, went as far as the gate, and found none. She felt herself absolutely chilled with terror. Was this another hallucination? What?

Starting point is 04:51:17 Two days in succession? One hallucination might pass with two hallucinations? The disquieting point about it was that the shadow had assuredly not been a phantom. Phantoms do not wear round hats. On the following day, Jean Valjean returned. Cosette told him what she thought she had heard and seen. She wanted to be reassured and to stop. see her father, shrug his shoulders, and say to her,

Starting point is 04:51:44 You are a little goose. Jean Valjean grew anxious. Cannot be anything, said he. He left her under some pretext and went into the garden, and she saw him examining the gate with great attention. During the night she woke up. This time she was sure, and she distinctly heard someone walking close to the flight of stepped beneath her window.

Starting point is 04:52:09 She ran to her little wicked and opened it. In point of fact, there was a man in the garden, with a large club in his hand. Just as she was about to scream, the moon lighted up the band profile. It was her father. She returned to her bed, saying to herself, "'He is fairly uneasy!' John Valjean passed that night, and the two succeeding nights in the garden. Cosette saw him through the hole in her shutter.

Starting point is 04:52:35 On the third night, the moon was on the wane, and had begun to rise later, At one o'clock in the morning, possibly, she had heard a loud burst of laughter, and her father's voice calling her, Cosette! She jumped out of bed, threw on her dressing-gown, and opened her window. Her father was standing on the grass-plop below. I have waked you for the purpose of reassuring you, said he. Look, there is your shadow with a round hat. And he pointed out to her, on the turp, a shadow cast by the moon, and which did indeed,

Starting point is 04:53:09 there are considerable resemblance to the spectre of a man wearing a round hat. It was the shadow produced by a chimney pipe of sheet iron, with a hood which rose above a neighboring roof. Cosette joined in his laughter, all her lugubrious suppositions were laid, and the next morning, as she was at breakfast with her father, she made Mary over the sinister garden haunted by shadows of iron chimney-pots. Jean Valjean became quite tranquil once more. As for Cosette, she did not pay much attention to the question whether the chimney-pot was really in the direction of the shadow which she had seen, or thought she had seen, and whether

Starting point is 04:53:49 the moon had been in the same spot in the sky. She did not question herself as to the peculiarity of a chimney-pot which is afraid of being caught in the act, and which retires when someone looks at its shadow, for the shadow had taken alarm when Cosette had turned round, and Cosette had thought herself very sure of this. serenity was fully restored. The proof appeared to her to be complete, and it quite vanished from her mind, whether there could possibly be anyone walking in the garden during the evening or at night. A few days later, however, a fresh incident occurred. End of chapter.

Starting point is 04:54:26 Chapter 3 of Book 5 of Limi Miserab, Volume 4 by Victor Hugo. This is a Libravox recording. All Libravox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Libravox.org. Recording by Peter Eastman Le Miserables, Volume 4 by Victor Hugo, translated by Isabel Florence Hapgood. Book 5, The End of Which Does Not Ressemble the Beginning. Chapter 3 Enriched with Commentaries by Tucson In the Garden, near the railing on the street, there was a story.

Starting point is 04:55:09 stone bench, screened from the eyes of the curious by a plantation of yoke elms, but which could, in case of necessity, be reached by an arm from the outside, past the trees and the gate. One evening, during that same month of April, Jean Valjean had gone out. Cosette had seated herself on this bench after sundown. The breeze was blowing briskly in the trees. Cosette was meditating. An objectless sadness was taking possession of her little by little, that invincible sadness evoked by the evening, and which arises, perhaps, who knows, from the mystery of the tomb which is ajar at that hour. Perhaps Fantine was within that shadow. Cosette rose, slowly made the tour of the garden, walking on the grass drenched in dew, and sang to herself, through the species of

Starting point is 04:56:06 melancholy somnambulism in which she was plunged. Really, one needs wooden shoes for the garden at this hour. One takes cold. She returned to the bench. As she was about to resume her seat there, she observed on the spot which she had quitted, a tolerably large stone, which had evidently not been there a moment before. Cosette gazed at the stone, asking herself what it meant. All at once, the idea occurred to her that the stone had not reached the bench all by itself, that someone had placed it there, that an arm had been thrust through the railing, and this idea appeared to alarm her. This time the fear was genuine.

Starting point is 04:56:52 The stone was there. No doubt was possible. She did not touch it, fled without glancing behind her, took refuge in the house, and immediately closed with shutter, bolt, and bar, the door. door-like window opening on the flight of steps. She inquired of Toussaint, "'Has my father returned yet?' "'Not yet, mademoiselle.' "'We have already noted, once for all, the fact that Toussaint stuttered. May we be permitted to dispense with it for the future. The musical notation of an infirmity is repugnant

Starting point is 04:57:27 to us. Jean Valjean, a thoughtful man and given to nocturnal strolls, often returned quite late at night. Tussin went on, Cosette. Are you careful to thoroughly barricade the shutters opening on the garden, at least with bars in the evening, and to put the little iron things of the little rings that close them? Oh, be easy on that score, miss. Tusson did not fail in her duty,

Starting point is 04:57:56 and Cosette was well aware of the fact, but she could not refrain from adding, It is so solitary here. So far as that is concerned, said Toussaint, it is true. We might be assassinated before we had time to say, oh! And Monsieur does not sleep in the house to boot. But fear nothing, miss, I fasten the shutters up like prisons. Lone women, that is enough to make one shudder, I believe you.

Starting point is 04:58:25 Just imagine, what if you were to see men enter your chamber at night, and say, hold your tongue, and begin to cut your throat? It's not the dying so much. You die for one must die, that's all right. It's the abomination of feeling those people touch you. And then they're knives. They can't be able to cut well with them. Oh, good gracious.

Starting point is 04:58:48 Be quiet, said Cosette. Fasten everything thoroughly. Cosette, terrified by the melodrama improvised by Toussaint, and possibly also by the recollection of the apparitions of the past week, which recurred to her memory. dared not even say to her, go and look at the stone which has been placed on the bench, for fear of opening the garden gate

Starting point is 04:59:12 and allowing the men to enter. She saw that all the doors and windows were carefully fastened, made Toussaint go all over the house from Garrett to cellar, locked herself up in her own chamber, bolted her door, looked under her couch, went to bed, and slept badly. All night long she saw that big stone, as large as a mountain and full of caverns.

Starting point is 04:59:38 At sunrise, the property of the rising sun is to make us laugh at all our terrors of the past night, and our laughter is in direct proportion to our terror which they have caused. At sunrise, Cosette, when she woke, viewed her fright as a nightmare, and said to herself, What have I been thinking of? It is like the footsteps that I thought I heard a week or two ago in the garden at night. It is like the shadow of the chimney-pot. Am I becoming a coward? The sun, which was glowing through the crevices in her shutters,

Starting point is 05:00:12 and herning the damask curtains crimson, reassured her to such an extent that everything vanished from her thoughts, even the stone. There was no more a stone on the bench than there was a man in a round hat in the garden. I dreamed about the stone, as I did all the rest. She dressed herself, descended to the garden, ran to the bench, and broke out in a cold perspiration. The stone was there. But this lasted only for a moment.

Starting point is 05:00:45 That which is terror by night is curiosity by day. Ba, said she, come, let us see what it is. She lifted the stone, which was tolerably large. beneath it was something which resembled a letter. It was a white envelope. Cosette seized it. There was no address on one side, no seal on the other. Yet the envelope, though unsealed, was not empty.

Starting point is 05:01:13 Papers could be seen inside. Cosette examined it. It was no longer alarm, it was no longer curiosity. It was a beginning of anxiety. Cosette drew from the envelope its contents, a little notebook of paper, each page of which was numbered, and bore a few lines in a very fine and rather pretty handwriting, as Cosette thought. Cousette looked for a name. There was none. To whom was this address? To her, probably, since a hand had deposited the packet

Starting point is 05:01:49 on her bench. From whom did it come? An irresistible fascination took possession of her. She tried to turn away her eyes from the leaflets which were trembling in her hand. She gazed at the sky, the street, the acacias all bathed in light, the pigeons fluttering over a neighboring roof, and then her glance suddenly fell upon the manuscript, and she said to herself that she must know what it contained. This is what she read. Chapter 4 A Heart Beneath a Stone The Reduction of the Universe to a single being, the expansion of a single being even to God, that is love.

Starting point is 05:02:34 Love is the salutation of the angels to the stars. How sad is the soul, when it is sad through love? What a void in the absence of the being, who by herself fills the world? Oh, how true it is that the beloved being becomes God. One could comprehend that God might be jealous of this, had not God the Father of all, evidently made creation for the soul and the soul for love the glimpse of a smile beneath a white crape bonnet with a lilac curtain is sufficient to cause the soul to enter into the palace of dreams God is behind everything but everything

Starting point is 05:03:17 hides God things are black creatures are opaque to love a being is to render that being transparent certain thoughts are prayers there are moments when, whatever the attitude of the body may be, the soul is on its knees. Parted lovers beguile absence by a thousand chimerical devices, which possess, however, a reality of their own. They are prevented from seeing each other, they cannot write to each other. They discover a multitude of mysterious means to correspond. They send each other the song of the birds, the perfume of the flowers, the smiles of children, the light of the sun, the sighings of the breeze, the rays of stars, all creation. And why not? All the works of God are made to serve love.

Starting point is 05:04:11 Love is sufficiently potent to charge all nature with its messages. Oh, Spring, thou art a letter that I write to her. The future belongs to hearts, even more than it does to mine. Love, that is the only thing that can occupy and fill eternity. In the infinite, the inexhaustible is requisite. Love participates of the soul itself. It is of the same nature. Like it, it is the divine spark. Like it, it is incorruptible, indivisible, imperishable.

Starting point is 05:04:49 It is a point of fire that exists within us, which is immortal and infinite, which nothing. can confine and which nothing can extinguish. We feel it burning even to the very marrow of our bones, and we see it beaming in the very depths of heaven. Oh, love, adorations, voluptuousness of two minds which understand each other, of two hearts which exchange with each other, of two glances which penetrate each other. You will come to me, will you not bliss? Strulls by two, two, in the solitudes, blessed and radiant days. I have sometimes dreamed that from time to time, hours detached themselves from the lives of the angels, and came here below to traverse the destinies

Starting point is 05:05:40 of men. God can add nothing to the happiness of those who love, except to give them endless duration. After a life of love, an eternity of love is in fact an augmentation. But to increase in intensity, even the ineffable felicity which love bestows on the soul, even in this world, is impossible, even to God. God is the plenitude of heaven. Love is the plenitude of man. You look at a star for two reasons, because it is luminous and because it is impenetrable. You have beside you a sweeter radiance and a greater mystery, woman. All of us, whoever we may be, have our reference. We lack air and we stifle. Then we die. To die for lack of love is horrible. Suffocation of the soul.

Starting point is 05:06:41 When love has fused and mingled two beings in a sacred and angelic unity, the secret of life has been discovered so far as they are concerned. They are no longer anything more than the two boundaries of the same destiny. They are no longer anything but the two wings of the same spirit. Love soar. On the day when a woman as she passes before you emits light as she walks, you are lost, you love. But one thing remains for you to do, to think of her so intently that she is constrained to think of you. What love commences can be finished by God alone. True love is in despair and is enchanted over a glove lost or a handkerchief found. and eternity is required for its devotion and its hopes.

Starting point is 05:07:37 It is composed both of the infinitely great and the infinitely little. If you are a stone, be adamant. If you are a plant, be the sensitive plant. If you are a man, be love. Nothing suffices for love. We have happiness, we desire paradise. We possess paradise, we desire heaven. O ye who love each other, all this is contained in love.

Starting point is 05:08:07 Understand how to find it there. Love has contemplation as well as heaven, and more than heaven it has voluptuousness. Does she still come to the Luxembourg? No, sir. This is the church where she attends Mass, is it not? She no longer comes here. Does she still live in this house? She has moved away.

Starting point is 05:08:33 where has she gone to dwell she did not say what a melancholy thing not to know the address of one's soul love has its childishness other passions have their pettinesses shame on the passions which be little man honor to the one which makes a child of him there is one strange thing do you know it i dwell in the night there is a being who carried off my school when she went away. Oh, would that we were lying side by side in the same grave, hand in hand, and from time to time in the darkness, gently caressing a finger, that would suffice for my eternity. Ye who suffer because ye love, love yet more, to die of love is to live in it. Love, a sombre and starry transfiguration, is mingled with this torture. There is ecstasy in agony.

Starting point is 05:09:42 Oh, joy of the birds, it is because they have nests that they sing. Love is a celestial respiration of the air of paradise. Deep hearts, sage minds take life as God has made it. It is a long trial, an incomprehensible preparation for an unknown destiny. This destiny, the true one, begins for a man with the first step inside the tomb. Then something appears to him, and he begins to distinguish the definitive. The definitive meditate upon that word.

Starting point is 05:10:23 The living perceive the infinite. The definitive permits itself to be seen only by the dead. In the meanwhile, love and suffer, hope and contemplate. woe alas to him who shall have loved only bodies forms appearances death will deprive him of all try to love souls you will find them again i encountered in the street a very poor young man who was in love his hat was old his coat was worn his elbows were in holes water trickled through his shoes and the stars through his soul. What a grand thing it is to be loved. What a far grander thing it is to love. The heart becomes heroic by dint of passion. It is no longer composed of anything but what is pure. It no longer rests on anything that is not elevated and great. An unworthy thought can no

Starting point is 05:11:31 more germinate in it than a nettle on a glacier. The serene and lofty soul, inaccessible to vulgar passions and emotions, dominating the clouds and the shades of this world, its follies, its lies, its hatreds, its vanities, its miseries, inhabits the blue of heaven, and no longer feels anything but profound and subterranean shocks of destiny, as the crests of mountains feel the shocks of earthquake. If there did not exist someone who loved, The sun would become extinct. End of Book 5, Chapter 4. Chapters 5 and 6 of Book 5 of Le Miserables, Volume 4 by Victor Hugo.

Starting point is 05:12:24 This is a Libravox recording. All Libravox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Libravox.org, recording by Closet Weevil. Le Miserables, Volume 4 by Victor Hugo. translated by isabel florence hapgood book five the end of which does not resemble the beginning chapter five cosette after the letter as cosette read she gradually fell into thought at the very moment when she raised her eyes from the last line of the notebook the handsome officer passed triumphantly in front of the gate it was his hour cosette thought him hideous she resumed her contemplation of the book it was written in the most charming of chirography thought cosette in the same hand but with divers inks sometimes very black again whitish as when ink has been added to the inkstand and consequently on different days it was then a mind which had unfolded itself there sigh by sigh irregularly without order without choice without object haphazard cosette had never read anything like it This manuscript, in which she already perceived more light than obscurity, produced upon her the effect of a half-open sanctuary.

Starting point is 05:13:46 Each one of these mysterious lines shone before her eyes and inundated her heart with a strange radiance. The education which she had received had always talked to her of the soul, and never of love, very much as one might talk of the firebrand and not the flame. This manuscript of fifteen pages suddenly and sweetly revealed to her all of love, sorrow, destiny, life, eternity, the beginning, the end. It was as if a hand had opened and suddenly flung upon her a handful of rays of light. In these few lines she felt a passionate, ardent, generous, honest nature, a sacred will, an immense sorrow, and an immense despair, a suffering heart, an ecstasy fully expanded. What was this manuscript? A letter. A letter without name, without address,

Starting point is 05:14:37 date, without signature, pressing and disinterested, an enigma composed of truths, a message of love made to be brought by an angel and read by a virgin, an appointment made beyond the bounds of earth, the love letter of a phantom to a shade. It was an absent one, tranquil and dejected, who seemed ready to take refuge in death, and who sent to the absent love, his lady, the secret of fate, the key of life, love. This had been written with one foot in the grave and one finger in heaven. These lines, which had fallen one by one on the paper, were what might be called drops of soul. Now, from whom could these pages come? Who could have penned them? Cosette did not hesitate for a moment, one man only. He! Day had dawned once more in her spirit. All had reappeared. She felt an

Starting point is 05:15:31 unheard of joy and a profound anguish. It was he, he who had written. He was there. It was he whose arm had been thrust through that railing. While she was forgetful of him, he had found her again. But had she forgotten him? No, never. She was foolish to have thought so for a single moment. She had always loved him, always adored him. The fire had been smothered and had smothered for a time,

Starting point is 05:15:57 but she saw all plainly now. It had but made headway, and now it had burst forth afresh, and had inflamed her whole being. This notebook was like a spark which had fallen from that other soul into hers. She felt the conflagration starting up once more. She imbued herself thoroughly with every word of the manuscript. Oh, yes, said she. How perfectly I recognize all that.

Starting point is 05:16:23 That is what I had already read in his eyes. As she was finishing it for the third time, Lieutenant Teodoul passed the gate once more and rattled his spurs upon the pavement. Cosette was forced to, to raise her eyes. She thought him insipid, silly, stupid, heuseless, foppish, displeasing, impertinent, and extremely ugly. The officer thought it his duty to smile at her. She turned away as in shame and indignation. She would gladly have thrown something at his head.

Starting point is 05:16:54 She fled, re-entered the house, and shut herself up in her chamber to peruse the manuscript once more, to learn it by heart and to dream. When she had thoroughly mastered it, she kissed it and put it in her bosom. All was over. Cosette had fallen back into deep, seraphic love. The abyss of Eden had yawned once more. All day long, Cosette remained in a sort of bewilderment. She scarcely thought, her ideas were in the state of a tangled skein in her brain. She could not manage to conjecture anything. She hoped through a tremor. What? vague things. She dared make herself no promises, and she did not wish to refuse herself anything. Flashes of pallor passed over her countenance, and shivers ran through her frame.

Starting point is 05:17:42 It seemed to her, at intervals, that she was entering the land of chimeras. She said to herself, is this reality? Then she felt of the dear paper within her bosom under her gown. She pressed it to her heart. she felt its angles against her flesh and if jean valjean had seen her at the moment he would have shuddered in the presence of that luminous and unknown joy which overflowed from beneath her eyelids oh yes she thought it is certainly he this comes from him and is for me and she told herself that an intervention of angels, a celestial dance, had given him back to her. O Transfiguration of Love, O Dreams, that celestial dance, that intervention of the angels, was a pellet of bread tossed by one thief to another thief, from the Charlemagne courtyard to the lion's ditch,

Starting point is 05:18:36 over the roofs of La Force. End of Chapter 5 Chapter 6. Old people are made to go out opportunely. When evening came, Jean Valjean went out. Cosette dressed herself. She arranged her hair in the most becoming manner, and she put on a dress whose bodice had received one snip of the scissors too much, and which, through this slope, permitted a view of the beginning of her throat, and was, as young girls say, a trifle indecent. It was not in the least indecent, but it was prettier than usual. She made her toilet thus, without knowing why she did so.

Starting point is 05:19:17 Did she mean to go out? No. Was she expecting a visitor? No. At dusk she went down to the garden, two songs busy in her kitchen, which opened to the backyard. She began to stroll under the trees, thrusting aside the branches from time to time with her hand because there were some which hung very low. In this manner she reached the bench.

Starting point is 05:19:42 The stone was still there. She sat down and gently laid her white hand on this stone as though she wished to caress and thank it. All at once she experienced that indefinable impression which one undergoes when there is someone standing behind one, even when she does not see the person. She turned her head and rose to her feet. It was he. His head was bare. He appeared to have grown thin and pale. His black clothes were hardly discernible.

Starting point is 05:20:14 The twilight threw a wan light on his fine brow and covered his eyes and shadows. Beneath the veil of incomparable sweetness, he had something about him that suggested death and night. His face was illuminated by the light of the dying day and by the thought of a soul that is taking flight. He seemed to be not yet a ghost, and he was no longer a man. He had flung away his hat in the thicket, a few paces distant. cosette though ready to swoon uttered no cry she retreated slowly for she felt herself attracted he did not stir by virtue of something ineffable and melancholy which enveloped him she felt the look in his eyes which she could not see cosette in her retreat encountered a tree and leaned against it had it not been for this tree she would have fallen then she heard his voice that voice which she had really never heard barely rising above the rustle of the leaves and murmuring.

Starting point is 05:21:15 Pardon me, here I am. My heart is full. I could not live on as I was living, and I have come. Have you read what I placed there on the bench? Do you recognize me at all? Have no fear of me. It is a long time. You remember the day, since you looked at me at the Luxembourg, near the gladiator. And the day when you passed before me, it was on the 16th of June and the 2nd of July. It is nearly a year ago. I have not seen you for a long time. I inquired at the woman who let the chairs and she told me that she no longer saw you. You lived in the Rue de Lest, on the third floor in the front apartments of a new house. You see that I know. I followed you. What else was there for me to do? And then you disappeared. I thought I saw you pass once while I was reading the newspapers under the arcade of the O'Dale. I ran after you. But no, it was a person who had a bonnet like yours. At night I came hither. Do not be afraid. No one sees me.

Starting point is 05:22:17 I come to gaze upon your windows near at hand. I walk very softly so that you may not hear, for you might be alarmed. The other evening I was behind you, you turned round, I fled. Once I heard you singing, I was happy. Did it affect you because I heard you singing through the shutters? That could not hurt you. No, it is not so. You see, you are my angel. Let me come sometimes. I think that I am going to die. If you only knew, I adore you. Forgive me, I speak to you, but I do not know what I am saying.

Starting point is 05:22:53 I may have displeased you. Have I displeased you? Oh, my mother, she said. And she sank down as though on the point of death. He grasped her. She fell. He took her in his arms. He pressed her. He pressed her. close without knowing what he was doing. He supported her as though he was tottering himself. It was as though his brain were full of smoke. Lightning started between his lips. His ideas vanished. It seemed to him that he was accomplishing some religious act and that he was committing a profanation. Moreover, he had not the least passion for this lovely woman whose force he felt against his breast. He was beside himself with love. She took his hand and laid it on her heart.

Starting point is 05:23:39 He felt the paper there. He stammered, You love me then? She replied in a voice so low that it was no longer anything more than a barely audible breath. Hush, thou knowest it. And she hid her blushing face on the breast of the superb and intoxicated young man. He fell upon the bench and she beside him. They had no words more. The stars were beginning to gleam.

Starting point is 05:24:06 How did it come to pass that their lips met? How comes it to pass that the birds sing, that snow melts, that the rose unfolds, that may expands, that the dawn grows white beyond the black trees of the shivering crest of the hills? A kiss, and that was all. Both started and gazed into the darkness with sparkling eyes. They felt neither the cool night nor the cold stone, nor the damp earth, nor the wet grass. They had looked at each other, and their hearts were full of thoughts. They had clasped hands unconsciously.

Starting point is 05:24:40 She did not ask him, she did not even wonder how he had entered there, and how he had made his way into the garden. It seemed so simple to her that he should be there. From time to time, Marius' knee touched Cosette's knee and both shivered. At intervals, Cosette stammered a word. Her soul fluttered on her lips like a drop of dew on a flower. Little by little they began to talk to each other. effusion followed silence, which is fullness. The night was serene and splendid overhead. These two beings, pure as spirits, told each other everything. Their dreams, their intoxications,

Starting point is 05:25:19 their ecstasies, their chimeras, their weaknesses, how they had adored each other from afar, how they had longed for each other, their despair when they had ceased to see each other. They confided to each other in an ideal intimacy, which nothing could augment, their most secret and most mysterious thoughts. They related to each other with candid faith in their illusions, all that love, youth, and the remains of childhood which still lingered about them, suggested to their minds. Their two hearts poured themselves out into each other in such wise that at the expiration of a quarter of an hour, it was the young man who had the young girl's soul and the young girl who had the young man's soul. Each became permeated with the other. They were enchanted with each other.

Starting point is 05:26:04 they dazzled each other. When they had finished, when they had told each other everything, she laid her head on his shoulder and asked him, What is your name? My name is Marius, said he. And yours? My name is Cosette.

Starting point is 05:26:23 End of Book 5, Chapter 6. Chapter 1 of Book 6 of Le Miserables, Volume 4, by Victor Hugo. This is a Librevox recording. All Librevox recording are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Librevox.org. Recording by Maylo Le Miserables, Volume 4 by Victor Hugo, translated by Isabel Florence Hapgood. Book 6, Little Gavrosch

Starting point is 05:26:54 Chapter 1 The Malicious Playfulness of the Wind Since 1823, when the tavern of Montfermey was on its way to shipwreck and was being gradually engulfed, not in the abyss of bankruptcy, but in the cesspool of petty debts, the Thénardier pair had had two other children, both males, that made five, two girls and three boys. Madame Thénardier had got rid of the last two, while they were still young and very small, with remarkable luck. Got rid of is the word. There was but a mere fragment of nature in that woman, A phenomenon, by the way, of which there is more than one example extant. Like the Mareshal de la Mothudancourt, the Thénardier was a mother to her daughters only.

Starting point is 05:27:46 There, her maternity ended. Her hatred of the human race began with her own sons. In the direction of her sons, her evil disposition was uncompromising, and her heart had a lugubrious wall in that quarter. As the reader has seen, she detested the eldest. She cursed the other two. Why? Because. The most terrible of motives, the most unanswerable of retorts, because.

Starting point is 05:28:15 I have no need of a litter of squalling brats, said this mother. Let us explain how the thanardias had succeeded in getting rid of their last two children, and even in drawing profit from the operation. The woman, Mignon, who was mentioned a few pages further back, was the same one who had succeeded in making old Gillesnormong support the two children which she had had. She lived on the Quay de Celestine at the corner of this ancient street of the Petit Musque, which afforded her the opportunity of changing her evil repute into good odour. The reader will remember the great epidemic of Krupe,

Starting point is 05:28:55 which ravaged the river districts of the sign in Paris 35 years ago, and of which science took advantage to make experiments on a grand scale as to the efficacy of inhalations of alum, so beneficially replaced at the present day by the external tincture of iodine. During this epidemic, the Mignon lost both her boys, who were still very young, one in the morning, the other in the evening of the same day. This was a blow. These children were precious to their mother. They represented 80 francs a month. These 80 francs were punctually paid in the name of Monsieur Guilinot Monde, by collector of his rents, Monsieur Bargesh, a retired tip staff in the Rue de Ré de Sicil.

Starting point is 05:29:43 The children dead, the income was at an end. The Mignon sought an expedient. In that dark Freemasonry of Evil, of which she formed a part, everything is known, all secrets are kept, and all lend mutual aid. Mignon needed two children, the Thénardiers had two, the same sex, the same age, a good arrangement for the one, a good investment for the other. The little Thénardiers became little Mignon's. Mignon quitted the Cue de la Celestine and went to live in the Rue-Cloch-Pers. In Paris, the identity which binds an individual to himself is broken between one street and another.

Starting point is 05:30:31 The registry office, being in no way warned, raised no objections, and the substitution was affected in the most simple manner in the world. Only, the Thénardier extracted for this loan of her children, ten francs a month, which Mignon promised to pay, and which she actually did pay. It is unnecessary to add that Monsieur Guillenormand continued to perform his compact. He came to see the children every six months. He did not perceive the change. monsieur menon said to him how much they resemble you venardier to whom avatars were easy seized this occasion to become gendrette

Starting point is 05:31:13 his two daughters and gavroche had hardly had time to discover that they had two little brothers when a certain degree of misery is reached one is overpowered with a sort of spectral indifference and one regards human beings as though they were spectres your nearest relations are often no more for you than vague shadowy forms barely outlined against a nebulous background of life and easily confounded again with the invisible on the evening of the day when she handed over her two little ones to manon with express intention of renouncing them forever the thenardier had felt or had appeared to feel a scruple she said to her husband but this is abandoning our children thenardier masterful and flammatic courtieres the scruple with this saying jean jacques rousseau did even better from scruples the mother proceeded to uneasiness but what if the police were to annoy us tell me monsieur thenardier is what we have done permissible fanardia replied everything is permissible no one will see anything but true blue in it besides no one has any interest in looking closely after children who have not a Sioux. Mannion was a sort of fashionable woman in the sphere of crime. She was careful about her toilet.

Starting point is 05:32:38 She shared her lodgings, which were furnished in an affected and wretched style, with a clever, gallicised English thief. This English woman, who had become a naturalised Parisienne, recommended by very wealthy relations, intimately connected with the medals in the library, and Mademoiselle Marse diamonds, became celebrated later on in judicial accounts. She was called Mamselle Miss. The two little creatures who had fallen to Mignon had no reason to complain of their lot. Recommended by the 80 francs, they were well cared for, as is everything from which profit is derived. They were neither badly clothed nor badly fed. They were treated almost like little gentlemen, better by their

Starting point is 05:33:25 false mother than by their real one. Mignon played the little. lady, and talked no thieves' slang in their presence. Thus passed several years, the Nadir augured well from the fact, one day he chanced to say to Mignon as she handed him his monthly stipend of ten francs, the father must give them some education. All at once, these two poor children, who had, up to that time, been protected tolerably well, even by their evil fate, were abruptly hurled into life, and forced to begin it for themselves.

Starting point is 05:34:03 A wholesale arrest of malfactors, like that in the Gendrette garret, necessarily complicated by investigations and subsequent incarcerations, is a veritable disaster for that hideous and occult counter-society which pursues its existence beneath public society. An adventure of this description entails all sorts of catastrophes in that somber world. The Thénardier catastrophe involved the catastrophe of Manong. one day a short time after manon had handed to eponine the note relating to the rue plumet a sudden raid was made by the police in the rue cloche-peels mannion was seized as was also mam's elmiss and all the inhabitants of the house which was of a suspicious character were gathered into the net while this was going on the two little boys were playing in the back yard and saw nothing of the raid when they tried to enter the house again They found the door fastened and the house empty.

Starting point is 05:35:05 A cobbler opposite called them to him, and delivered to them a paper which their mother had left for them. On this paper there was an address, Monsieur Barge, collector of rents, Rue de la Road de Sicil, number eight. The proprietor of the stall said to them, You cannot live here any longer. Go there, it is nearby, the first street on the left. ask your way from this paper. The children set out, the elder leading the younger, and holding in his hand the paper which was to guide them.

Starting point is 05:35:40 It was cold, and his benumbed little fingers could not close very firmly, and they did not keep a very good hold on the paper. At the corner of the Rue-Closh-Pers, a gust of wind tore it from him, and as night was falling, the child was not able to find it again. They began to wander aimlessly through the streets. End of Book 6, Chapter 1 Chapter 2 of Book 6

Starting point is 05:36:10 of Le Miserables, Volume 4, by Victor Hugo This is a Librevox recording. All Librebox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Librevox.org. Recording by May Lowe. Le Miserables, Volume 4 by Victor Hugo. Translated by Issaid by Issaid by I. Isabelle Florence Habgood.

Starting point is 05:36:36 Book 6. Little Gavroche Chapter 2 In which Little Gavroche extracts profit from Napoleon the Great. Spring in Paris is often traversed by harsh and piercing breezes, which do not precisely chill, but freeze one. These north winds which sad in the most beautiful days produce exactly the effect of those puffs of cold air which enter a warm room through the cracks of a badly fitting door.

Starting point is 05:37:04 or window. It seems as though the gloomy door of winter had remained ajar, and as though the wind were pouring through it. In the spring of 1832, the epoch when the first great epidemic of this century broke out in Europe. These north gales were more harsh and piercing than ever. It was a door even more glacial than that of winter which was ajar. It was the door of the sepulture. In these winds, one felt the bruceing. breath of the cholera. From a meteorological point of view, these cold winds possessed this peculiarity, that they did not preclude a strong electric tension.

Starting point is 05:37:48 Frequent storms accompanied by thunder and lightning burst forth at this epoch. One evening, when these gales were blowing rudely, to such a degree that January seemed to have returned and that the bourgeois had resumed their cloaks, little Gavroche, who was always shivering gaily under his rags, was standing as though an ecstasy before a wig-makers shop in the vicinity of the Orm Saint-Gervais. He was adorned with a woman's woolen shawl, picked up no one knows where, and which he had converted into a neck comforter. Little Gavroche appeared to be engaged in intent admiration of a wax bride in a low-necked

Starting point is 05:38:29 dress, and crowned with orange flowers who was revolving in the window and displaying her smile to passers-by between two argand lamps but in reality he was taking an observation of the shop in order to discover whether he could not prig from the shop front a cake of soap which he would then proceed to sell for a sue to a hairdresser in the suburbs he had often managed to breakfast off of such a role he called his species of work for which he possessed special aptitude shaving barbers. While contemplating the bride and eyeing the cake of soap, he muttered between his teeth, Tuesday.

Starting point is 05:39:10 It was not Tuesday. Was it Tuesday? Perhaps it was Tuesday, yet, yes, it was Tuesday. No one has ever discovered to what this monologue referred. Yes, perchance, this monologue had some connection with the last occasion on which he had dined, three days before, for it was now Friday. The barber in his shop, which was warmed by a good stove, was shaving a customer and casting a glance from time to time at the enemy, that freezing and impudent street urchin, both of whose hands were in his pockets, but whose mind was evidently unsheathed. While Gavroche was scrutinising the shop window and the cakes of Windsor soap, two children of unequal stature, very neatly dressed and still smaller than himself, one apparently seven years of age, the other five, and the other four, and two children of unequal stature, very neatly dressed, and still smaller than himself, one apparently seven years of age, the other

Starting point is 05:40:01 five, timidly turned the handle and entered the shop, with a request for something or other, arms possibly, in a plaintive murmur which resembled a groan rather than a prayer. They both spoke at once, and their words were unintelligible because sobs broke the voice of the younger, and the teeth of the elder were chattering with cold. The barber wheeled round with a furious look, and without abandoning his razor, thrust back the elder with his left hand and the younger with his knee and slammed his door saying the idea of coming in and freezing everybody for nothing the two children resumed their march in tears in the meantime a cloud had risen it had begun to rain little

Starting point is 05:40:49 gavroche ran after them and accosted them what's the matter with you brats we don't know where we are to sleep replied the elder is that all said Gavroche A great matter, truly, the idea of bawling about that. They must be greenies. And adopting, in addition to his superiority, which was rather bantering, an accent of tender authority and gentle patronage. Come along with me, youngens. Yes, sir, said the elder.

Starting point is 05:41:21 And the two children followed him as they would have followed an archbishop. They had stopped crying. Gavroche led them up the rue Saint-Antoine. in the direction of the bastille. As Gavroche walked along, he cast an indignant backward glance at the barber's shop. That fellow has no heart,

Starting point is 05:41:40 the whiting, he muttered. He's an Englishman. A woman who caught sight of these three marching in a file, with Gavroche at their head, burst into noisy laughter. This laugh was wanting in respect towards the group.

Starting point is 05:41:56 Good day, Mamsale Omnibus, said Gavroche to her. An instant later, the wig-maker-makered. occurred to his mind once more and he added I am making a mistake in the beast he's not a whiting he's a serpent barber I'll go and fetch a locksmith and I'll have a bell hung to your tail this wigmaker had rendered him aggressive as he strode over a gutter he apostrophized a bearded portress who was worthy to meet forced on the brookan and who had a broom in her hand

Starting point is 05:42:27 madam said he so you were going out with your horse and thereupon he spattered the polished boots of a pedestrian. You scamp! shouted the furious pedestrian. Gavroche elevated his nose above his shore. Is Monsieur complaining? Of you! ejaculated the man. The office is closed, said Gavroche. I do not receive any more complaints.

Starting point is 05:42:57 In the meanwhile, as he went on up the street, he perceived a beggar girl, 13 or 14 years old, and clad in so short a gown that her knees were visible, lying thoroughly chilled under a port cocherre. The little girl was getting to be too old for such a thing. Growth does play these tricks. The petticoat becomes short, at the moment when nudity becomes indecent.

Starting point is 05:43:22 Poor girl, said Gavroche, she hasn't even trousers. Hold on, take this! And unwinding all the comfortable woolen which he had around his neck, he flung it on the thin and purple shoulders of the beggar girl, where the scarf became a shawl once more. The child stared at him in astonishment, and received the shawl in silence. When a certain stage of distress has been reached in his misery, the poor man no longer groans over evil, no longer returns thanks for good. That done, said Gavroche, who was shivering more than St. Martin.

Starting point is 05:44:02 For the latter, retained one half of his cloak. At this br-h-h-the downpour of rain redoubled in its spite, became furious. The wicked skies punish good deeds. Ah, come now! exclaimed Gavroche. What's the meaning of this? It's re-raining. Good heavens! If it goes on like this, I shall stop my subscription. And he set out on the march once more. It's all right, he resumed, casting a glance at the Becker-Gurice. girl, as she coiled up under the shore. She's got a famous peal. And looking up the clouds, he exclaimed, caught. The two children followed close on his heels. As they were passing one of

Starting point is 05:44:48 these heavy-grated lattices, which indicate a baker's shop, for bread is put behind bars like gold, Gavroche turned round. Ah, by the way, brats, have we dined? Monsieur, replied the elder, we have had nothing to eat. eat since this morning so you have neither father nor mother resumed gavroche majestically excuse us sir we have a papa and a mamma but we don't know where they are sometimes that's better than knowing where they are said gavrash who was a thinker we have been wondering about these two hours continued the elder we have hunted for things at the corners of the street but we have found nothing "'I know,' ejaculated Gavroche. "'It's the dogs who eat everything.' He went on after a pause.

Starting point is 05:45:44 "'Ah, we have lost our authors. We don't know what we have done with them. "'This should not be, Gammons. "'It's stupid to let old people stray off like that. "'Come now. We must have a snooze all the same.' However, he asked them no questions. "'What was more simple than that they should have no dwelling place?' The elder of the two children, who had almost entombed,

Starting point is 05:46:06 entirely recovered the prompt heedlessness of childhood uttered this exclamation. It's queer all the same. Mama told us that she would take us to get a blessed spray on Palm Sunday. Bosch, said Gavroche. Mama, resumed the elder, is a lady who lives with Mamselle Miss. Tan flute, retorted Gavroche. Meanwhile, he had halted, and for the last two minutes he had been feeling and fumbling in all sorts of nooks which his rags contained. At last he tossed his head with an air intended to be merely satisfied,

Starting point is 05:46:44 but which was triumphant in reality. Let us be calm, youngans, here is supper for three. And from one of his pockets he drew forth a sou. Without allowing the two urchins time for amazement, he pushed both of them before him into the baker's shop, and flung his sue on the counter, crying, boy five centimes worth of bread the baker who was the proprietor in person took up a loaf and a knife in three pieces my boy went on gavroche and he added with dignity there are three of us and seeing that the baker after scrutinising the three customers had taken down a black loaf he thrust his finger far up his nose with an inhalation as imperious as though he had had a pinch of the great frederick snuff on the tip of the tip of the great frederick snuff on the tip of the tip of the of his thumb and hurled this indignant apostrophe full in the baker's face kiksa those of our readers who might be tempted to aspire in this interpolation of gavroches to the baker a russian or polish word

Starting point is 05:47:52 or one of those savage cries which the yo-ways and the botacudos hurl at each other from bank to bank of a river athwart the swolitudes are warned that it is a word which they our readers utter every day and which takes the place of the phrase, "'Keske se'est'est-la?' The baker understood perfectly and replied, "'Well, it's bread, and very good bread of the second quality.'

Starting point is 05:48:18 "'You mean l'arton brutal, "'black bread,' retorted Gavroche, "'carmly and coldly disdainful. "'White bread, boy, white bread, white bread, "'larton savant. "'I'm standing treat.' "'The baker could not repress a smile, "'and as he cut the white bread,

Starting point is 05:48:37 he surveyed them in a compassionate way which shocked Gavroche. "'Come now, baker's boy,' said he. "'What are you taking our measure like that for?' All three of them placed end to end would have hardly made a measure. When the bread was cut, the baker threw the sous into his drawer, and Gavroche said to the two children, "'Grup away!' The little boys stared at him in surprise.

Starting point is 05:49:03 Gavroche began to laugh. "'Ah, hello! That's so. They don't understand yet they're too small, and he repeated, eat away. At the same time, he held out a piece of bread to each of them, and thinking that the elder, who seemed to him more worthy of his conversation, deserves some special encouragement and ought to be relieved from all hesitation to satisfy his appetite. He added as he handed him the largest share, rammed that into your muzzle. One piece was smaller than the others. He came to kept this for himself. The poor children, including Gavroche, were famished. As they tore their

Starting point is 05:49:44 bread apart in big mouthfuls, they blocked up the shop of the baker, who, now that they had paid their money, looked angrily at them. Let's go into the street again, said Gavroche. They set off once more in the direction of the Bastille. From time to time, as they passed the lighted shop windows, the smallest halted to look at the time on a letter of watch, which was suspended from his neck by a cord. Well, he is a very greener, said Gavroche. Then, becoming thoughtful, he muttered between his teeth. All the same, if I had charge of the babes, I'd lock him up better than that.

Starting point is 05:50:25 Just as they were finishing their morsel of bread, and had reached the angle of that gloomy rue de ballet, at the other end of which the low and threatening wicket of La Force was visible, Hello, is that you, Gavroche? said someone. Hello, is that you, Montparnas, said Gavroche. A man had just accosted the street urchin, and the man was no other than Montparnas in disguise, with blue spectacles, but recognisable to Gavroche. The bow-wows, went on Gavroche,

Starting point is 05:50:59 you've got to hide the colour of a linseed plaster, and blue specks like a doctor. "'You're putting on style, upon my word.' "'Hush!' ejaculated Montparnasse. "'Not so loud!' "'And he drew Gavroche hastily out of range of the lighted shops. "'The two little ones followed mechanically, "'holding each other by the hand.

Starting point is 05:51:22 "'When they were ensconced under the arch of a port-cochere, "'sheltered from the rain and from all eyes. "'Do you know where I'm going?' demanded Montparnas. "'To the abbey of Ascend with Rhehrie. regret, replied Gavroche. Joker. And Montparnas went on. I'm going to find Babe.

Starting point is 05:51:43 Ah, exclaimed Gavroche, so her name is Babe. Montparnas lowered his voice. Not she, he. Ah, Babe. Yes, Babe. I thought he was buckled. He has undone the buckle, replied Montparnas. And he rapidly related to the Gamin Howe, on the Mawain.

Starting point is 05:52:05 morning of that very day, Babé, having been transferred to La Consulgieri, had made his escape by turning to the left instead of the right in the police office. Gavroche expressed his admiration for this skill. What a dentist, he cried. Montparnasse added a few details as to Babe's flight and ended with, Oh, that is not all. Gavroche, as he listened, had seized a cane that Montparnas held in his hand, and mechanically pulled at the upper part, and the blade of a dagger made its appearance.

Starting point is 05:52:40 Ah, he exclaimed, pushing the dagger back in haste. You have brought along your gendarme disguised as a bourgeois. Montparnasse winked. The deuce, resumed Gavroche, so you're going to have a bout with the bobbies? You can't tell, replied Montparnas with an indifferent air. It's always a good thing to have a pin about one. Gavroche persisted. what are you up to tonight?

Starting point is 05:53:07 Again, Montparnasse took a grave tone and said, Mouthing every syllable, Things. And abruptly changing the conversation, By the way, What? Something happened the other day. Fancy.

Starting point is 05:53:25 I met a bourgeois, he makes me a present of a sermon and his purse. I put it in my pocket. A minute later, I feel in my pocket. There's nothing there. "'Except the sermon,' said Gavroche. "'But you,' went on Montparnas, "'where are you bound for now?'

Starting point is 05:53:44 Gavroche pointed to his two protegees and said, "'I'm going to put these infants to bed.' "'Whereabouts is the bed?' "'At my house.' "'Where is your house?' "'At my house.' "'So you have a lodging?' "'Yes, I have.'

Starting point is 05:54:04 And where is your lodging? In the elephant, said Gavroche. Montparnas, though not naturally inclined to astonishment, could not restrain an exclamation. In the elephant! Well, yes, in the elephant, retorted Gavroche. Keksa? This is another word of the language which no one writes and which everyone speaks. Keksar signifies,

Starting point is 05:54:32 What's the say, Kesselaa? What's the matter with that? The urchin's profound remark called Montparnas to calmness and good sense. He appeared to return to better sentiments with regard to Gavroche's lodging. Of course, said he, yes, the elephant. Is it comfortable there? Very, said Gavroche. It's really bully there.

Starting point is 05:54:55 There ain't any drafts as there are under the bridges. How do you get in? Oh, I get in. So there is a hole, demanded Montparnas. But, blah, I should say so. But you mustn't tell. It's between the forelegs. The bobbies haven't seen it.

Starting point is 05:55:15 And you climb up. Yes, I understand. A turn of the hand, crick-crack, and it's all over. No one there. After a pause, Gavroche added, I shall have a ladder for these children. Montparnas burst out laughing. where the devil did you pick up those youngans?

Starting point is 05:55:36 Gavrosh replied with great simplicity. They are some brats that a wig maker made me a present of. Meanwhile, Montparnas had fallen to thinking, You recognised me very readily, he muttered. He took from his pocket two small objects which were nothing more than two quills wrapped in cotton and thrust one up each of his nostrils. This gave him a different nose.

Starting point is 05:56:00 "'That changes you,' remarked Gavroche. "'You are less homely, so you ought to keep them on all the time.' "'Mont Parnas was a handsome fellow, but Gavroche was a tease. "'Seriously,' demanded Montparnas, "'how do you like me so?' "'The sound of his voice was different also. "'In a twinkling, Mon Parnas had become unrecognizable.' "'Oh, do play Portichinelle for us,' exclaimed Gavroche.

Starting point is 05:56:30 The two children, who had not been listening up to this point, being occupied themselves in thrusting their fingers up their noses, drew near at this time, and stared at Montparnas with dawning joy and admiration. Unfortunately, Montparnas was troubled. He laid his hand on Gavroche's shoulder and said to him, emphasizing his words, Listen to what I tell you, boy, if I were on the square with my dog, my knife and my wife, and if you were to squander ten times, ensues on me, I wouldn't refuse to work. But this isn't Shrove Tuesday." This odd phrase produced a singular effect on the gammon. He wheeled round hastily, darted his little sparkling eyes about him with profound attention, and perceived a police sergeant standing with his back to them a few paces off. Gavroche allowed an ah good to escape him, but immediately

Starting point is 05:57:24 suppressed it, and shaking Montparnasse's hand, well, good evening, said he, I'm off to my elephant with my brats, supposing that you should need me some night, you can come and hunt me up there. I lodge on the Entresol, there is no porter, you will inquire for Monsieur Gavroche. Very good, said Montparnas. And they parted, Montparnasse, betaking himself in the direction of the grave, and Gavroche towards the bastille. The little one of five, dragged along by his brother, who was dragged by Gavroche, turned his head back several times to watch Pottie Chanel as he went. The ambiguous phrase, by means of which Montparnasse had warned Gavroche of the presence of

Starting point is 05:58:09 the policeman, contained no other talisman than the assonance, Dig, repeated five or six times in different forms. This syllable, dig, uttered alone or artistically mingled with the words of a phrase, means, take care, we can no longer talk freely. There was besides, in Montparnasse's sentence, a literary beauty which was lost upon Gavroche, that is, mon dog, madag, and my dig. A slang expression of the temple, which signifies, my dog, my knife, and my wife,

Starting point is 05:58:46 greatly in vogue among clowns and the red tails, in the great century when Moliere wrote and Calot drew. Twenty years ago, there was still to be seen in the southwest corner of the Place de la Bastille, near the basin of the canal, excavated in the ancient ditch of the fortress prison, a singular monument, which has already been effaced from the memories of Parisians, and which deserved to leave some trace, for it was the idea of a member of the Institute,

Starting point is 05:59:16 the General-in-Chief of the Army of Egypt. We say monument, although it was only a rough model, but this model itself, a marvellous sketch, the grandiose skeleton of an idea of Napoleons, which successive gusts of wind have carried away and thrown on each occasion, still further from us, had become historical, and had acquired a certain definiteness, which contrasted with its provisional aspect. It was an elephant, forty feet high, constructed of timber and masonry, bearing on its back a tower which resembled a house, formerly painted green by some dauber,

Starting point is 05:59:55 and now painted black by heaven, the wind and time. In this deserted and unprotected corner of the place, the broad brow of the Colossus, his trunk, his tusks, his tower, his enormous crupper, his four feet, like columns, produced at night, under the starry heavens, a surprising and terrible form. It was a sort of symbol of popular force. It was somber, mysterious, and immense. It was some mighty, visible phantom, one knew not what, standing erect beside the invisible spectre of the Bastille.

Starting point is 06:00:38 Few strangers visited this edifice, no passer-by looked at it. It was falling into ruins. Every season the plaster which detached itself from its sides formed hideous wounds upon it. The adiles, as the expression ran in elegant dialect, had forgotten it ever since 1814. Where it stood in its corner, melancholy, sick, crumbling, surrounded by a rotten palisade, soiled continually by drunken coachman. Cracks meandered a thwart its belly, a lath projected from its tail. Tall grass flourished between its legs, and, as the level of the place had been rising all around

Starting point is 06:01:19 it for a space of thirty years, by that slow and continuous movement which insensibly elevates the soil of large towns, it stood in a hollow. and it looked as though the ground were giving way beneath it. It was unclean, despised, repulsive, and superb, ugly in the eyes of the bourgeois, melancholy in the eyes of the thinker. There was something about it of the dirt which is on the point of being swept out, and had something of the majesty which is on the point of being decapitated. As we have said, at night, its aspect changed.

Starting point is 06:01:56 night is the real element of everything that is dark. As soon as twilight descended, the old elephant became transfigured. He assumed a tranquil and redoubtable appearance in the formidable serenity of the shadows. Being of the past, he belonged to the night, and obscurity was in keeping with his grandeur. This rough, squat, heavy, hard, austere, almost misshapen, but assuredly, majestic monument, stamped with a sort of magnificent and savage gravity, has disappeared, and left a rain in peace a sort of gigantic stove, ornamented with its pipe, which has replaced the sombre fortress with its nine towers, very much as the bourgeoisie replaces the feudal

Starting point is 06:02:44 classes. It is quite natural that a stove should be the symbol of an epoch in which a pot contains power. This epoch will pass away. People have already begun to understand. understand that, if there can be a force in a boiler, there can be no force except in the brain. In other words, that which leads and drags on the world is not locomotives, but ideas. Harness locomotives to ideas, that is well done, but do not mistake the horse for the rider. At all events, to return to the Place de la Bastille, the architect of this elephant succeeded in making a grand thing out of plaster. the architect of the stove has succeeded in making a pretty thing out of bronze.

Starting point is 06:03:32 This stovepipe, which has been baptized by a sonorous name, and called the Column of July, this monument of a revolution that miscarried was still enveloped in 1832 in an immense shirt of woodwork, which we regret for our part, and by a vast plank enclosure which completed the task of isolating the elephant. It was towards this corner of the place, dimly lighted by the reflection of a distant street lamp, that the gammon guided his two brats. The reader must permit us to interrupt ourselves here, and to remind him that we are dealing with simple reality,

Starting point is 06:04:11 and that twenty years ago the tribunals were called upon to judge, under the charge of vagabondage and mutilation of a public monument, a child who had been caught asleep in this very elephant of the Bastille. this fact noted we proceed on arriving in the vicinity of the colossus gavroche comprehended the effect which the infinitely great might produce on the infinitely small and said don't be scared infants then he entered through a gap in the fence into the elephant's enclosure and helped the young ones to clamber through the breach the two children somewhat frightened followed gavroche without uttering a word and confided themselves to this little providence in rags, which had given them bread and promised them a shelter. There, extended along the fence, lay a ladder, which by day served the labourers in the neighbouring timber-yard.

Starting point is 06:05:08 Gavroche raised it with remarkable vigour, and placed it against one of the elephant's forelegs. Near the point where the ladder ended, a sort of black hole in the belly of the colossus could be distinguished. Gavroche pointed out the ladder, and the hole to his guests, and said to them, climb up and go in the two little boys exchanged terrified glances you're afraid brats exclaimed gavroche and he added you shall see he clasped the rough leg of the elephant an inner twinkling without deigning to make use of the ladder he had reached the aperture he entered it as an adder slips through a crevice and disappeared within and an instant later the two children saw his head which looked pale appeared vaguely on the edge of the shadowy hole, like a wan and whitish spectre. Well, he exclaimed, climb up, youngans. You'll see how snug it is here. Come up, you,

Starting point is 06:06:07 he said to the elder, I'll lend you a hand. The little fellows nudged each other. The gammon frightened and inspired them with confidence at one in the same time. And then it was raining very hard. The elder one undertook the risk. The younger, on seeing his brother climbing up and himself left alone between the paws of this huge beast, felt greatly inclined to cry, but he did not dare. The elder lad climbed, with uncertain steps, up the rungs of the ladder, Gavroche in the meanwhile, encouraging him with exclamations like a fencing-master to his pupils, or a muleteer to his mules.

Starting point is 06:06:46 Don't be afraid, that's it, come on, put your feet there. Give us your hand here, boldly. when the child was within reach, he seized him suddenly and vigorously by the arm and pulled him towards him. "'Nabbed,' said he, the brat had passed through the crack. "'Now,' said Gavroche, wait for me, be so good as to take a seat, monsieur. And making his way out of the hole, as he had entered it, he slipped down the elephant's leg with the agility of a monkey, landed on his feet in the grass, grasped the child of five

Starting point is 06:07:20 around the body and planted him fairly in the middle of the ladder. Then he began to climb up behind him, shouting to the elder, I'm going to boost him, do you tug? And in another instant, the small lad was pushed, dragged, pulled, thrust, stuffed into the hole, before he had time to recover himself, and Gavroche, entering behind him, and repulsing the ladder with a kick which sent it flat on the grass, began to clap his hands and to cry, Here we are, long-lived General Lafayette. This explosion over, he added,

Starting point is 06:07:56 Now, youngens, you are in my house. Gavroche was at home, in fact. Oh, unforeseen utility of the useless, charity of great things, goodness of giants. This huge monument, which had embodied an idea of the emperors, had become the box of a street urchin. The brat had been accepted and she, sheltered by the Colossus. The bourgeois decked out in their Sunday finery who passed the

Starting point is 06:08:24 elephant of the Bastille were fond of saying as they scanned it disdainfully with their prominent eyes, what's the good of that? It served to save them the cold, the frost, the hail, the rain, to shelter from the winds of winter, to preserve from slumber in the mud which produces fever, and from slumber in the snow which produces death. A little being, who had no father, no mother, no bread, no clothes, no refuge. It served to receive the innocent, whom society repulsed. It served to diminish public crime. It was a lair open to one against whom all doors were shut.

Starting point is 06:09:07 It seemed as though the miserable old mastodon, invaded by vermin and oblivion, covered with warts, with mould and ulcers, tottering, worm-eaten, abandoned, condemned, a sort of medicant colossus, asking arms in vain, with a benevolent look in the midst of the crossroads, had taken pity on that other medicant, the poor pygmy, who roamed without shoes to his feet, without a roof over his head, blowing on his fingers, clad in rags, fed on rejected scraps. That was what the elephant of the Bastille was good for. This idea of Napoleon, disdained by men, had been taken back by God. That which had been merely illustrious had become august.

Starting point is 06:09:55 In order to realise his thought, the Emperor should have had porphyry, brass, iron, gold, marble. The old collection of planks, beams and plaster sufficed for God. The Emperor had had the dream of a genius in that titanic elephant, armed, prodigious, with trunk uplifted, bearing its tower and scattering on all sides its merry and vivifying waters. He wished to incarnate the people. God had done a grander thing with it. He had lodged a child there. The hole through which Gavroche had entered was a breach which was hardly visible from the outside,

Starting point is 06:10:35 being concealed, as we have stated, beneath the elephant's belly, and so narrow that it was only cats and homeless children who could pass through it. Let's begin, said Gavroche, by telling us. Gavroche, by telling the porter that we are not at home. And plunging into the darkness with the assurance of a person who is well acquainted with his apartments, he took a plank and stopped up the aperture. Again Gavroche plunged into the obscurity. The children heard the crackling of the match thrust into the phosphoric bottle.

Starting point is 06:11:07 The chemical match was not yet in existence. At that epoch, the fumarred steel represented progress. A sudden light made them blink. Gavroche had just managed to ignite one of those bits of cord dipped in resin which are called cellar rats. The cellar rat, which emitted more smoke than light, rendered the interior of the elephant confusedly visible. Gavroche's two guests glanced about them, and the sensation which they experienced, was something like that which one would feel if shut up in the great tonne of Heidelberg, or, better still, like what Jonah must have felt in the biblical belly of the whale.

Starting point is 06:11:47 An entire and gigantic skeleton appeared enveloping them. Above, a long brown beam. Whence started at regular distances, massive arching ribs, represented the vertebral column with its sides. Stalectites of plaster depended from them, like entrails, and vast spider's webs stretching from side to side form dirty diaphragms. and there, in the corners, were visible large blackish spots, which had the appearance of being alive, and which changed places rapidly with an abrupt and frightened movement. Fragments which

Starting point is 06:12:27 had fallen from the elephant's back into his belly had filled up the cavity so that it was possible to walk upon it as on a floor. The smaller child nestled up against his brother, and whispered to him, It's black! This remark drew an exclamation from Gavroche, The petrified air of the two brats rendered some shock necessary. "'What's that you're gabbling about there?' he exclaimed. "'Are you scoffing at me? Are you turning up your noses? Do you want the twilleries? Are you brutes? Come, say. I warn you that I don't belong to the regiment of simpletons.

Starting point is 06:13:05 Ah, come now. Are you brats from the Pope's establishment?' A little roughness is good in cases of fear. It is reassuring. The two children drew close to Gavroche. Gavroche, paternally touched by this confidence, passed from grave to gentle, and addressing the smaller, "'Stupid,' said he, accenting the insulting word with a caressing intonation. "'It's outside that it is black. Outside it's raining. Here it does not rain. Outside it's cold. Here there's not an atom of wind. Outside, there are heaps of people. people. Here there's no one. Outside there ain't even the moon. Here there's my candle,

Starting point is 06:13:50 confound it. The two children began to look upon the apartment with less terror, but Gavroche allowed them no more time for contemplation. Quick, said he, and he pushed them towards what they were very glad to be able to call the end of the room. There stood his bed. Gavroche's bed was complete, that is to say, it had a mattress, a blanket, and an alcove with curtains. The mattress was a straw mat, the blanket, a rather large strip of grey woolen stuff, very warm and almost new. This is what the alcove consisted of. Three rather long poles, thrust into and consolidated with the rubbish which formed the floor, that is to say, the belly of the elephant, two in front and one behind, and united by a rope at their summits,

Starting point is 06:14:41 so as to form a pyramidal bundle. This cluster, this cluster. The plaster supported a trelliswork of brass wire which was simply placed upon it, but artistically applied, and held by fastenings of iron wire, so that it enveloped all three holes. A row of heavy stones kept this network down to the floor so that nothing could pass under it. This grating was nothing else than a piece of the brass screens with which aviaries are covered in menageries. Gavroche's bed stood, as in a cage behind this net. The whole resembled an Eskrimal tent. This trellis work took the place of curtains. Gavroche moved aside the stones which fastened the net down in front, and the two folds of the net

Starting point is 06:15:28 which lapped over each other fell apart. Down on all fours, Brats, said Gavroche. He made his guests enter the cage with great precaution, then he crawled in after them, pulling the stones together, and closed the opening hometically again. All three had stretched out on the mat. Gavroche still had the cellar rat in his hand. Now, said he, go to sleep. I'm going to suppress the candelabra.

Starting point is 06:15:57 Monsieur, the elder of the brothers asked Gavroche, pointing to the netting. What's that for? That, answered Gavroche gravely, is for the rats. Go to sleep. Nevertheless, he felt obliged to add a few words of instruction for the benefit of these young creatures, and he continued. It's a thing from the Gardin de Plants. It's used for fierce animals.

Starting point is 06:16:21 There's a whole shop full of them there. All you've got to do is to climb over a wall, crawl through a window, and pass through a door. You can get as much as you want. As he spoke, he wrapped the younger one up bodily in a fold of the blanket, and the little one murmured, Oh, how good that is! It's warm! Gavroche cast a pleaser.

Starting point is 06:16:43 these die on the blanket. That's from the Gardin de Plants, too, said he. I took that from the monkeys. And, pointing out to the eldest, the mat on which he was lying, a very thick and admirably made mat, he added, that belonged to the giraffe. After a pause, he went on, The beasts had all these things. I took them away from them.

Starting point is 06:17:07 It didn't trouble them. I told them, it's for the elephant. He paused, then resumed. You crawl over the walls and you don't care a straw for the government, so there now. The two children gazed with timid and stupefied respect on this intrepid and ingenious being, a vagabond like themselves, isolated like themselves, frail like themselves, who had something admirable and all-powerful about him, who seemed supernatural to them, and whose physiognomy was composed of all the grimaces of an old,

Starting point is 06:17:43 mount a bank, mingled with the most ingenious and charming smiles. Monsieur, ventured the elder timidly, you are not afraid of the police, then? Gavroche contented himself with replying, Brat, nobody says police, they say bobbies. The smaller had his eyes wide open, but he said nothing. As he was on the edge of the mat, the elder being in the middle, Gavroche tucked the blanket round him as a mother might have

Starting point is 06:18:14 done, and heighten the mat under his head with old rags, in such a way as to form a pillow for the child. Then he turned to the elder. Hey, we're jolly comfortable here, ain't we? Ah, yes, replied the elder, gazing at Gavroche with the expression of a saved angel. The two poor little children, who had been soaked through, began to grow warm once more. Ah, by the way, continued Gavroche. What were you bawling about? and pointing out the little one to his brother, "'A mite like that, I've nothing to say about, "'but the idea of a big fellow like you crying,

Starting point is 06:18:55 "'it's idiotic. You looked like a calf.' "'Gracious,' replied the child, "'we have no lodging.' "'Bother,' retorted Gavroche. "'You don't say lodgings, you say crib.' "'And then we were afraid of being alone like that at night.' "'You don't say night. "'You say darkman.'

Starting point is 06:19:16 "'Thank you, sir,' said the child. "'Listen,' went on Gavroche. "'You must never ball again over anything. "'I'll take care of you. "'You shall see what fun we'll have. "'In summer, we'll go to the glacier with Navet, "'one of my pals. "'We'll bathe in the gar.

Starting point is 06:19:35 "'We'll run stark naked in front of the rafts on the bridge at Ostellitz. "'That makes the laundresses raging. "'They scream, they get mad, "'and if you only knew how ridiculous they are. We'll go and see the man skeleton. And then I'll take you to the play. I'll take you to see Frederick Le Maitre. I have tickets.

Starting point is 06:19:55 I know some of the actors. I even played in a piece once. There were a lot of us, fellas, and we ran under a cloth, and that made the sea. I'll get you an engagement at my theatre. We'll go to see the savages. They ain't real, those savages ain't. They wear pink tights that go all in wrinkles, and you can see where their elbows have been darned with white.

Starting point is 06:20:16 then we'll go to the opera we'll get in with the hired applauders the opera clerk is well managed i wouldn't associate with the clerk on the boulevard at the opera just fancy some of them pay twenty sous but they're ninnees they're called dish clouds and then we'll go to see the guillotine work i'll show you the executioner he lives in the rue de mare m stanson he has a letter-box at his door ah we'll have famous fun At that moment, a drop of wax fell on Gavroche's finger and recalled him to the realities of life. "'The deuce,' said he, "'there's the wick giving out. "' Attention! "'I can't spend more than a sous a month on my lighting. "'When a body goes to bed, he must sleep.

Starting point is 06:21:05 "'We haven't the time to read Monsieur Paul de Cox's romances.' "'And besides, the light might pass through the cracks of the port cocherre, and all the bobby's need to do is to see it. And then, remarked the elder timidly, he alone dared to talk to Gavroche and reply to him, a spark might fall in the straw, and we must look out and not burn the house down. People don't say burn the house down, remarked Gavroche, they say, blaze the crib. The storm increased in violence, and the heavy downpour beat upon the back of the colossus amid collapse of thunder. You're taken in, rain, said Gavroche. It amuses me to hear the decanter run down the legs of the house.

Starting point is 06:21:52 Winter is as stupid. It wastes its merchandise. It loses its labour. It can't wet us, and that makes it kick up a row. Old water carrier that it is. This allusion to the thunder, all the consequences of which Gavroche, in his character of a philosopher of the 19th century, accepted, was followed by a broad flash of lightning,

Starting point is 06:22:14 so dazzling that a hint of it entered the belly of the elephant through the crack. Almost at the same instant the thunder rumbled with great fury. The two little creatures uttered a shriek and started up so eagerly that the network came near being displaced, but Gavroche turned his bold face to them and took advantage of the clap of thunder to burst into a laugh. Calm down, children, don't topple over the edifice. That's fine, first-class thunder, all right? That's no slouch of a streak of lightning. "'Bravo for the good God! "'Duce take it!

Starting point is 06:22:51 "'It's almost as good as it is at the Ambigu. "'That said, he restored order in the netting, "'push the two children gently down on the bed, "'press their knees in order to stretch them out at full length and exclaimed, "'Since the good God is lighting his candle, I can blow out mine. "'Now, babes, now, my young humans, you must shut your peepers. "'It's very bad not to sleep. "'It'll make you swallow the strainer, or, as they say,

Starting point is 06:23:19 in fashionable society, stink in the gullet. Wrap yourself up well in the hide. I'm going to put out the light. Are you ready? Yes, murmured the elder. I'm all right. I seem to have feathers under my head. People don't say head, cried Gavroche. They say nut. The two children nestled close to each other. Gavroche finished arranging them on the mat, drew the blanket up to their very ears, and repeated, for the third. third time, his injunction in the heretical tongue, shut your peepers, and he snuffed

Starting point is 06:23:54 out his tiny light. Hardly had the light been extinguished when a peculiar trembling began to affect the netting under which the three children lay. It consisted of a multitude of dull scratches which produced a metallic sound, as if claws and teeth were gnawing at the copper wire. This was accompanied by all sorts of little piercing cries. The little five-year-old old boy, on hearing this hubbub overhead, and chilled with terror, jogged his brother's elbow, but the elder brother had already shut his peepers, as Gavroche had ordered. Then the little one, who could no longer control his terror, questioned Gavroche, but in a very low tone and with bated breath.

Starting point is 06:24:39 Sir? Hey, said Gavroche, who had just closed his eyes? What is that? It's the rats. replied Gavroche, and he laid his head down on the mat again. The rats, in fact, who swarmed by thousands in the carcass of the elephant, and who were the living black spots, which we have already mentioned, had been held in awe by the flame of the candle, so long as it had been lighted.

Starting point is 06:25:08 But as soon as the cavern, which was the same as their city, had returned to darkness, scenting what the good storyteller Perot calls fresh meat, They had hurled themselves in throngs on Gavroche's tent, and had climbed to the top of it and had began to bite the meshes as though seeking to pierce this newfangled trap. Still, the little one could not sleep. Sir, he began again. Hey, said Gavroche, what are rats?

Starting point is 06:25:37 They are mice. This explanation reassured the child a little. He had seen white mice in the course of his life, and he was not afraid of them. nevertheless he lifted up his voice once more sir hey said gavroche again why don't you have a cat i did have one replied gavroche i brought one here but they ate her this second explanation undid the work of the first and the little fellow began to tremble again the dialogue between him and gavroche began again for the fourth time monsieur hey "'Who was it that was eaten?' "'The cat.'

Starting point is 06:26:20 "'And who ate the cat?' "'The rats.' "'The mice?' "'Yes, the rats.' "'The child, in consternation, "'dismayed at the thought of mice which ate cats, pursued, "'Sir, would those mice eat us?' "'Wouldn't they just?' ejaculated Gavroche.

Starting point is 06:26:42 "'The child's terror had reached its climax, But Gavroche added, Don't be afraid. They can't get in. And besides, I'm here. Here, catch hold of my hand. Hold your tongue and shut your peepers. At the same time, Gavroche grasped the little fellow's hand across his brother. The child pressed the hand close to him and felt reassured.

Starting point is 06:27:05 Courage and strength have these mysterious ways of communicating themselves. Silence reigned round them once more. The sound of their voices had frightened off. the rats. At the expiration of a few minutes they came raging back, but in vain, the three little fellows were fast asleep and heard nothing more. The hours of the night fled away. Darkness covered the vast Plasta la Bastille, a wintry gale which mingled with the rain, blue and gusts. The patrol searched all the doorways, alleyways, enclosures, and obscure nooks, and in their search for nocturnal vagabonds, they passed in silence,

Starting point is 06:27:46 before the elephant. The monster, erect, motionless, staring open-eyed into the shadows, had the appearance of dreaming happily over his good deed, and sheltered from heaven and from men the three poor sleeping children. In order to understand what is about to follow, the reader must remember that, at that epoch, the Bastille guardhouse was situated at the other end of the square, and that what took place in the vicinity of the elephant could neither be seen nor heard by the sentinel. Towards the end of that hour which immediately precedes the dawn, a man turned from the Rue Saint-Antoine at a run, made the circuit of the enclosure of the column of July, and glided between the palings until he was underneath the belly of the elephant. If any light had illuminated

Starting point is 06:28:38 that man, it might have been divine from the thorough manner in which he was soaked that he had passed the night in the rain. Arrived beneath the elephant, he uttered a peculiar cry, which did not belonged to any human tongue and which a parakee alone could have imitated. Twice he repeated this cry, of whose orthography the following barely conveys an idea. Kiddikikyu! At the second cry, a clear, young, merry voice responded from the belly of the elephant. Yes! Almost immediately, the plank which closed the hole was drawn aside, and gave passage to a child who descended the elephant's leg and fell briskly near the man. It was Gavroche. The man was Montparnas. As for his cry of Kiddikyu, that was, doubtless,

Starting point is 06:29:29 what the child had meant when he had said, you will ask for Monsieur Gavroche. On hearing it, he had waked with a start, had crawled out of his alcove, pushing apart the netting a little, and carefully drawing it together again. Then he had opened the trap and descended. The man and the child recognized each other silently amid the gleeves. The man and the child recognized each other silently amid the gloom. Montparnasse confined himself to the remark, We need you, come, lend us a hand. The lad asked for no further enlightenment. I'm with you, said he. And both took their way towards the Rue Saint-Antoine, whence Montparnasse had emerged, winding rapidly through the long file of market-gardener's

Starting point is 06:30:11 cards which descend towards the markets at that hour. The market-gardeners, crouching, half asleep in their wagons, amid the salads and vegetables, enveloped to their very eyes and their mufflers on account of the beating rain, did not even glance at these strange pedestrians. End of Book 6, Chapter 2. Chapter 3 of Book 6 of Le Mesaerab, Volume 4, by Victor Hugo. This is a Libravox recording. All Librevox recordings are in the public domain.

Starting point is 06:30:46 For more information or to volunteer, please visit Librevox.org. Recording by Rachel Weaver. Le Mesaerob, Volume 4, by Victor Hugo, translated by Isabel Florence Hopgood. Book 6, Little Gavroche. Chapter 3, The Vicissitudes of Flight. This is what had taken place that same night at La Force. An escape had been planned between Babé, Brjong, Guelamere, and Tenardier, although Tenardier was in close confinement. Babet had arranged the matter for his own benefit on the same day, as the reader has seen from Montparnasse's account of Tugavroch.

Starting point is 06:31:38 Montparnasse was to help them from the outside. Brouzanne, after having passed a month in the punishment cell, had had time in the first place to weave a rope. and the second to mature a plan. In former times, those severe places where the discipline of the prison delivers the convict to his own hands were composed of four stone walls, a stone ceiling,

Starting point is 06:32:04 a flagged pavement, a camp bed, a grated window, and a door lined with iron, and were called dungeons. But the dungeon was judged to be too terrible. Nowadays they are composed of, of an iron door, a grated window, a camp bed, a flagged pavement, four stone walls and a stone

Starting point is 06:32:27 stealing, and are called chambers of punishment. A little light penetrates towards midday. The inconvenient point about these chambers, which, as the reader sees, are not dungeons, is that they allow the persons who should be at work to think. So, Bajan meditated, and he emerged from the chamber of punishment with a rope. As he had the name of being very dangerous in the Charlemagne courtyard, he was placed in the new building. The first thing he found in the new building was Guelamere. The second was a nail. Gwlemere, that is to say crime, a nail, that is to say liberty. Brjon, of whom it is high time that the reader should have a complete idea, was, with an appearance of delicate health and a profoundly premeditated languor, a polioling,

Starting point is 06:33:17 intelligent brig, and a thief, who had a caressing glance and an atrocious smile. His glance resulted from his will, and his smile from his nature. His first studies in his art had been directed to roofs. He had made great progress in the industry of men who tear off lead, who plunder the roofs, and despoil the gutters by the process called double pickings. The circumstance which put the finishing touch on the, the moment peculiarly favorable for an attempt at escape was when the roofers were relaying and rejoining, at that very moment, a portion of the slates on the prison. The St. Bernard

Starting point is 06:34:00 courtyard was no longer absolutely isolated from the Charlemagne and the St. Louis courtyard. Up above, there were scaffoldings and ladders, in other words, bridges and stairs in the direction of liberty. The new building, which was the most cracked and decrepit thing to be seen anywhere in the world was the weak point in the prison. The walls were eaten by Salt Peter to such an extent that the authorities had been obliged to line the vaults of the dormitories with a sheathing of wood, because stones were in the habit of becoming detached and falling on the prisoners in their beds. In spite of this antiquity, the authorities committed the error of confining in the new building the most troublesome prisoners,

Starting point is 06:34:45 a placing there the hard cases, as they say in prison parlance. The new building contained four dormitories, one above the other, and a top story which was called the bell air or fine air. A large chimney flew, probably from some ancient kitchen of the Duke's de la force, started from the ground floor, traversed all four stories, cut the dormitories, where it figured as a flattened pillar into two portions, and finally pierced the roof. Guelimer and Brzeon were in the same dormitory.

Starting point is 06:35:20 They had been placed by way of precaution on the lower story. Chance ordained that the heads of their beds should rest against the chimney. Tenardier was directly over their heads in the top story known as Belle Air. The pedestrian, who halts on the Rue culture Saint-Catherine, after passing the barracks of the firemen in front of the Port Coucher of the bathing establishment, beholds a yard full of flowers and shrubs in wooden boxes at the extremity of which spreads out a little white rotunda with two wings brightened up with green shutters the bucolic dream of jeanjac not more than ten years ago there rose above the rotonda an enormous black hideous bare wall by which it was backed up this was the outer wall of la force this wall beside that rotunda was milton viewed for berquin's lofty as it was this wall was overtopped by a still blacker roof which could be seen beyond this was a roof of the new building there one could descry four dormer windows guarded with bars they were the windows of the bell air

Starting point is 06:36:35 a chimney pierced the roof this was the chimney which traversed the dormitories the bell air that top story of the new building was a sort of a large hall with a mansard roof guarded with the triple gratings and double doors of sheet iron which were studded with enormous bolts when one entered from the north end one had on one's left the four dormer windows on one's right facing the windows at regular intervals four square tolerably vast cages separated by narrow passages built of masonry to about the height of the elbow and the rest up to the roof of iron bars. Tenardier had been in solitary confinement in one of these cages since the night of the 3rd of February. No one was ever able to discover how and by what connivance he succeeded in procuring and secreting a bottle of wine, invested, so it is said by Deru, with which a narcotic is mixed, and which the band of the endor-mule or sleep-compellers rendered famous. there are in many prisons trustrous employees half jailers half thieves who assist in escapes who sell to the police an unfaithful service and who turn a penny whenever they can On that same night, then, when Little Gavroch picked up the two lost children,

Starting point is 06:38:08 Brison and Gwlemere, who knew that Babé, who had escaped that morning, was waiting for them in the street as well as Montparnasse, rose softly, and with the nail which Brzanne had found, began to pierce the chimney against which their bed stood. The rubbish fell on Brjohn's bed so that they were not heard. Shours, mingled with thunder, shook the doors on their hinges, and created in the prison a terrible and opportune uproar. Those of the prisoners who woke pretended to fall asleep again and left Gwlemere and Bézanne to their own devices. Berzian was a droid, Gwelomere was vigorous.

Starting point is 06:38:48 Before any sound had reached the watcher who was sleeping in the grated cell which opened into the dormitory, the wall had been pierced, the chimney scaled, the iron grating, which bared the upper orifice and the flu, forced, and the two redoubtable ruffians were on the roof. The wind and rain redoubled. The roof was slippery. What a good night to leg it, said Bréjean. An abyss six feet broad and eight feet deep separated them from the surrounding wall. At the bottom of this abyss, they could see the musket of a sentinel gleaming through the gloom.

Starting point is 06:39:28 They fastened on one end of the rope which Brezion had spread in his dungeon to the stumps of the iron bars which they had just wrenched off, flung the other over the outer wall, crossed the abyss at one bound, clung to the coping of the wall, got astride of it, let themselves slip one after the other along the rope, upon a little roof which touches the bath-house, pulled their rope after them, jumped down into the courtyard of the bath-house, traversed it, pushed open the porter's wicket, beside which hung his rope, pooled this, opened the port-coucher, and found themselves in the street. Three quarters of an hour had not elapsed since they had risen in bed in the dark, nail in hand,

Starting point is 06:40:13 and their project in their heads. A few moments later they had joined Babé and Mont Parnas, who were prowling about the neighborhood. They had broken their rope in pulling it after them, and a bit of it remained attached to the chimney on the roof. They had sustained no other damage, however, than that of scratching nearly all the skin off their hands. That night, Tenardier was warned, without anyone being able to explain how, and was not asleep. Towards one o'clock in the morning, the night being very dark, he saw two shadows passing along the roof, in the rain and squalls, in front of the dormer window, which was opposite his cage. One halted at the window long enough to dart in a glance. This was Brajan.

Starting point is 06:40:57 Tenardier recognized him and understood this was enough. Tenadier rated as a burglar and detained as a measure of precaution under the charge of organizing a nocturnal ambush with armed force was kept in sight. The sentry, who was relieved every two hours, marched up and down in front of his cage with a loaded musket. The bell air was lighted by a skylight. The prisoner had on his feet fetters weighing fifty pounds. every day at four o'clock in the afternoon, a jailer escorted by two dogs. This was still in vogue at that time, entered his cage, deposited beside his bed a loaf of black bread, weighing two pounds,

Starting point is 06:41:40 a jug of water, a bowl filled with rather thin bullion, in which swam a few mayagin beans, inspected his irons and tapped the bars. This man and his dog made two visits during the night. Tenardier had obtained permission to keep a sort of iron bolt which he used to spike his bread into a crack in the wall in order to preserve it from the rats as he said. As Tenardier was kept in sight, no objection had been made to this spike. Still, it was remembered afterward that one of the jailers had said, it would be better to let him have only a wooden spike. At two o'clock in the morning the Sentinel, who was an old soldier, was relieved,

Starting point is 06:42:23 and replaced by a conscript. A few moments later, the man with the dogs paid his visit and went off without noticing anything except possibly the excessive youth and the rustic air of the raw recruit. Two hours afterward, at four o'clock, when they came to relieve the conscript, he was found asleep on the floor, lying like a log near Tenardiar's cage.

Starting point is 06:42:46 As for Tenardier, he was no longer there. There was a hole in the ceiling of his cage, and, above it, another hole in the roof. One of the planks of his bed had been wrenched off, and probably carried away with him, as it was not found. They also seized in his cell a half-empty bottle which contained the remains of the stupefying wine with which the soldier had been drugged.

Starting point is 06:43:09 The soldier's bayonet had disappeared. At the moment when this discovery was made, it was assumed that Tenardier was out of reed. The truth is that he was no longer in the new building, but that he was still in great danger. Tenardier, on reaching the roof of the new building, had found the remains of Brison's rope hanging to the bars of the upper trap of the chimney. But, as this broken fragment was much too short,

Starting point is 06:43:35 he had not been able to escape by the outer wall, as Brjohn and Guelamer had done. When one turns from the Rue de Belais into the Rue de Roie-Sacil, one almost immediately encounters a repulsive ruin. There stood on that spruce, bought in the last century a house of which only the back wall now remains, a regular wall of masonry, which rises to the height of the third story between the adjoining building. This ruin can be recognized by two large square windows, which are still to be seen there.

Starting point is 06:44:08 The middle one, that nearest the right gable, is barred with a warm, eaten beam, adjusted like a prop. Through these windows there was formerly visible a lofty and lugubierous wall, which was a fragment of the outer wall of LaForce. The empty space on the street left by the demolished house is half filled by a fence of rotten boards, shored up by five stone posts. In this recess lies concealed a little shanty which leans against the portion of the ruin, which has remained standing. The fence has a gate, which a few years ago was fastened only by a latch.

Starting point is 06:44:45 It was the crest of this ruin that Tenardier had succeeded in reaching a little after one o'clock in the morning. How had he got there? That is what no one has ever been able to explain or understand. The lightning must at the same time have hindered and helped him. He had made use of the ladders and scaffoldings of the slaters to get from roof to roof, from enclosure to enclosure, from compartment to compartment, to the buildings of the Charlemagne Court, then to the buildings of the St. Louis court, and thence to the hut on the Rue de Roy de Sicily. Had he made use of the ladders and scaffoldings of the slaters to get from roof to roof, from enclosure to enclosure, from compartment to compartment, to the buildings of the

Starting point is 06:45:31 Charlemagne court, then to the buildings of the St. Louis court, to the outer wall, and thence to the hut on the rue de Roy de Sicily. But in that attenary, there existed breaks which seemed to render it an impossibility. Had he placed the plank from his bed like a bridge from the roof of the Bel-Air to the outer wall, and crawled flat on his belly, on the coping of the outer wall to the whole distance round the prison as far as the hut? But the outer wall of the force formed a crenellated and unequal line. It mounted and descended. It dropped at the fireman's barracks. It rose towards the bath-house. It was cut and twain by built on. It was not even of the same height on the Hotel La Manion, as on the Rube Heave.

Starting point is 06:46:19 Everywhere occurred falls and right angles, and then the sentinel must have espied the dark form of the fugitive. Hence, the route taken by Ternardier still remains rather inexplicable. In two manners, flight was impossible. Had Ternardier spurt on by the thirst for liberty which changes precipices into ditches, iron bars into waddles of oyser, a legless man into an athlete, a gouty man into a bird, stupidity into instinct, instinct into intelligence and intelligence into genius, had Tenardier invented a third mode, no one has ever found out. The marvels of escape cannot always be accounted for. The man who makes his escape would repeat is inspired.

Starting point is 06:47:06 There is something of the star and of the lightning in the mysterious gleam of flight. The efforts toward deliverance is no less surprising than the moment. the flight toward the sublime. And one says of the escaped thief, How did he contrive to scale that wall? In the same way, that one says of Cornille, where did he find the means of dying? At all events, dripping with perspiration, drenched with rain, with his clothes hanging in ribbons, his hands flayed, his elbows bleeding, his knees torn, Tenardier had reached what children in their figurative language, call the edge of the wall of the ruin. There he had streaked. He had streaked.

Starting point is 06:47:44 stretched himself out at full length, and there his strength had failed him. A steep escarpment, three stories high, separated him from the pavement of the street. The rope, which he had, was too short. There he waited, pale, exhausted, desperate with all the despair which he had undergone, still hidden by the night, but telling himself that the day was on the point of dawning, alarmed at the idea of hearing the neighboring clock of St. Paul strike four within a few minutes, an hour when the sentinel was relieved, and when the latter would be found asleep under the pierced roof, staring in horror at a terrible depth, at the light of the street-lanterns, the wet black

Starting point is 06:48:29 pavement, that pavement longed for, yet frightful, which meant death, and which meant liberty. He asked himself, whether his three accomplices in flight had succeeded, if they had heard him and if they would come to his assistance he listened with the exception of the patrol no one had passed through the street since he had been there nearly the whole of the descent of the market gardeners from montrulle from charon from vincent and from bersey to the markets was accomplished through the rue sant antoon four o'clock struck thenardier shuddered A few moments later, that terrified and confused uproar, which follows the discovery of an escape, broke forth in the prison. The sound of doors opening and shutting, the creaking of gratings on their hinges, a tumult in the guardhouse, the hoarse shouts of the turnkeys, the shock of the musket-butts on the pavement of the courts reached his ears. Lights ascended and descended past the grated windows of the dormitories. A torch ran along the ridge-pole of the top story of the new building.

Starting point is 06:49:41 The firemen belonging in the barracks on the right had been summoned. Their helmets, with a torch lighted up in the rain, went and came along the roofs. At the same time, Tenardier perceived in the direction of the Bastille, a wane whiteness, lighting up the edge of the sky in Dolphalwise. He was on top of a wall ten inches wide, stretched out under the heavy redness. rains, with two gulfs to the right and the left, unable to stir, subject to the giddiness of a possible fall, and to the horror of a certain arrest, and his thoughts, like the pendulum of a clock, swung from one of these ideas to the other, dead if I fall, caught if I stay. In the midst of this anguish he

Starting point is 06:50:30 suddenly saw the street being still dark, a man who is gliding along the walls and coming from the Rube-Pavy halt in the recess above which Tenardier was, as it were suspended. Here this man was joined by a second, who walked with the same caution, then by a third, then by a fourth. When these men were reunited, one of them lifted the latch of the gate in the fence, and all four entered the enclosure in which the shanty stood. They halted directly under Tenardier. These men had evidently chosen this very very. This man had evidently chosen this vacant space in order that they might consult without being seen by the passers-by, or by the sentinel who guards the wicket of La Force a few paces distant.

Starting point is 06:51:16 It must be added that the rain kept this sentinel blocked in his box. Tenardier, not being able to distinguish their visages, lent an ear to their words with a desperate attention of a wretch who feels himself lost. Tenier saw something resembling a gleam of hope flashed before his eyes. these men conversed in slang. The first said in a low but distinct voice, Let's cut. What are we up to here?

Starting point is 06:51:45 The second replied, It's raining hard enough to put out the very devil's fire, and the bobby's will be a long instanter. There's a soldier on guard yonder. We shall get nabbed here. These two words, Aishigo and Aisikale, both of which mean icy.

Starting point is 06:52:04 and which belonged the first to the slang of the barriers the second to the slang of the temple were flashes of light for ternardier by the icico he recognized brujon who was a prowler of the barriers By the Aicy Calais, he knew Babé, who was among his other trades, had been an old clothes-broker at the temple. The antique slang of the great century is no longer spoken except in the temple, and Babé was really the only person who spoke it in all its purity. Had it not been for the icy calais, then Ternardier would not have recognized him, for he had entirely changed his voice. In the meanwhile, the third man had intervened. There's no hurry yet. Let's wait a bit. How do we know that he doesn't stand in need of us? By this, which was nothing but French Ternardier recognized Montparnasse, who made it a point in his elegance to understand all slings and to speak none of them.

Starting point is 06:53:05 As for the fourth, he held his peace, but his huge shoulders betrayed him. Ternardier did not hesitate. It was Gwlemere. Bergen replied almost impetuously, but still in a low tone, What are you jabbering about? The tavern keeper hasn't managed to cut his stick. He don't tumble into the racket, that he don't. You have to be a pretty knowing cove to tear up your shirt. Cut up your sheet to make a rope, punch holes in doors,

Starting point is 06:53:34 get up false papers, make false keys, file your irons, hang out your cord, hide yourself and disguise yourself. The old fellow hasn't managed to play it. He doesn't understand how to work the business. Bebe added, still in that classic. slang, which was spoken by Poliere and Cartou, and which is to the bold, new, highly-colored, and risky argo used by Bréjean, what the language of our scene is to the language of André Cheneer. Your tavern-keeper must have been nabbed in the act. You have to be knowing. He's only a

Starting point is 06:54:07 green horn. He must have let himself be taken in by a bobby, perhaps even by a sheep who played it on him, as his pal. Listen, Montparnet, do you hear those shouts in the prison? You have seen all those lights. He's recaptured there. He'll get off with twenty years. I ain't afraid. I ain't a coward. But there ain't anything more to do, or otherwise they'd lead us a dance. Don't get mad. Come with us. Let's go drink a bottle of old wine together. One doesn't desert one's friends in a scrape, crumbled Montparnasse. I tell you he's nabbed, retorted Prjohn. At the present moment, the innkeeper ain't worth a happeny we can't do nothing for him every minute i think a bobby has got me in his fist mont parnay no longer offered more than a feeble resistance the fact is that these four men with the fidelity of ruffians who never abandoned each other had prowled all night long about la force great as was their peril

Starting point is 06:55:07 and the hope of seeing tonardier make his appearance on the top of some wall but the night which was really growing too fine for the downpour was such as to render all the streets deserted. The cold, which was overpowering them, soaked their garments, their whole redden shoes, the alarming noise which had just burst forth from the prison, the hours which had elapsed, the patrol which they had encountered, the hope which was vanishing, all urged them to beat a retreat. Montparnasse himself, who was, perhaps almost Tenardier's son-in-law, yielded. A moment more, and they would be gone. Ténardier was panting on his wall, like the shipwrecked sufferers of the Meduce on their raft,

Starting point is 06:55:51 when they beheld the vessel which had appeared in sight vanished on the horizon. He dared not call to them. A cry might be heard and ruin everything. An idea occurred to him. A last idea. A flash of inspiration. He drew from his pocket the end of Bréjean's rope, which he had detached from the chimney of the new building,

Starting point is 06:56:12 and flung it into the space enclosed by the fence. The rope fell at their feet. a widow said babet my tortoise said brajean the tavern-keeper is there said montparnasse they raised their eyes turnardier thrust out his head a very little quick said ma parnese have you the other end of the rope projean yes not the two pieces together we'll fling him the rope he can fasten it to the wall and he'll have enough of it to get down with turnardier ran the risk and spoke i am paralyzed with cold we will warn you up i can't budge let yourself slide we'll catch you my hands are benumbed only fasten the rope to the wall i can't then one of us must climb up said maupurness three stories ejaculated the ancient plaster-flu which had served for a stove that had been used in the shanty in former times ran along the wall and mounted almost to the very spot where they could see turn out of air this flu then much damaged and full of cracks has since fallen but the marks of it are still visible it was very narrow one might get up but by the help of that said montparnasse by that flu exclaimed babet a grown-up cove never it would take a brag A brat must be got, resumed Brazian.

Starting point is 06:57:39 Where are we to find a young un? said Guillaemere. Wait, said Montparnasse. I've got the very article. He opened the gate of the fence very softly, made sure that no one was passing along the street, stepped out cautiously, shut the gate behind him, and set off at a run in the direction of the Bastille. Seven or eight minutes elapsed. Eight thousand centuries to Thernardier. Bebe, Brazshaun, and Gwelemere did not open their lips. At last the gate opened once more, and Montparnasse appeared, breathless, and followed by Gavroche. The rain still rendered the street completely deserted.

Starting point is 06:58:18 Little Gavroch entered the enclosure and gazed at the forms of these ruffians with a tranquil air. The water was dripping from his hair. Gwlemmer addressed him. Are you a man, youngen? Gavroch shrugged his shoulders and replied. a young un like me's a man and men like you are babes the brat's tongue is well hung exclaimed babet the paris brad ain't made a mere straw added brujam what do you want asked gavroge montparnasse answered climb up that flu with this rope said babet and fasten it continued brujon to the top of the wall went on babet to the cross-bore of the window added brujon and then said gavurge "'There,' said Gwlemere, "'the gammon examined the rope, the flu,

Starting point is 06:59:07 "'the wall, the windows, "'and made that indescribable "'and disdainful noise with his lips, "'which signifies, is that all? "'There's a man up there, "'whom you are to save,' resumed Montparnes. "'Will you?' began Brjohn again. "'Greenhorn replied the lad

Starting point is 06:59:23 "'as though the question appeared "'a most unprecedented one to him, "'and he took off his shoes. "'Guelimair seized Gavroached by one arm "'and set him on the roof the shanty, whose warm-eaten planks bent beneath the urchin's weight, and handed him the rope with Brijon had knotted together during Mont Parnasse's absence. The gammon directed his steps toward the flu, which it was easy to enter, thanks to the large crack which touched the roof.

Starting point is 06:59:48 At the moment when he was on the point of ascending, to Nardier, who saw life and safety approaching, bent over the edge of the wall, the first light of dawn struck white upon his brow, dripping with sweat upon his livid cheekbones, his sharp and savage nose, his bristling gray beard and Gavroach recognized him. Hello, it's my father! Oh, that won't hinder. And taking the rope in his teeth, he resolutely began the ascent. He reached the summit of the hut, bestrored the old wall, as though it had been a horse,

Starting point is 07:00:21 and nodded the rope firmly to the upper crossbar of the window. A moment later, Tenardier was in the street. As soon as he touched the pavement, as soon as he found himself out of danger, he was no longer either weary or chilled or trembling. The terrible things from which he had escaped vanished like smoke. All that strange and ferocious mind awoke once more, and stood erect and free, ready to march onward. These were the man's first words. Now, whom are we to eat? It is useless to explain the sense of this frightfully transparent,

Starting point is 07:00:57 mark, which signifies both to kill, to assassinate, and to plunder, to eat, true sense, to devour. Let's get well into a corner, said Bréjean. Let's settle it in three words and part at once. There was an affair that promised well in the rue plumet, a deserted street, an isolated house, an old rotten gate on a garden, and lone woman. Well, why not? demanded Tenardier. Your girl, Epinin, went to see about the matter, replied Babé.

Starting point is 07:01:29 and she brought a biscuit to magnom added wellimer nothing to be made there the girl's no fool said turn to year still it must be seen to yes yes said brujon it must be looked up in the meanwhile none of the men seemed to see gavroche who during this colloquy had seated himself on one of the fence posts he waited a few moments thinking that perhaps his father would turn towards him then he put on his shoes again and said "'Is that all? You don't want me any more, my men? Now you're out of your scrape. I'm off. I must go and get my brats out of bed.' And off he went. The five men emerged one after another from the enclosure. When Gavroche had disappeared at the corner of the Rue de Bel-A, Babé took to Naradier aside. Did you take a good look at that young, he asked? "'What youngen?' "'The one who climbed the wall and carried you the rope.

Starting point is 07:02:29 Not particularly. Well, I don't know, but it strikes me that it was your son. Bha, said Tenardier, do you think so? End of Book 6, Chapter 3. Recording by Rachel Weaver, Boston, Massachusetts. Chapter 1 of Book 7 of Le Miserables, Volume 4 by Victor Hugo. This is a Libravox recording. All Libravox recordings are in the public domain.

Starting point is 07:03:03 or to volunteer, please visit Libravox.org. Recording by Rachel Nelson Smith. Les Miserables, Volume 4 by Victor Hugo, translated by Isabel Florence Hapgood. Book 7, Slang, Chapter 1, Origin. Pigrita is a terrible word. It engenders a whole world. La Pegre, for which reds. theft, and a hell la pegrin for which red hunger. Thus, idleness is the mother. She has a son,

Starting point is 07:03:44 theft, and a daughter, hunger. Where are we at this moment, in the land of slang? What is slang? It is, at one and the same time, a nation and a dialect. It is theft in its two kinds, people and language. When four and thirty years ago, the narrator of this grave and somber history introduced into a work written with the same aim as this a thief who talked Argo, there arose amazement and clamor. What? How? Argo? Why, Argo is horrible. It is the language of prisons, galleys, convicts, of everything that is most abominable in society, etc. etc. We have never understood this sort of objections. Since that time, two powerful romancers, one of whom is a profound observer of the human heart, the other an intrepid friend of the people, Balzac and Eugene Sue, having represented their ruffians as talking their natural language, as the author of The Last Day of a Condemned Man did in 1828.

Starting point is 07:05:03 the same objections have been raised people repeated what do authors mean by that revolting dialect slang is odious slang makes one shudder who denies that of course it does when it is a question of probing a wound a gulf a society since when has it been considered wrong to go too far to go to the bottom we have always thought that it was sometimes a courageous act and at least a simple and useful deed worthy of the sympathetic attention which duty accepted and fulfilled merits why should one not explore everything and study everything why should one halt on the way the halt is a matter depending on the sounding line and not on the leadsman certainly too, it is neither an attractive nor an easy task to undertake an investigation into the lowest deaths of the social order, where terra firma comes to an end and where mud begins, to rummage in those vague murky waves, to follow up, to seize and to fling, still quivering upon the pavement that abject dialect which is dripping with filth when thus brought to the light.

Starting point is 07:06:32 that pusulus vocabulary each word of which seems an unclean ring from a monster of the mire and the shadows nothing is more lugubrious than the contemplation thus in its nudity in the broad light of thought of the horrible swarming of slang it seems in fact to be a sort of horrible beast made for the night which has just been torn from its cesspool one thinks one beholds one behold one beholds one beholds one be a sort of horrible beast made for the night which has been torn from its cesspool one thinks one beholds holds a frightful, living, and bristling thicket which quivers, russles, wavers, returns to shadow, threatens, and glares. One word resembles a claw, another an extinguished and bleeding eye. Such and such a phrase seems to move like the claw of a crab. All this is alive with a hideous vitality of things which have been organized out of to side organization. Now, when has horror ever excluded study? Since when has malady banished medicine?

Starting point is 07:07:44 Can one imagine a naturalist refusing to study the viper, the bat, the scorpion, the centipede, the tarantula, and one who would cast them back into their darkness saying, oh, how ugly that is, The thinker, who should turn aside from slang, would resemble a surgeon who would avert his face from an ulcer or a wart. He would be like a philologist refusing to examine a fact in language, a philosopher hesitating to scrutinize a fact in humanity. For it must be stated to those who are ignorant of the case that Argo is both a literary phenomenon and a social result. What is slang, properly speaking? It is the language of wretchedness. We may be stopped, the fact may be put to us in general terms,

Starting point is 07:08:44 which is one way of attenuating it. We may be told that all trades, professions, it may be added, all the accidents of the social hierarchy, and all forms of intelligence have their own slang. The merchant, who says, Montpellier not active, Marseille, fine equality. The broker on change, who says, assets at end of current month, the gambler who says, Tire etue, refé de Pique. The sheriff of the Norman Isles, who says, the holder in fee reverting to his landed estate,

Starting point is 07:09:26 cannot claim the fruits of that estate during the hereditary seizure, of the real estate by the morgagore. The playwright who says, the piece was hissed. The comedian who says, I've made a hit. The philosopher who says phenomenal triplicity. The huntsman who says, Valise Allay, Wollessi Fouillon. The phrenologist who says amativeness, combativeness, secretiveness. The infantry soldier who says my shooting iron. The cavalryman who says my turkey cock. The fencing master who says tears, gert, break. The printer who says my shooting stick and galley.

Starting point is 07:10:19 All printer, fencing master, cavalry, dragoon, infantry, man, phrenologist, huntsman, philosopher, comedian, playwright, sheriff, gambler, stockbroker, and merchant, speak slang. The painter who says my grinder, the notary who says my skip the gutter, the hairdresser who says my mealy back, the cobbler who says my cub, talks slang. Strictly speaking, if one absolutely insists on the point, all the different fashions of saying the right and the left, the sailors' port and starboard, the scene-shifters court side and garden side, the Beatles' gospel side, and epistle slide, are slang. There is the slang of the affected lady, as well as of the presuses.

Starting point is 07:11:22 the Hotel Ramboulet nearly adjoins the Corde of Miracla. There is a slang of duchesses. Witness this phrase contained in a love letter from a very great lady and a very pretty woman of the restoration. You will find, in this gossip, a fultitude of reasons why I should libertize. Diplomatic ciphers are slang. The Pontifical Chensselary by using 26 for Rome, Gerzikinsizal for dispatch, and Abfux de Gourgur-Zu to XI for the Dew de Modena speaks slang.

Starting point is 07:12:11 The physicians of the Middle Ages, who, for carrot, radish, and turnip, said, opopinac perfrosinum reptitalmus dracopholicum inglorum postmigorum talked slang the sugar manufacturer who says loaf clarified lumps bastard common burnt this honest manufacturer, talks slang. A certain school of criticism 20 years ago, which used to say half of the works of Shakespeare consists of plays upon words and puns, talked slang. The poet and the artist, who with profound understanding would designate M. de Montmorency as a bourgeois if you were not a judge of verses and statutes, speaks slang. The classic academician who calls flowers flora, fruits, Pomona, the sea, Neptune, love, fires, beauty, charms, a horse, a courser,

Starting point is 07:13:28 the white or tricolored cockade, the rose of Belona, the three-cornered hat, Mars's triangle, that classical academician talks slang. Algebra, medicine, botany, have each their slang, the tongue which is employed on board ship, that wonderful language of the sea, which is so complete and so picturesque, which was spoken by Jean-Bart, de Kessni, Sufrin, and Dupur, which mingles with the whistling of the rigging, the sound of the speaking trumpets, the shock of the boarding irons, the roll of the sea,

Starting point is 07:14:13 the wind, the gale, the cannon is wholly a heroic and dazzling slang, which is to the fierce slang of the thieves, what the lion is to the jackal. No doubt, but say what we will, this manner of understanding, the word slang,

Starting point is 07:14:32 is an extension which everyone will not admit. For our part, we reserve to the word its ancient and precise, circumscribed, and determined significance, and we restrict slang to slang. The veritable slang, and the slang that is preeminently slang, if the two words can be coupled thus, the slang immemorial which was a kingdom, is nothing else we repeat than the homely uneasy crafty treacherous venomous cruel equivocal vile profound fatal tongue of wretchedness there exists at the extremity of all abasement and all misfortunes a last misery which revolts and makes up its mind to enter into conflict with the whole mass of fortunate facts and reigning rights. A fearful conflict where, now cunning,

Starting point is 07:15:40 now violent, unhealthy and ferocious at one and the same time, it attacks the social order with pinpricks through vice and with club blows through crime. To meet the needs of this conflict, wretchedness has invented a language of combat, which is slang. To keep afloat, and to rescue from oblivion, to hold above the gulf, were it but a fragment of some language, which man has spoken and which would otherwise be lost, that is to say, one of the elements, good or bad, of which civilization is composed, or by which it is complicated, to extend the records of social observation, is to serve civilization itself. This service Plautus rendered, consciously or unconsciously, by making two Carthaginian soldiers

Starting point is 07:16:46 talk Phoenician. That service, Moliere rendered, by making so many of his characters, talk Levantine, and all sorts of dialects. Here objections spring up afresh. Phoenician, very good, Levantine, quite right. Even dialect, let that pass. They are tongues which have belonged to nations or provinces, but slang. What is the use of preserving slang? What is the good of assisting slang to survive. To this we reply in one word only, assuredly, if the tongue which a nation or a province has spoken is worthy of interest, the language which has been spoken by a misery is still more worthy of attention and study. It is the language which has been spoken in France, for example,

Starting point is 07:17:45 for more than four centuries, not only by a misery, but by every possible human misery. And then we insist upon it, the study of social deformities and infirmities, and the task of pointing them out with a view to remedy, is not a business in which choices permitted. The historian of manners and ideas has no less austere a mission than the historian. of events. The latter has a surface of civilization, the conflicts of crowns, the births of princes, the marriages of kings, battles, assemblages, great public men, revolutions in the daylight, everything on the exterior, the other historian has the interior, the depths, the people who toil,

Starting point is 07:18:42 suffer, weight, the oppressed woman, the agonizing child, the secret war between man and man, obscure ferocities, prejudices, plotted iniquities, the subterranean, the indistinct tremors of multitudes, the die of hunger, the counterblows of the law, the secret evolution of souls, the go bare fort, the bare armed, the disinherited, the orphans, the unhappy, and the infamous, all the forms which roam through the darkness. He must descend with his heart full of charity and severity at the same time, as a brother and as a judge, to those impenetrable casemates where crawl, pell-mell those who bleed and those who deal the blow, those who weep and those who curse, those who fast and those who devour, those who endure evil and those who inflict it.

Starting point is 07:19:52 Have these historians of hearts and souls duties at all inferior to the historians of external facts? Does anyone think that Aligiri has any fewer things to say than Machiavelli? is the underside of civilization any less important than the upper side merely because it is deeper and more sombre? Do we really know the mountain well when we are not acquainted with the cavern? Let us say, moreover, parenthetically, that from a few words of what precedes a marked separation might be inferred between the two classes of historians, which does not exist in our mind. No one is a good historian of the patent, visible, striking, and public life of peoples. If he is not, at the same time, in a certain measure, the historian of their deep and hidden life. And no one is a good historian of the interior unless he understands at need to be the historian of the exterior also.

Starting point is 07:20:59 The history of manners and ideas permeates the history of events, and this is true. reciprocally. They constitute two different orders of facts which correspond to each other, which are always interlaced, and which often bring forth results. All the liniments, which providence traces on the surface of a nation, have their parallels, somber, but distinct in their depths, and all convulsions of the depths produce ebullations on the surface. true history being a mixture of all things, the true historian mingles in everything. Man is not a circle with a single center. He is an ellipse with a double focus. Facts form one of these, and ideas the other. Slang is nothing but a dressing room where the tongue having some bad action to perform disguises itself.

Starting point is 07:22:02 There it clothes itself in word masks, in metaphor rags, in this guise, it becomes horrible. One finds it difficult to recognize. Is it really the French tongue, the great human tongue? Behold it ready to step upon the stage and to retort upon crime, and prepared for all the employments of the repertory of evil. It no longer walks. It hobbles. It limps on the crutch of the court of miracles.

Starting point is 07:22:39 A crutch metamorphosable into a club. It is called vagrancy. Every sort of specter, its dressers, have painted its face. It crawls and rears the double gate of the reptile. Henceforth, it is apt at all roles, and is made suspicious by the counterfeiter, covered with verdigree by the forger, blacked by the soot of the incendiary,

Starting point is 07:23:11 and the murderer applies its rouge. When one listens, by the side of honest men, at the portals of society, one overhears the dialogues of those who are on the outside. One distinguishes questions and replies. One perceives, without understanding it, a hideous murmur, sounding almost like human accents, but more nearly resembling a howl than an articulate word. It is slang. The words are misshapen

Starting point is 07:23:51 and stamped with an indescribable and fantastic bestiality. One thinks one hears Hydra's talking. It is unintelligible in the dark. It gnashes and whispers, completing the gloom with mystery. It is black in misfortune. It is blacker still in crime. These two blacknesses, amalgamated, composed slang. Obscurity in the atmosphere. Obscurity in acts.

Starting point is 07:24:25 Obscurity in voices. Terrible, toad-like tongue. which goes and comes, leaps, crawls, slobbers, and stirs about, and monstrous, wise, in that immense gray fog composed of rain and night, of hunger, of vice, of falsehood, of injustice, of nudity, of suffocation, and of winter, the high noonday of the miserable. Let us have compassion on the chastised. Alas, who are we ourselves? Who am I who now address you?

Starting point is 07:25:08 Who are you who are now listening to me? And are you very sure that we have done nothing before we were born? The earth is not devoid of resemblance to a jail. Who knows whether man is not a recaptured offender against divine justice? Look closely at life. It is so made that everywhere we feel the sense of punishment. Are you what is called a happy man? Well, you are sad every day.

Starting point is 07:25:40 Each day has its own great grief or its little care. Yesterday you were trembling for a health that is dear to you. Today you fear for your own. Tomorrow it will be anxiety about money. the day after, tomorrow, the diatribe of a slanderer, the day after that, the misfortune of some friend, then the prevailing weather, then something that has been broken or lost, then a pleasure with which your conscience and your vertebral column reproach you. Again, the course of public affairs.

Starting point is 07:26:19 This without reckoning in the pains of the heart, and so it goes on. One cloud is dispelled, another forms. There is hardly one day out of a hundred, which is wholly joyous and sunny, and you belong to that small class who are happy? As for the rest of mankind, stagnating night rests upon them. Thoughtful minds make but little use of the phrase, The fortunate and the unfortunate, in this world's evidently, the vestibule of another, there are no fortunate.

Starting point is 07:26:59 The real human division is this, the luminous and the shady. To diminish the number of the shady, to augment the number of the luminous, that is the object. That is why we cry, education, science. To teach reading means to light the fire. Every syllable spelled out sparkles.

Starting point is 07:27:24 however he who says light does not necessarily say joy people suffer in the light excess burns the flame is the enemy of the wing to burn without ceasing to fly Therein lies the marvel of genius. When you shall have learned to know and to love, you will still suffer. The day is born in tears. The luminous weep, if only over those in darkness. End of book seven, chapter one, recording by Rachel Nelson Smith, Santa Cruz, California. Chapter 2 of Book 7 of Le Miserable Volume 4 by Victor Hugo This is a Librivox recording

Starting point is 07:28:18 All Librivox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer Please visit Librivox.org Recording by Algae Pug Les Miserables Volume 4 by Victor Hugo Translated by Isabel Florence Hapgood Book 7. Slang. Chapter 2. Chapter 2. Roots.

Starting point is 07:28:46 Slang is the tongue of those who sit in darkness. Thought is moved in its most sombre depths. Social philosophy is bidden to its most poignant meditations in the presence of that enigmatic dialect at once so blighted and rebellious. Therein lies chastisement made visible. Every syllable has an air of it. of being marked. The words of the vulgar tongue appear therein wrinkled and shriveled, as it were, beneath the hot iron of the executioner. Some seem to be still smoking. Such and such a phrase

Starting point is 07:29:21 produces upon you the effect of a shoulder of a thief branded with the fleur-de-leads, which has suddenly been laid bare. Ideas almost refuse to be expressed in these substantives, which are fugitives from justice. Metaphor is sometimes so shameless, that one feels that it has worn the iron neck fetter moreover in spite of all this and because of all this this strange dialect has by rights its own compartment in that great impartial case of pigeon-holes where there is room for the rusty farthing as well as for the gold metal and which is called literature slang whether the public admit the fact or not has its syntax and its poetry it is a language yes by the deformity of certain terms we recognize the fact that it was chewed by mandorin and by the splendor of certain metonomies we feel that viandes spoke it that exquisite and celebrated verse me who are the nege d'antan but where are the snows of years gone by is a verse of slang antonam ante anum is a word of tune slang which signified the past year and by extension formerly thirty-five years ago at the epoch of the departure of the great chain-gang there could be read in one of the cells at bichetra this maxim engraved with a nail on the wall by a king of tune

Starting point is 07:30:53 condemned to the galleys le daub d'en d'auntan tremes sempre for la pierre de serre this means kings in days gone by always went and had themselves anointed in the opinion of that king anointment meant the galleys the word decadreuse which expresses the departure of heavy vehicles at a gallop is attributed to viand and it is worthy of him this word which strikes fire with all four of its feet sums up in a barrage masterly onomatopoeia the whole of La Fontaine's admirable verse, six stout horses drew a coach. From a purely literary point of view, few studies would prove more curious and fruitful than the study of slang. It is a whole language within a language, a sort of sickly excrescence,

Starting point is 07:31:48 an unhealthy graft which is produced of vegetation, a parasite which has produced of vegetation, a parasite which has its roots in the old gallic trunk and whose sinister foliage crawls all over one side of the language. This is what may be called the first, the vulgar aspect of slang. But for those who study the tongue as it should be studied, that is to say, as geologists study the earth, slang appears like a veritable alluvial deposit. According as one digs a longer or shorter distance into it, one finds in slang below the old popular French Provenzal, Spanish, Italian, Leventine, that language the Mediterranean ports, English and German, the Romance language in its three varieties, French, Italian and Romance Romance, Latin, and finally Basque and Celtic, a profound and unique formation, a subterranean edifice erected in common by all the miserable. Each accursed race has deposited its layer, each suffering,

Starting point is 07:32:53 has dropped its stone there each heart has contributed its pebble a throng of evil base or irritated souls who have traversed life and have vanished into eternity linger there almost entirely visible still beneath the form of some monstrous word do you want spanish the old gothic slang abounded in it here is beauvet a box on the ear which is derived from venton window later on vontaine which comes from vantana ghat cat which comes from gato acet oil which comes from ascete do you want italian here is spade sword which comes from Spada. Carvel, boat, which comes from Carvella. Do you want English? Here is Bichot, which comes from Bishop, Raya, Spy, which comes from Raskallon, Pilsch, a case which comes from pilcher, a sheath. Do you want German? Here is the Killeur, the waiter, Kielner, the Heirs, the Master, Herzog, Do you want Latin? Here is Fongier. To break, frangere, a furé, to steel, fur, caden, chain, catena. There is one word which crops up in every language of the continent, with a sort of mysterious power and authority.

Starting point is 07:34:32 It is the word manuous. The Scotchman makes of it his Mac, which designates the chief of the clan, Macfarlane, macallamore the great farlan the great calomore slang turns it into mech and later le mech that is to say god would you like basque here is gahisto the devil which comes from gates to evil sorgbeau good night which comes from gavon good evening do you want celtic here is blavin a handkerchief which comes from blavet gushing water menes a woman in a bad sense which comes from maynette full of stones baran brook which comes from baranton fountain goffer locksmith from goff blacksmith gudes death which comes from gendu black white finally would you like history slang calls crowns la motes a souvenir of the coin in circulation on the galleys of malta in addition to the philological origins just indicated slang possesses other and still more natural roots which spring so to speak from the mind of man itself in the first place the direct creation of words therein lies the mystery of tongues to paint with words which contains figures one knows not how or why is a primitive foundation of old human languages what may be called their granite slang abounds in words of this description immediate words words created instantaneously no one knows either where or by whom without etymology without analogies without derivatives solitary

Starting point is 07:36:23 barbarous sometimes hideous words which at times possess a singular power of expression and which live the executioner the tulle the forest les sabri fear flight tough the lackey the Larban, the mineral, the prefect, the minister, pharos, the devil, the rabbewin. Nothing is stranger than these words which both mask and reveal. Some, Le Rabbein, for example, are at the same time grotesque and terrible and produce on you the effect of a cyclopean grimace. In the second place, metaphor. The peculiarity of a language which is desirous of saying all, yet concealing all, is that it is rich in figures metaphor is an enigma wherein the thief who is plotting a stroke the prisoner who is arranging an escape take refuge no idiom is more metaphorical than slang

Starting point is 07:37:22 to screw the nut to twist the neck tortillier to wriggle to eat etregerre to be tried a rat a bread thief illon skin it rains a striking ancient figure which partly bears its date about it which assimilates long oblique lines of rain with the dense and slanting pikes of the lances and which compresses into a single word the popular expression it rains halberds sometimes in proportion of slang progresses from the first epoch to the second words pass from the primitive and savage sense to the metaphorical sense the devil ceases to be the rabbein and becomes the bulonje the baker who puts the bread into the oven this is more witty but less grand something like racine after cornet like euripides after eschalus certain slang phrases which participate in the two epochs and have at once the barbaric character and the metaphorical character resemble phantasmagories the chaugeres von solicit des gaes at la the prowlers are going to steal horses by night this passes before the minds like a group of spectres, one knows not what one sees. In the third place, the expedient.

Starting point is 07:38:46 Slang lives on the language. It uses it in accordance with its fancy. It dips into it haphazard, and it often confines itself when occasion arises to alter it in a gross and summary fashion. Occasionally, with the ordinary words thus deformed and complicated with words of pure slang, picturesque phrases are formed,

Starting point is 07:39:08 in which there can be felt the mixture of the two preceding elements the direct creation and a metaphor the cab jaspine jimaron quill aroulogne de panton crimdon la sabri the dog is barking i suspect that the diligence for paris is passing through the woods la da bouge e le merossiere la fe et botif the bourgeois is stupid bourgeoisie is cunning the daughter is pretty generally to throw listeners off the track slang confines herself to adding to all the words of the language without distinction an ignoble tale a termination in ay ork yerg or in yush thus vosierre travaea bonnourg sisi gumush do you think that leg of mutton good a phrase addressed by cartouche to a turnkey in order to find out whether the sum offered for his escape suited him the termination in mar has been added recently slang being the dialect of corruption quickly becomes corrupted itself besides this as it is always seeking concealment as soon as it feels that it is understood it changes its form contrary to what happens with every other vegetation every ray of light which falls upon it kills whatever it touches thus slang is in constant process of decomposition and recomposition an obscure and rapid work which never pauses it passes over more ground in ten years than a language in ten centuries thus le latin bread becomes the latif the gea horse becomes the gea la fertonsch straw becomes la ferti the momignard brat the momac

Starting point is 07:41:03 the fique duds frusque la schique the church the groujois the colabre neck the collar the devil is at first geistol then the rabbiain then the baker The priest is a ratichon, then the bore, the sanglier, the dagger is Le Vandu, 22, then the serin, then the langer, the police are raya, then Rusin, then Russe, then Marchand de Lace, dealers in staylaces, then coqueur, then congne, the executioner is Laud, then Charleau, Laetier, Laetier, then le bacchiard in the seventeenth century to fight was to give each other snuff in the nineteenth it is to chew each other's throats there have been twenty different phrases between these two extremes cartouche's talk would have been hebrew to la all the words of this language are perpetually engaged in flight like the men who utter them still from time to time and in consequence of this very movement the ancient slang crops up again and becomes new once more it has its headquarters where it maintains its sway the temple preserved the slang of the seventeenth century bichetre when it was a prison preserved the slang of tune there one could hear the termination in enche of the old tuneres bois tuo do you drink but perpetual movement remains its law nevertheless if the philosopher succeeds in fixing for a moment for purposes of observation this language which is incessantly evaporating he falls into doleful and useful meditation no study is more efficacious and more fecund in instruction

Starting point is 07:43:05 there is not a metaphor not an analogy in slang which does not contain a lesson among these men to beat means to feign one beats a malady ruse is their strength for them the idea of the man is not separated from the idea of darkness the night is called la saulg man log man is the derivative of the night they have taken up the practice of considering society in the light of an atmosphere which kills them of a fatal force and they speak of their liberty as one would speak of his health a man under arrest is a sick man a man who is condemned is a dead man the most terrible thing for the prisoner within the four walls in which he is buried is a sort of glacial chastity and he calls the dungeon the castus in that funereal place life outside always presents itself under its most smiling aspect the prisoner has irons on his feet you think perhaps that his thought is that it is with the feet that one walks no he is thinking that it is with the feet that one dances so when he has succeeded in severing his fetters his first idea is that now he can dance and he calls the saw the bastrang public-house ball a name is a centre profound dissimulation the ruffian has two heads one of which reasons out his actions and leads him all his life long and the other which he has upon his shoulders on the day of his death he calls the head which counsels him in crime la sorbonne and the head which expiates it la tranche when a man has no longer anything but rags upon his body and vices in his heart

Starting point is 07:44:59 when he has arrived at that double moral and material degradation which the word blackguard characterizes in its two acceptations he is ripe for crime he is like a well-wetted knife he has two cutting edges his distress and his malice so slang does not say a blackguard it says unriguiz what are the galleys a brazier of damnation a hell the convict calls himself a fagot and finally what the name do malefactors give to their prison the college a whole penitentiary system can be evolved from that word does the reader wish to know where the majority of the songs of the galleys those refrains called in a special vocabulary lir-on-fa have had their birth let him listen to what follows there existed at the chatelle in paris a large and long cellar this cellar was eight feet below the level of the sand it had neither windows nor air-holes its only aperture was the door men could enter there air could not this vault had for ceiling a vault of stone and for floor ten inches of mud it was flagged but the pavement had rotted and cracked under the oozing of the water eight feet above the floor a long and massive beam traversed this subterranean excavation from side to side from this beam hung at short distances of the water eight feet above the floor a long and massive beam traversed this subterranean excavation from side to side from this beam hung at short distances of heart chains three feet long and at the end of these chains there were rings for the neck in this vault men who had been condemned to the galleys were incarcerated until the day of their departure for toul they were thrust under this beam for each one found his fetters swinging in the darkness and waiting for him the chains those pendant arms and the necklets those open hands caught the unhappy wretches by the throat they were riveted and left there

Starting point is 07:46:59 As the chain was too short, they could not lie down. They remained motionless in that cavern, in that night, beneath that beam, almost hanging, forced to unheard-of efforts to reach their bread, jug or their vault overhead, mud even to mid-leg, filth flowing to their very calves, broken asunder with fatigue,

Starting point is 07:47:22 with thighs and knees-giving way, clinging fast to the chain with their hands in order to obtain some rest, unable to sleep except when standing erect and awakened every moment by the strangling of the collar some woke no more in order to eat they pushed the bread which was flung to them in the mud along their leg with their heel until it reached their hand how long did they remain thus one month two months six months sometimes one stayed a year it was the antechamber of the galleys men were put there for stills stealing a hair from the king in this sepulchre hell what did they do what man can do in a sepulchre they went through the agonies of death and what can man do in hell they sang for song lingers where there is no longer any hope in the waters of malta when a galley was approaching the song could be heard before the sound of the oars poor sir vincent the poacher who had gone through the prison cellar of the chattelais said it was the rhymes the kept me up uselessness of poetry what is the good of rhyme it is in this cellar that nearly all the slang songs had their birth it is from the dungeon of the grand chatelais of paris that comes a melancholy refrain of the montgomery galley

Starting point is 07:48:46 timalumisand timalumisson the majority of these is ysiquet et la teartre du petit d'arnon here is the theatre of the little arched Cupid. Do what you will. You cannot annihilate that eternal relic in the heart of man, love. In this world of dismal deeds, people keep their secrets. The secret is the thing above all others. The secret, in the eyes of these wretches, is unity which serves as a base of union. To betray a secret is to tear from each member of this fierce community something of his own personality, to inform against in the energetic slang dialect is called to eat the bit as though each informer drew to himself a little of the substance of all and nourished himself on a bit of each one's flesh what does it signify to receive a box on the ear commonplace metaphor replies it is to see thirty-six candles here slang intervenes and takes it up candle camufle thereupon the ordinary tongue gives camuflis as the synonym for suflay thus by a sort of infiltration from below upwards with the aid of metaphor that incalculable trajectory slang mounts from the cavern to the academy

Starting point is 07:50:12 and puler saying i like my camufl causes voltaire to write long livaire la bo mele deserves a hundred camuflés researchers in slang mean discoveries at every step study and investigation of this strange idiom lead to the mysterious point of intersection of regular society with society which is accursed the thief also has his food for cannon stealable matter you i whoever passes by la panthee everybody slang is language turned to convict that the thinking principle of man be thrust down ever so low that it can be dragged and pinioned there by obscured there by obscured tyrannies of fatality that it can be bound by no one knows what fetters in that abyss is sufficient to cause consternation oh poor thought of miserable wretches alas will no one come to the succour of the human soul in that darkness is it her destiny there to await forever the mind the liberator the immense rider of Pegasie and hippogriffs the combatant of heroes of the dawn who shall descend from the asian

Starting point is 07:51:25 between two wings, the radiant night of the future? Will she forever summon in vain to her assistance, the lance of light of the ideal? Is she condemned to hear the fearful approach of evil through the density of the gulf, and to catch glimpses nearer and nearer at hand beneath the hideous water of that dragon's head, that moor streaked with firm,

Starting point is 07:51:50 and that writhing undulation of claws, swellings and rings must it remain there without a gleam of light without hope given over to that terrible approach vaguely centred out by the monster shuddering dishevelled wringing its arms forever chained to the rock of night a sombre andromeda white and naked amid the shadows end of book seven chapter two recording by algae pug perth Western Australia. Chapters 3 and 4 of Book 7 of Les Miserables, Volume 4 by Victor Hugo. This is a Librivox recording.

Starting point is 07:52:34 All Librivox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Librivox.org. Recording by Algae Pug. Le Miserables, Volume 4 by Victor Hugo, translated by Isabel Florence Hepgood. Book 7. Slang. Chapters 3 and 4. Chapter 3. Slang which weeps and slang which laughs. As the reader perceives slang in its entirety, slang of 400 years ago, like the slang of today, is permeated with that sombre, symbolical spirit which gives to all words a mean which is now mournful,

Starting point is 07:53:18 now menacing. One feels in it the wild and ancient sadness of those vagrants of the court of miracles who played it cards with packs of their own, some of which have come down to us. The eight of clubs, for instance, represented a huge tree bearing eight enormous trefoil leaves, a sort of fantastic personification of the forest. At the foot of this tree a fire was burning, over which three hares were roasting a huntsman on a spit, and behind him, on another fire, hung a steaming pot, whence emerged the hill. head of a dog. Nothing can be more melancholy than these reprisals in painting by a pack of cards in the presence of stakes for the roasting of smugglers and of the cauldron for the boiling of

Starting point is 07:54:04 counterfeiters. The diverse forms assumed by thought in a realm of slang, even song, even raillery, even menace, all partook of this powerless and dejected character. All the songs, the Melodies of some of which have been collected were humble and lamentable to the point of evoking tears. The peggler is always the poor pegler, and he is always the hair in hiding, the fugitive mouse, the flying bird. He hardly complains. He contends himself with sighing. One of his moans has come down to us, I do not understand how God, the father of men, can torture his children and his grandchildren and hear them cry, without himself suffering torture.

Starting point is 07:54:52 The wretch, whenever he has time to think, makes himself small before the low and frail in the presence of society. He lies down flat on his face. He entreats. He appeals to the side of compassion. We feel that he is conscious of his guilt. Towards the middle of the last century,

Starting point is 07:55:11 a change took place. Prison songs and thieves Rittonel's assumed, so to speak, an insolent and jovial mean the plaint of melur was replaced by the larifla we find in the eighteenth century in nearly all the songs of the galleys and prisons a diabolical and enigmatical gaiety we hear this strident and lilton refrain which we should say had been lighted up by a phosphorescent gleam and which seems to have been flung into the forest by will of the wisp playing the fife miralabi sous la babaut mirro-litton ribon ribet su la babi sur la babi mir la babo mirro li tae m'en ribon ribon this was sung in a cellar or in a nook of the forest while cutting a man's throat a serious symptom in the eighteenth century the ancient melancholy of the dejected classes vanishes they began to laugh they rally the grand meg and the grand dob given louis the fifteenth they called the king of france la marquis the marquis de panton and behold they are almost gay a sort of gleam proceeds from these miserable wretches as though their consciences were not heavy within them any more

Starting point is 07:56:24 these lamentable tribes of darkness have no longer merely the desperate audacity of actions they possess the heedless audacity of mind a sign that they are losing the sense of their criminality and that they feel even among thinkers and dreamers some indefinable support which the latter them know not of. A sign that theft and pillage are beginning to filter into doctrines and sophisms in such a way as to lose somewhat of their ugliness, while communicating much of it to sophisms and doctrines. A sign, in short, of some outbreak which is prodigious and near, unless some diversion shall arise. Let us pause a moment. Whom are we accusing here? Is it the 18th century? Is it philosophy? Certainly not. The work of the 18th century is healthy and good and wholesome. The encyclopedists, Diderot at their head.

Starting point is 07:57:20 The physiocrats, Turgot at their head. The philosophers, Voltaire, at their head. The utopians, Rousseau, at their head. These are four sacred legions. Humanity's immense advance towards the light is due to them. They are the four vanguards of the human race, marching towards the four cardinal points of progress. Diderot, towards the beautiful, Turgot, towards the useful, Voltaire, towards the true,

Starting point is 07:57:50 Rousseau, towards the just. But by the side of and above the philosophers, there were the sophists, a venomous vegetation mingled with a healthy growth, hemlock in the virgin forest. While the execution was burning the great books of the liberators of the century on the grand staircase of the courthouse, Writers now forgotten were publishing, with the king's sanction, No one knows what strangely disorganizing writings, which were eagerly read by the unfortunate. Some of these publications, odd to say,

Starting point is 07:58:23 which were patronised by a prince, are to be found in the secret library. These facts, significant but unknown, were imperceptible on the surface. Sometimes, in the very obscurity of a fact, lurks its danger. It is obscure because it is underhand. Of all these writers, the one who probably then excavated in the masses

Starting point is 07:58:46 the most unhealthy gallery was Restif a la Breton. This work, peculiar to the whole of Europe, affected more ravages in Germany than anywhere else. In Germany, during a given period, summed up by Schiller, in his famous drama The Robbers, theft and pillage rose up in protest against property and labour, assimilated certain species and false elementary ideas which though just in appearance were absurd in reality enveloped themselves in these ideas disappeared within them after a fashion assumed an abstract name passed into the state of theory and in that shape circulated among the laborious suffering and honest masses unknown even to the imprudent chemists who had prepared the mixture unknown even to the masses who accepted it whenever a fact of this sort presents itself the case is grave suffering engenders wrath and while a prosperous classes blind themselves or fall asleep which is the same thing as shutting one's eyes

Starting point is 07:59:51 the hatred of the unfortunate classes lights its torch at some aggrieved or ill-made spirit which dreams in a corner and sets itself to the scrutiny of society the scrutiny of hatred is a terrible thing hence if the ill-fortune of the times so wills it those fearful commotions which were formerly called jaccharis beside which purely political agitations are the merest child's play which are no longer the conflict of the oppressed and the oppressor but the revolt of discomfort against comfort then everything crumbles jaccaris are the earthquakes of the people it is this peril possibly imminent towards the close of the eighteenth century which the the French Revolution that immense act of probity cut short. The French Revolution, which is nothing else than the idea armed with the sword, rose erect and with the same abrupt movement, closed the door of ill, and opened the door of good. He put a stop to torture, promulgated the truth, expelled miasma, rendered the century healthy, crowned the populace. It may be said of it that it created man a second time, by giving him a second

Starting point is 08:01:05 soul the right the 19th century has inherited and profited by its work and today the social catastrophe to which we lately alluded is simply impossible blind is he who announces it foolish is he who fears it revolution is the vaccine of Jacques'Harae thanks to the revolution social conditions have changed feudal and monarchical maladies no longer run in our blood there is no more of the Middle Ages in our constitution. We no longer live in the days when terrible swarms within made eruptions, when one heard beneath his feet the obscure course of a dull rumble,

Starting point is 08:01:45 when indescribable elevations from mole-like tunnels appeared on the surface of civilization, where the soil cracked open, where the roofs of caverns yawned, and where one suddenly beheld monstrous heads emerging from the earth. The revolutionary sense is a moral sense. The sentiment of right, once developed, develops the sentiment of duty. The law of all is liberty, which ends where the liberty of others begin, according to Robs-Pierre's admirable definition. Since 89, the whole people has been dilating into a sublime individual.

Starting point is 08:02:23 There is not a poor man who possessing his right has not his ray of son. The die of hunger feels within him the honesty of France. The dignity of the citizen is an internal armour. He who is free is scrupulous. He who votes reigns. Hence, incorruptibility. Hence, the miscarriage of unhealthy lusts. Hence, eyes heroically lowered before temptations.

Starting point is 08:02:50 The revolutionary wholesomeness is such that on a day of deliverance, a 14th of July, a 10th of August, there is no longer any populace. The first cry of the enlightened and increasing throng, is death to thieves progress is an honest man the ideal and the absolute do not filch pocket handkerchiefs by whom were the wagons containing the wealth of the Tuolaris escorted in 1848 by the rag pickers of the four-bore son Antoine rags mounted guard over the treasure virtue rendered these tatadamalians resplendent in those wagons in

Starting point is 08:03:28 in chests, hardly closed, and some even half open, amid a hundred dazzling caskets, was that ancient crown of France, studded with diamonds, surmounted by the carbuncle of royalty, by the regent diamond, which was worth thirty millions. Barefooted, they guarded that crown. Hence no more Jacques'I. I regret it for the sake of the skillful. The old fear has produced its last effects in that quarter, and henceforth it can no longer be employed in politics. The principal spring of the red spectre is broken. Everyone knows it now. The scarecrow scares no longer.

Starting point is 08:04:09 The birds take liberty with a mannequin, foul creatures alight upon it, the bourgeois laugh at it. Chapter 4 The Two Duties To Watch and to Hope. This being the case, is all social danger dispelled? certainly not there is no jacchari society may rest assured on that point blood will no longer rush to its head but let society take heed to the manner in which it breathes our perplexy is no longer to be feared but thysus is there social pthysus is called misery one can perish from being undermined as well as from being struck by lightning let us not weary of repeating and sympathetic souls must not forget that this is the first of fraternal obligations and selfish hearts must understand that the first of political necessities consists in thinking first of all of the disinherited and sorrowing throngs in solacing airing enlightening loving them and enlarging their horizon to a magnificent extent in lavishing upon them education in every form in offering them the example of labour never the example of idleness in diminishing the individual burden by enlarging the notion of the universal aim, in setting a limit to poverty,

Starting point is 08:05:33 without setting a limit to wealth, in creating vast fields of public and popular activity, in having, like Priores, a hundred hands to extend in all directions to the oppressed and the feeble, in employing the collective power for that grand duty of opening workshops for all arms, schools for all aptitudes, and laboratories for all degrees of intelligence, in augmenting salaries, diminishing trouble, balancing what should be and what is, that is to say, in proportioning enjoyment to effort and a glut to need, in a word, in evolving from the social apparatus more light and more comfort for the benefit of those who suffer and to those who are ignorant.

Starting point is 08:06:17 And let us say it, all this is but the beginning. The true question is this. Labor cannot be a law without being a right. We will not insist on this point. This is not the proper place for that. If nature calls itself providence, society should call itself foresight. Intellectual and moral growth is no less indispensable than material improvement. To know is a sacrament.

Starting point is 08:06:43 To think is the prime necessity. Truth is nourishment as well as grain. A reason which fasts from science and wisdom grows thin. Let us enter equal complaint against stomachs and minds which do not eat. If there is anything more heartbreaking than a body perishing for lack of bread, it is the soul which is dying from hunger for the light. The whole progress tends in the direction of solution. Someday we shall be amazed.

Starting point is 08:07:12 As the human race mounts upward, the deep layers emerge naturally from the zone of distress. The obliteration of misery will be accomplished by a simple elevation of level. we should do wrong were we to doubt this blessed consummation the past is very strong it is true at the present moment it censures this rejuvenation of a corpse is surprising behold it is walking and advancing it seems a victor this dead body is a conqueror he arrives with his legions superstitions with his sword despotism with his banner ignorance a while ago he won ten battles he advances he threatens he laughs he is at our doors let us not despair on our side let us sell the field on which hannibal is encamped what have we to fear we who believe no such thing as a backflow of ideas exists any more than there exists a return of a river on its course but let those who do not desire a future reflect on this matter when they say no to progress it is not a the future but themselves that they are condemning they are giving themselves a sad

Starting point is 08:08:28 malady they are inoculating themselves with the past there is but one way of rejecting tomorrow and that is to die now no death that of the body as late as possible that of the soul never this is what we desire yes the enigma will utter its word the sphinx will speak the problem will be solved Yes, the people, sketched out by the 18th century, will be finished by the 19th. He who doubts this is an idiot. The future blossoming, the near blossoming forth of universal well-being is a divinely fatal phenomenon. Amense combined propulsions direct human affairs and conduct them within a given time to a logical state.

Starting point is 08:09:15 That is to say, to a state of equilibrium. That is to say, to equity. A force composed of earth and heaven results from humanity and governs it. This force is a worker of miracles. Marvelous issues are no more difficult to it than extraordinary vicissitudes. Aided by science, which comes from one man and by the event, which comes from another, it is not greatly alarmed by these contradictions in the attitude of problems, which seem impossibilities to the vulgar herd.

Starting point is 08:09:48 It is no less skillful at causing a solution to spring. forth from the reconciliation of ideas, than the lesson from the reconciliation of facts, and we may expect anything from that mysterious power of progress, which brought the Orient and the Occident face to face one fine day in the depth of a sepulchre, and made the Imams converse with Bonaparte in the interior of the Great Pyramid. In the meantime, let there be no halt, no hesitation, no pause in the grandiose onward march of minds. Social philosophy consists essentially in science and peace. Its object is, and its results may be, to dissolve wrath by the study of antagonisms. It examines,

Starting point is 08:10:32 it scrutinizes, it analyzes, then it puts together once more, it proceeds by means of reduction, discarding all hatred. More than once, a society has been seen to give way before the wind which is let loose upon mankind. History is full of the shipwrecks of nations and empires, manners, customs, laws, religions, and some fine day that unknown force, the hurricane, passes by and bears them all away. The civilisations of India, of Caldea, of Persia, of Syria, of Egypt, have disappeared one after the other. Why? We know not. What are the causes? of these disasters? We do not know.

Starting point is 08:11:19 Could these societies have been saved? Was it their fault? Did they persist in the fatal vice which destroyed them? What is the amount of suicide in these terrible deaths of a nation and a race? Questions to which there exists no reply. Darkness in rapt condemned civilisations. They sprung a leak. Then they sank.

Starting point is 08:11:42 We have nothing more to say, and it is with a sort of terror that we've been. look on at the bottom of that sea which is called the past behind those colossal waves at the shipwreck of those immense vessels Babylon Nineveh Tarsus Thebes Rome beneath the fearful gusts which emerge from all the mouths of the shadows but shadows are there and light is here we are not acquainted with the maladies of these ancient civilizations we do not know the infirmities of our own everywhere upon it we have the right of light we contemplate its beauties we lay bare its defects where it is ill we probe and

Starting point is 08:12:23 the sickness once diagnosed the study the cause leads to the discovery of the remedy our civilization the work of 20 centuries is its law and its prodigy it is worth the trouble of saving it will be saved it is already much to have solaced it its enlightenment is yet another point all the of modern social philosophies must converge towards this point. The thinker of today has a great duty to auscultate civilization. We repeat that this auscultation brings encouragement. It is by this persistence in encouragement that we wish to conclude these pages,

Starting point is 08:13:05 an austere interlude in a mournful drama. Beneath the social mortality we feel human imperishableness. The globe does not perish because it has these wounds, craters, eruptions, sulphur pits, here and there, nor because of a volcano which ejects its pus. The maladies of the people do not kill man. And yet anyone who follows the course of social clinics shakes his head at times. The strongest, the tenderest, the most logical, have their hours of weakness. Will the future arrive?

Starting point is 08:13:41 It seems as though we might almost put this question when we behold so much time. terrible darkness. Melancholy face-to-face encounter of selfish and wretched. On the part of the selfish, the prejudices, shadows of costly education, appetite increasing through intoxication, a giddiness of prosperity which dulls, a fear of suffering which in some goes as far as an aversion for the suffering, an implacable satisfaction, the eye so swollen that it bars the soul. on the side of the wretched covetousness envy hatred of seeing others enjoy the profound impulses of the human beast towards assuaging its desires hearts full of mist sadness need fatality impure and simple ignorance shall we continue to raise our eyes to heaven is the luminous point which we distinguish there one of those which vanish the ideal is frightful to behold thus lost in the depths, small, isolated, imperceptible, brilliant, yet surrounded by those great

Starting point is 08:14:51 black menaces monstrously heaped around it, yet no more in danger than the star in the moor of the clouds. End of Book 7, Chapter 3 and 4. Recording by Algae Pug, Perth, Western Australia. This is a Libravox recording. All LibraVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Libravox.org. Recording by Angelica Gabriella Wilson. Lemisarablu, Volume 4 by Victor Hugo.

Starting point is 08:15:33 Translated by Isabel Florence Hepgood. Book 8, Enchantments and Desolations. Chapter 1. Full Light The reader has probably understood that Eponine, having recognized Through the gate, the inhabitant of that Rue Plumont with a Mignon had sent her, had begun by keeping the Ruffians away from the Rue Plumont, and had then conducted Marius thither, and that, after many days spent in ecstasy before that gate,

Starting point is 08:16:00 Marius, drawn on by that force which draws the iron to the magnet, and a lover toward the stones of which is built the house of her whom he loves, had finally entered Cosette's garden, as Romeo entered the Garden of Juliet. This had proved easier for him than for Romeo, Romeo was obliged to scale a wall. Marius had only to use a little force on one of the bars of the decrepit gate, which vacillated in its rusty recess after the fashion of old people's teeth. Marius was slender and readily passed through.

Starting point is 08:16:30 As there was never anyone in the street, and as Marius never entered the garden except at night, he ran no risk of being seen. Beginning with that blessed and holy hour when a kiss betrothed these two souls, Marius was there every evening. If at that period of her existence, Cosette had fallen in love with a man in the least unscrupulous or debauched, she would have been lost, for there are generous natures which yield themselves, and Cosette was one of them. One of women's magnanimities is to yield.

Starting point is 08:17:01 Love at the height where it is absolute is complicated with some indescribably celestial blindness of modesty. But what dangers you run, O noble souls? How often you give the heart and we take the body. Your heart remains with you. You gaze upon it in the gloom with a shudder. Love has no middle course. It either ruins or it saves. All human destiny lies in this dilemma.

Starting point is 08:17:29 This dilemma, ruin or safety, is set forth no more inexorably by any fatality than by love. Love is life, if it is not death. Cradle, also coffin. The same sentiment says, yes, know in the human heart. Of all the things that God has made, the human heart is the one which sheds the most light, alas, and the most darkness. God willed that Cosette's love should encounter one of the loves which save. Throughout the whole of the month of May of that year 1832, there were there, in every night, in that poor neglected garden, beneath that thicket which grew

Starting point is 08:18:08 thicker and more fragrant day by day, two beings composed of all chastity, all in overflowing with all the felicity of heaven, nearer to the archangels than to mankind, pure, honest, intoxicated, radiant, who shone for each other amid the shadows. It seemed to Cosette that Marius had a crown, and to Marius that Cosette had a nimbus. They touched each other, they gazed at each other, they clasped each other's hands, they pressed close to each other, but there was a distance which they did not pass. that they respected it. They did not know of its existence. Marius was conscious of a barrier, Cosette's innocence, and Cosette of a support, Marius's loyalty. The first kiss had also

Starting point is 08:18:54 been the last. Marius, since that time, had not gone further than to touch Cosette's hand or her kerchief or a lock of hair with his lips. For him, Cosette was a perfume and not a woman. He inhaled her. She refused nothing, and he asked nothing. Cosette was a perfume. happy and Marius was satisfied. They lived in this ecstatic state which can be described as the dazzling of one soul by another soul. It was the ineffable first embrace of two maiden souls in the ideal, two swans meeting on the young foe. At that hour of love, an hour when voluptuousness is absolutely mute, beneath the omnipotence of ecstasy, Marius, the pure and seraphic Marius, would rather have gone to a

Starting point is 08:19:38 woman of the town than have raised Cosette's robe to the height of her ankle. Once, in the moonlight, Cosette stooped to pick up something on the ground. Her bodice fell apart and permitted a glimpse of the beginning of her throat. Marius turned away his eyes. What took place between these two beings? Nothing. They adored each other. At night, when they were there, that garden seemed a living and sacred spot.

Starting point is 08:20:03 All flowers unfolded around them and sent them incense, and they opened their souls and scattered them over the flowers. The wanton and vigorous vegetation quivered. full of strength and intoxication around these two innocents, and they uttered words of love which set the trees to trembling. What words were these? Breaths, nothing more. These breaths suffice to trouble and to touch all nature roundabout.

Starting point is 08:20:26 Magic power, which we should find it difficult to understand were we to read in a book these conversations which are made to be borne away and dispersed, like smoke-wreaths by the breeze beneath the leaves. Take from these murmurs of two lovers, that melody which proceeds from the soul, which accompanies them like a leer and what remains is nothing more than a shade you say what is that all yes childish prattle repetitions laughter at nothing nonsense everything that is deepest and most sublime in the world the only things which are worth the trouble of saying and hearing the man who has never heard the man who has

Starting point is 08:21:03 never uttered these absurdities these sultry marks is an imbecile and a malicious fellow Cosette said to Marius, Does there know? In all this and athwart this celestial maidenliness, and without either of them being able to say how it had come about, they had begun to call each other thou. Does thou know, my name is Euphrasi? Euphrazi, why know?

Starting point is 08:21:25 Their name is Cosette. Oh, Cosette is a very ugly name that was given to me when I was the little thing. But my real name is Euphrasi. Does thou like that name? Yufresi. Yes, but Cosette is not ugly. Do you like it better than you, Frasie? Yes.

Starting point is 08:21:45 Then I like it better too. Truly, it is pretty, Cosette. Call me Cosette. And the smile that she added made of this dialogue and idle worthy of the grove situated in heaven. On another occasion, she gazed intently at him and exclaimed, Monsieur, you are handsome. You are good-looking, you are witty, you're not at all stupid.

Starting point is 08:22:06 You are much more lunate than I am, but I bid you defiance with this world. I love you. And Marius, in the very heavens, thought he heard a strain sung by a star. Or she bestowed on him this gentle tap because he coughed, and she said to him, Don't cough, sir. I will not have people cough in my domain without my permission. It is very naughty to cough and disturb me. I want you to be well because, in the first place, if you are not well,

Starting point is 08:22:35 I should be very unhappy. What should I do then? And this was simply divine. Once, Marius said to Cosette, Just imagine, I thought at one time that your name was Ursula. This made the both of them laugh the whole evening. In the middle of another conversation,

Starting point is 08:22:53 he chanced to exclaim, Oh, one day, on the Luxembourg, I had a good mind to finish breaking up a veteran. But he stopped short and went no further. He would have been obliged to speak to Cosette of her garter, and that was impossible. This bordered on a strange theme, the flesh, before which that immense and innocent love

Starting point is 08:23:12 recoiled with a sort of sacred fright. Mary is pictured life with Cosette to himself like this, without anything else. To come every evening to the rue plumont, to displace the old and accommodating bar of the Chief Justice's gate, to sit elbow to elbow on that bench, to gaze through the trees at the scintillian of the oncoming night, to fit a fold of the knee of his trousers

Starting point is 08:23:34 into the ample fall of Cosette's gown, to caress her thumbnail, to call her vow, to smell of the same flower, one after the other, forever, indefinitely. During this time, clouds passed above their heads. Every time that the wind blows, it bears with it more of the dreams of men than of the clouds of heaven. This chaste, almost shy love, was not devoid of gallantry by any means. To pay The compliments to the woman whom a man loves is the first method of bestowing caresses, and he is half audacious who tries it. A compliment is something like a kiss through a veil. Voluntuousness mingles there with its sweet tiny point while it hides itself.

Starting point is 08:24:17 The heart draws back before voluptuousness, only to love the more. Marius' blandishments, all saturated with fancy, were, so to speak, of azure hue. The birds, when they fly up yonder in the direction of the angels, must hear so words. There were mingled with them, nevertheless, life, humanity, all the positiveness of which Marius was capable. It was what is said in the bower, a prelude to what will be said in the chamber, a lyrical effusion, stroph and sonnet intermingled, pleasing hyperblies of cooing, all the refinements of adoration arranged in a bouquet and excealing celestial perfume, an ineffable twitter of heart to heart.

Starting point is 08:24:57 Oh, murmured Marius, how beautiful you are. I dare not look at you. It is all over with me when I contemplate you. You are grace. I know not what is the matter with me. The hem of your gown when the tip of your shoe is from beneath upsets me. And then, what an enchanted gleam when you open your throat even but a little. You talk astonishingly good sense.

Starting point is 08:25:22 It seems to me at all times that you are a dream. Speak, I listen. I admire her. Oh, Cosette, how strange it is and how charming, I am really beside myself. You are adorable, mademoiselle. I study your feet with the microscope, and your soul with the telescope. And Cosette answered, I have been loving a little more all the times that is passing this morning. Questions and replies to care of themselves in this dialogue, which always turned with mutual consent upon love, as the pith figures always turn on their peg. Cosette's whole person was ingeniousness, ingenuity, transparency, whiteness, candor, radiance. It might have been said of Cosette that she was clear.

Starting point is 08:26:08 She produced on those who saw her the sensation of April and dawn. There was dew in her eyes. Cosette was a condensation of the auroral light in the form of a woman. It was quite simple that Marius should admire her since he adored her, but the truth is that this little schoolgirl, fresh from the convent, talked with exquisite penetration and uttered at times all sorts of true and delicate sayings. Her prattle was conversation. She never made a mistake about anything, and she saw things justly.

Starting point is 08:26:38 The woman feels and speaks with the tender instinct of the heart, which is infallible. No one understands so well as a woman how to say things that are at once both sweet and deep. Sweetness and depth, they are the whole of woman. In them lies the whole of heaven. In this full felicity, tears walled up in their eyes every instant. A crushed ladybug, a feather fallen from the nest, a branch of Hawthorne broken, aroused their pity, and their ecstasy, sweetly mingled with melancholy, seemed to ask nothing better than to weep. The most sovereign symptom of love is a tenderness that is at times almost unbearable.

Starting point is 08:27:16 In addition to this, all these contradictions are the lightning play of love, they were fond of laughing. They laughed readily and with a delicious freedom, and so familiarly, that they sometimes presented the air of two boys. Still, though unknown to hearts intoxicated with purity, nature is always present and will not be forgotten. She is there with her brutal and sublime object, and however great may be the innocence of souls, one feels in the most modest private interview the adorable and mysterious shade which separates a couple of lovers from a pair of friends.

Starting point is 08:27:49 They idolize each other. The permanent and the immutable are persistent. People live. They smile. They laugh. They make little grimaces with the tips of their lips. They interlace their fingers. They call each other thou, and that does not prevent eternity.

Starting point is 08:28:06 Two lovers hide themselves in the evening, in the twilight, in the invisible, with the birds, with the roses. They fascinate each other in the darkness with their hearts, which they throw into their eyes. They murmur. They whisper, and in the meantime, immense liberations of the planets fill the infinite universe. End of Book 8, Chapter 1. Recording by Angelica Gabriella Wilson. De Nisa Chapters 2 and 3 of Book 8 of Le Miserie, Volume 4, by Victor Hugo.

Starting point is 08:28:46 This is a Librivox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please, visit librivox.org recording by Joel Hermanson. Le Misera, Volume 4 by Victor Hugo, translated by Isabel Florence Hapgood. Book 8, Chapter 2, The Beewilderment of Perfect Happiness. They existed vaguely, frightened at their happiness. They did not notice the cholera which decimated Paris precisely during that very month. They had confided in each other as far as possible, but this had not extended much further than their names.

Starting point is 08:29:34 Marius had told Cosette that he was an orphan, that his name was Marius Pontmercy, that he was a lawyer, that he lived by writing things for publishers, that his father had been a colonel, that the latter had been a hero, and that he, Marius, was on bad terms with his grandfather who was rich. He had also hinted at being a baron, but this had produced no effect on Cosette. She did not know the meaning of the word. Marius was Marius. On her side, she had confided to him that she had been brought up at the Petit Picpus convent, that her mother, like his own, was dead, that her father's name was Monsieur Fauchelevent,

Starting point is 08:30:17 that he was very good, that he gave a great deal to the poor, but that he was poor himself. and that he denied himself everything, though he denied her nothing. Strange to say, in the sort of symphony which Marius had lived since he had been in the habit of seeing Cosette, the past, even the most recent past, had become so confused and distant to him, that what Cosette had told him, satisfied him completely. It did not even occur to him to tell her about the nocturnal adventure in the hovel, about Thénardier, about the burn, and about the strange attitude and singular flight of her father.

Starting point is 08:30:59 Marius had momentarily forgotten all this. In the evening, he did not even know that there had been a morning. What he had done, where he had breakfasted, nor who had spoken to him. He had songs in his ears, which rendered him deaf to every other thought. He only existed at the hours when he saw him. Then, as he was in heaven, it was quite natural that he should forget earth. Both bore languidly the indefinable burden of immaterial pleasures. Thus lived these somnambulists who are called lovers. Alas! Who is there who has not felt all these things?

Starting point is 08:31:47 Why does there come an hour when one emerges from this azure? And why does life go on afterwards? Love almost takes the place of thinking. Love is an ardent forgetfulness of all the rest. Then ask logic of passion, if you will. There is no more absolute logical sequence in the human heart than there is a perfect geometrical figure in the celestial mechanism. For Cosette and Marius nothing existed except Marius and Cosette.

Starting point is 08:32:20 The universe around them had fallen into a hole. They lived in a golden minute. There was nothing before them, nothing behind. It hardly occurred to Marius that Cosette had a father. His brain was dazzled and obliterated. Of what did these lovers talk then? We have seen of the flowers and the swallows, the setting sun and the rising moon,

Starting point is 08:32:46 and all sorts of important things. They had told each other everything except everything. The everything of lovers is nothing. But the father, the realities, that layer, the ruffians, that adventure, to what purpose? And was he very sure that this nightmare had actually existed? They were two, and they adored each other. And beyond that, there was nothing. Nothing else existed.

Starting point is 08:33:15 It is probable that this vanishing of hell in our rear is inherent to the arrival of paradise. Have we beheld demons? Are there any? Have we trembled? Have we suffered? We no longer know. A rosy cloud hangs over it. So these two beings lived in this manner high aloft, with all that improbability which is in nature. Neither at the Nadir nor at the zenith between man and seraphim, above the mire, below the ether, in the clouds, hardly flesh and blood, soul and ecstasy from head to foot already too sublime to walk the earth still too heavily charged with humanity to disappear in the blue suspended like atoms which are waiting to be precipitated apparently beyond the bounds of destiny ignorant of that rut yesterday to-day to-morrow amazed rapturous floating soaring at times so light that they could take their flight out into the infinite almost prepared to soar away to all eternity

Starting point is 08:34:26 they slept wide awake thus sweetly lulled oh splendid lethargy of the real overwhelmed by the ideal sometimes beautiful as cosette was marius shut his eyes in her presence the best way to look at the soul is through closed eyes marius and cosette never asked themselves whither this was to lead them they considered that they had already arrived it is a strange claim on man's part to wish that love should lead to something end of chapter two book eight Chapter 3, The Beginning of Shadow Jean Valjean suspected nothing. Cosette, who was rather less dreamy than Marius, was gay, and that suffice for Jean Valjean's happiness. The thoughts which Cosette cherished her tender preoccupations.

Starting point is 08:35:24 Marius' image which filled her heart took away nothing from the incomparable purity of her beautiful, chaste, and smiling brow. She was at the age, when the first of her beautiful, The Virgin bears her love as the angel his lily. So Jean Valjean was at ease. And then, when two lovers have come to an understanding, things always go well. The third party who might disturb their love is kept in a state of perfect blindness by a restricted number of precautions, which are always the same in the case of all lovers.

Starting point is 08:35:59 Thus, Colette never objected to any of Jean Valjean's proposals. Did she want to take a walk? Yes, dear little father. Did she want to stay at home? Very good. Did he wish to pass the evening with Cosette? She was delighted. As he always went to bed at ten o'clock, Marius did not come to the garden on such occasions

Starting point is 08:36:22 until after that hour, when from the street he heard Cosette open the long glass door on the veranda. Of course, no one ever met Marius in the daytime. Valjean never even dreamed any longer that Marius was in existence. Only once, one morning, he chanced to say to Cosette, Wari. You have whitewash on your back. On the previous evening, Marius in a transport had pushed Cosette against the wall. Old Toussaint, who retired early, thought of nothing but her sleep, and was as ignorant

Starting point is 08:36:59 as the whole matter as Jean Valjean. Marius never set foot in the house. When he was with Cosette, they hid themselves in a recess near the steps, in order that they might neither be seen nor heard from the street, and there they sat, frequently contenting themselves, by way of conversation, with pressing each other's hands twenty times a minute as they gazed at the branches of the trees.

Starting point is 08:37:26 At such times, a thunderbolt might have fallen thirty paces from them, and they would not have noticed it. So deeply was the reverie of one absorbed and sunk in the reverie of the other. Limpid purity. Ours wholly white, almost all alike. This sort of love is a recollection of lily petals and the plunge of the death. The whole extent of the garden lay between them and the street. Every time that Marius entered and left,

Starting point is 08:37:58 he carefully adjusted the bar of the gate in such a manner that no displacement was visible. He usually went away about midnight and returned to Corfeyrak's lodgings. Corfeyrac said to Bohorel, Would you believe it? Maurice comes home nowadays at one o'clock in the morning, Bohoro replied. What do you expect? There's always a batard in a seminary fellow.

Starting point is 08:38:26 At times, Corfeyrac pulled out of him. his arms, assumed a serious air, and said to Marius, You are getting irregular in your habits, young man. Corfeyrac, being a practical man, did not take in good part this reflection of an invisible paradise upon Marius. He was not much in the light of concealed passions. It made him impatient. And now and then he called upon Marius to come back to reality. One morning he threw him this admonition. My dear fellow, you produce upon me the effect of being located in the moon.

Starting point is 08:39:03 The realm of dreams, the province of illusions, capital, soap bubble, come be a good boy, what's her name? But nothing could induce Maris to talk. They might have torn out his nails before one of the two sacred syllables of which that ineffable name, Cosette, was composed. True love is as luminous as the dawn and as silent as the tomb. Only Corfeyrac saw this change in Marius, that his taciturnity was of the beaming order. During this sweet month of May, Marius and Cosette learned to know these immense delights, to dispute and to say you for thou, simply that they might say thou the better afterwards, to talk at great length with very minute details of persons in whom they took not the slightest interest in the world.

Starting point is 08:39:58 Another proof that in that ravishing opera called love, the libretto counts for almost nothing. For Marius to listen to Cosette discussing finery, for Cosette to listen to Marius talk in politics, to listen, knee-pressed-to-ne to the carriages rolling along the Rue de Babylon. to gaze upon the same planet in space or at the same glow-worm gleaming in the grass to hold their peace together a still greater delight than conversation etc etc in the meantime divers complications were approaching one evening marius was on his way to the rendezvous by way of the boulevard de invalides he habitually walked with drooping head as he was on the point of turning the corner of the Rue Plumet, he heard someone quite close to him say,

Starting point is 08:40:59 Good evening, Monsieur Marius. He raised his head and recognized Eponini. This produced a singular effect upon him. He had not thought of that girl a single time since the day when she had conducted him to the Rue Plummet. He had not seen her again, and she had gone completely out of his mind. He had no reasons for anything but gratitude towards her.

Starting point is 08:41:26 He owed her his happiness, and yet it was embarrassing to him to meet her. It is an error to think that passion, when it is pure and happy, leads man to a state of perfection. It simply leads him, as we have noted, to a state of oblivion. In this situation, man forgets to be bad,

Starting point is 08:41:48 but he also forgets to be good. Gratitude, duty, matters essential and important to be remembered, vanish. At any other time, Marius would have behaved quite differently to Eponine, absorbed in Cossette.

Starting point is 08:42:05 He had not even clearly put it to himself that this eponine was named Eponine Thénardier, and that she bore the name inscribed in his father's will, that name for which but a few months before, he would have so ardently sacrificed himself. We show Marius as he was. His father himself was fading out of his soul to some extent,

Starting point is 08:42:30 under the splendor of his love. He replied with some embarrassment, Ah, so it's you, Aponine? Why do you call me you? Have I done anything to you? No, he answered. Certainly he had nothing. nothing against her, far from it. Only he felt that he could not do otherwise. Now that he

Starting point is 08:42:57 used thou for Gosset, then say you to Eponine. As he remained silent, she exclaimed, Say! Then she paused. It seemed as though words failed that creature formerly so heathless and so bold. She tried to smile and could not. Then she resumed. Well, then she paused again, and remained with downcast eyes. Good evening, Mr. Marius, said she suddenly and abruptly, and away she went. End of Book 8, chapters 2 and 3. Recording by Joel Hermanson. www.jolehermanson.com

Starting point is 08:43:42 Chapter 4 of Book 8 of Le Miserab, Volume 4 by Victor Hugo. This is a Librovax recording. All Libervox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Libravox.org. Recording by Patricia Hayes. Les Miserables, Volume 4 by Victor Hugo. Translated by Isabel Florence Hapgood. Book 8, Enchantments and Desolations.

Starting point is 08:44:15 Chapter 4. A Cab Runs in English and Barks in Slang. The following day was the 3rd of June, 1832, a day. which it is necessary to indicate on account of the grave events which at that epoch hung on the horizon of Paris in the state of lightning-charged clouds. Marius at nightfall was pursuing the same road as on the preceding evening, with the same thoughts of delight in his heart, when he caught sight of Eponine approaching through the trees of the boulevard. Two days in succession. This was too much.

Starting point is 08:44:53 He turned hastily aside, quitted the boulevard. changed his course and went to the rue plumet through the rue monsieur. This caused Eponine to follow him to the rue Plumet, a thing which she had not yet done. Up to that time, she had contended herself with watching him on his passage along the boulevard, without ever seeking to encounter him. It was only on the evening before that she had attempted to address him. So Eponine followed him, without his suspecting the fact. She saw him displace the bar and slip into the garden. She approached the railing, felt the bars one after the other, and readily recognized the one which Marius had moved. She murmured in a low and in gloomy accents. None of that,

Starting point is 08:45:39 Lisette. She seated herself on the underpinning of the railing, close beside the bar as though she were guarding it. It was precisely at the point where the railing touched the neighboring wall. There was a dim nook there, in which Eponine was entirely conceiving. field. She remained thus for more than an hour, without stirring and without breathing, a prey to her thoughts. Towards ten o'clock in the evening one of the two or three persons who passed through the rue plumet, an old belated bourgeois, who was making haste to escape from this deserted spot of evil repute, as he skirted the garden railings and reached the angle which it made with the wall, heard a dull and threatening voice saying,

Starting point is 08:46:26 surprise that he comes here every evening. The passer-by cast a glance around him, saw no one, dared not peer into the black niche, and was greatly alarmed. He redoubled his pace. This passer-by had reason to make haste, for a very few instance later, six men who were marching separately and at some distance from each other, along the wall, and who might have been taken for a gray patrol, entered the rue plummet. The first to arrive at the garden railing halted and waited for the others. A second later, all six, reunited. These men began to talk in a low voice.

Starting point is 08:47:08 This is the place, said one of them. Is there a cab, a dog, in the garden? Ask another. I don't know. In any case, I have fetched a ball that will make him eat. Have you some putty to break the pain with? Yes. The railing is old, interpolated a fifth, who had the voice of a ventriloquist.

Starting point is 08:47:30 "'So much the better,' said the second who had spoken. "'It won't screech under the saw, and it won't be hard to cut. The six, who had not yet opened his lips, now began to inspect the gate, as Eponine had done an hour earlier, grasping each bar in succession and shaking them cautiously. Thus he came to the bar which Marius had loosened, as he was on the point of grasping this bar, a hand emerged abruptly from the darkness, fell upon his arm. He felt himself vigorously thrust aside by a push in the middle of his breast, and a hoarse voice said to him, but not loudly, There's a dog. At that moment he perceived a pale girl standing before him. The man underwent that

Starting point is 08:48:16 shock which the unexpected always brings. He bristled up in hideous wise. Nothing is so formidable to behold as ferocious beasts who are uneasy, their terrified air evokes terror. He recoiled and stammered, What jade is this? Your daughter? It was, in fact, Eponine, who had addressed the Nardier. At the apparition of Eponine, the other five, that is to say, Cloxieu, Goulmer, Babet, Brugon, and Montparnasse, had noiselessly drawn near, without precipitation,

Starting point is 08:48:53 without uttering a word with the sinister slowness peculiar to these men of the night some indescribable but hideous tools were visible in their hands gulmer held one of those pairs of curved pinchers which prowlers call fancians ah see here what are you about there what do you want with us are you crazy exclaimed thenardier as loudly as one can exclaim and still speak low what have you come here to hinder our work for eponine burst out laughing and threw herself on his neck i am here little father because i am here isn't a person allowed to sit on the stones nowadays it's you who ought not be here what have you come here for since it is a biscuit i told magnon so there's nothing to be done here but embrace me my good little father it's a long time since i've seen you so you're out thenardier tried to disentangle himself from eponine's arms and grumbled that's good you've embraced me yes i'm out i'm not in now get away with you but eponine did not release her hold and redoubled her caresses but how did you manage it little pa you have been very clever to get out of that tell me about it and my mother where is mother tell me about mamma thenardier replied she's well i don't know let me alone and be off tell you, I won't go. So there now, pouted Eponine like a spoiled child. You send me off, and it's four months since I saw you, and I've hardly had time to kiss you.

Starting point is 08:50:35 And she caught her father around the neck. Come now, this is stupid, said Babé. Make hast, said Goumer, the cops may pass. The ventrillae's voice repeated his distich. We ne'en saun par la Jue de laun. This isn't, New Year's. day. Abakoté Papa-Mama to peck at Pa and Ma'Eau. Eponine turned to the five ruffians. "'Why, it's Monsieur Brujon. Good day, Monsieur Babbe! Good day, Monsieur Cloxou. Don't you know me, Mr. Goumer? How goes it, Montparnasse?'

Starting point is 08:51:12 "'Yes, they know you, ejaculated thenardier. But good day, good evening, shirov, leave us alone!' "'It's the hour for foxes, not chicken,' said Montfarnasse. "'You see the job we have on hand here?' added Babé. Eponine caught Montparnasse's hand. "'Take care,' he said. "'You'll cut yourself. I have a knife open.' "'My little Montparnasse,' responded Eponine very gently. "'You must have confidence in people.

Starting point is 08:51:42 I am the daughter of my father, perhaps. "'Monsieur, M. Bébe, Mr. Gilmer, "'I'm the person who was charged to investigate this matter.' "'It is remarkable that Eponine did not talk slang. That frightful tongue had become impossible to her since she had known Marius. She pressed in her hand, small, bony and feeble as that of a skeleton, Goulmer's huge coarse fingers, and continued, "'You know well that I am no fool. Ordinarily I am believed. I have rendered you service on various occasions. Well, I have made inquiries. You will

Starting point is 08:52:18 expose yourselves to no purpose, you see? I swear to you that there is nothing in this house. There are lone women, said Goulemere. No persons have moved away. The candles haven't, anyway, ejaculated Babet. And he pointed out to Eponine across the tops of the trees, a light which was wandering about in the mansard roof of the pavilion. It was Toussaint, who had stayed up to spread out some linen to dry.

Starting point is 08:52:46 Eponine made a final effort. Well, said she, they're very poor folks, and it's a hard. where there isn't a sou go to the devil cried thenardier when we've turned the house upside down and put the cellar at the top in the attic below we'll tell you what there is inside and whether it's franks or sioux or half farthings and he pushed her aside with the intention of entering my good friend mr montparnasse said eponine i entreat you you are a good fellow don't enter take care care, you'll cut yourself, replied Montparnasse. The Nardier resumed in his decided tone. Decap, my girl, and leave men to their own affairs. Eponine released Montparnasse's hand, which she had grasped again, and said,

Starting point is 08:53:38 So you mean to enter this house? Rather, grinned the ventriloquus. Then she set her back against the gate, faced the six ruffians who were armed to the teeth, and to whom the night lent the visages of demons, and set in a firm low voice, well, I don't mean that you shall. They halted in abasement. The ventriloquist, however, finished his grin. She went on. Friends, listen well. This is not what you want. Now I am talking. In the first place, if you enter this garden, if you lay a hand on this gate, I'll scream, I'll beat on the door, I'll rouse everybody, I'll have the whole six of you

Starting point is 08:54:21 seized. I'll call the police." She'd do it, too, said Thénardier in a low tone to Brugon and the ventriloquist. She shook her head and added, "'Beckoning with my father!' The Nardier stepped near. "'Not so close, my good man,' said she. He retreated, growling between his teeth. "'Why, what's the matter with her?'

Starting point is 08:54:44 And he added, bitch. She began to laugh in a terrible way, as you like. but you shall not enter here i am not the daughter of a dog since i am the daughter of a wolf there are six of you what matters that to me you are men well i am woman you don't frighten me i tell you that you shan't enter this house because it doesn't suit me if you approach i'll bark i told you i'm the dog and i don't care a straw for you go your way you bore me go where you please but don't come here i forbid it "'You can use your knives. I'll use kicks. It's all the same to me. Come on!' She advanced a pace near the ruffians. She was terrible. She burst out laughing. "'Parteen, I am not afraid. I shall be hungry this summer, and I shall be cold this winter. Aren't they ridiculous these ninnies of men who think they can scare a girl? What?

Starting point is 08:55:45 Scare? Oh, yes, much, because you have finical puppets of mistresses who hide under the bed when you put on a big voice, forsooth! I ain't afraid of anything that I ain't!' She fastened her intent gaze upon Thinardier and said, "'Not even you, father!' Then she continued, as she cast her bloodshot spectre-like eyes upon the ruffians in turn. "'What do I care if I am picked up tomorrow morning

Starting point is 08:56:16 "'on the pavement of the Rue Plumet, "'killed by the blows of my father's club, or whether I'm found a year from now in the nets at Saint-Claude, or the eel of swan, in the midst of rotten old corks and drowned dogs. She was forced to pause. She was seized by a dry cough. Her breath came from her weak and narrow chest, like the death rattle. She resumed,

Starting point is 08:56:42 I have only to cry out, and people will come, and then slap, bang! There are six of you. I represent the whole world. world thenardier made a movement towards her don't approach she cried he halted and said gently well no i won't approach but don't speak so loud so you intend to hinder us in our work my daughter but we must earn our living all the same have you no longer any kind of feeling for your father you bother me said eponine we must live we must eat burst so saying she seated herself on the underpinning of the fence and hummed mon bras si d'au du my arm so plump my jean bien fit my leg well formed and the temper du and time wasted she had set her elbow on her knee and her chin in her hand and she swung her foot with an air of indifference her tattered gown permitted a view of her thin shoulder-blades the neighboring street lantern illuminated her profile and her attitude. Nothing more resolute and more surprising could be seen. The six rascals, speechless and gloomy at being held in check by a girl, retreated beneath the shadow cast by the

Starting point is 08:58:03 lantern, and held counsel with furious and humiliated shrugs. In the meantime she stared at them with a stern but peaceful air. "'There's something the matter with her,' said Babé, a reason. Is she in love with the dog? It's a shame to miss this anyway. Two women, an old fellow who lodges in the backyard, and curtains that ain't so bad at the windows. The old cove must be a Jew. I think the job's a good one. Well, go in, then, the rest of you, exclaimed Montparnasse. Do the job. I'll stay here with the girl, and if she fails us, he flashed the knife, which he held open in his hand, in the light of the lantern. The Nardier said not a word, and seemed ready for whatever the rest pleased. Brugon, who was somewhat of an oracle, and who had, as the reader knows, put up the job, had not as yet spoken. He seemed thoughtful. He had the reputation of not sticking at anything, and it was known that he had plundered a police post simply out of bravado.

Starting point is 08:59:12 Besides this, he made verses in songs, which gave him great authority. Babe interrogated him. Say you nothing, Brugon? Brugon remained silent and instant longer, then he shook his head in various ways and finally concluded to speak. Oh, that's bad. Let's quit.

Starting point is 08:59:31 They went away. As they went, Montparnasse muttered. Never mind. If they had wanted, I'd have cut her throat. Babet responded, I wouldn't. I don't hit a lady. At the corner of the corner of her.

Starting point is 08:59:45 of the street they halted and exchanged the following ignimatical dialogue in a low tone. Where shall we go to sleep tonight? Under Patin, Paris. Have you the key to the gate, Thinardier? Pardy. Eponin, who never took her eyes off of them, saw them retreat by the road by which they had come. She rose and began to creep after them along the walls and the houses. She followed them thus as far as the boulevard.

Starting point is 09:00:14 There they parted, and she saw these six men plunge into the gloom where they appear to melt away. End of Book 8, Chapter 4 Chapter 5 and 6 of Book 8 of Les Miserab. Volume 4 by Victor Hugo. This is a Libravox recording. All Libravox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Libravox.org. Patricia Hayes.

Starting point is 09:00:51 Le Miserab, Volume 4 by Victor Hugo. Translated by Isabel Florence Hapgood. Book 8. Enchantments and Desolations. Chapter 5, Things of the Night. After the departure of the ruffians, the Rue Plume resumed its tranquil, nocturnal aspect. That which had just taken place in this street would not have astonished a forest. The lofty trees, the copses, the heathes, the branches,

Starting point is 09:01:21 rudely interlaced, the tall grass exist in a somber manner. The savage swarming there catches glimpses of sudden apparitions of the invisible. That which is below man distinguishes, through the mist, that which is beyond man. And the things of which we living beings are ignorant there meet face to face in the night. Nature, bristling and wild, takes alarm at certain approaches in which she fancies that she feels the supernatural. The forces of the gloom know each other and are strangely balanced by each other. Teeth and claws fear what they cannot grasp. Blood-drinking beciality, voracious appetites, hunger in search of prey, the armed instincts of nails and jaws which have for source and aim the belly. Glare and smell out uneasily the impassive spectral forms

Starting point is 09:02:18 straying beneath the shroud, erect in its vague and shuddering robe, and which seemed to them to live with the dead and terrible life. These brutalities, which are only matter, entertain a confused fear of having to deal with the immense obscurity condensed into an unknown being. A black figure, barring the way, stops the wild beast short. That which emerges from the cemetery intimidates and disconcerts that which emerges from the cave. The ferocious fear the sinister. Wolves recoil when they encounter a ghoul. End of Chapter 5.

Starting point is 09:03:04 Chapter 6. Marius becomes practical once more to the extent of giving Cosette his address. While this sort of a dog with a human face was mounting guard over the gate, and while the six ruffians were yielding to a girl, Marius was by Cosette's side. Never had the sky been more studded with stars and more charming, the trees more trembling, the odor of the grass more penetrating, never had the birds fallen asleep

Starting point is 09:03:34 among the leaves with a sweeter noise, never had all the harmonies of universal serenity responded more thoroughly to the inward music of love. Never had Marius been more captivated more happy, more ecstatic. But he had found Cosette sad. Cosette had been weeping. Her eyes were red. This was the first cloud in that wonderful dream. Morris's first word had been, What is the matter? And she had replied, this. Then she had seated herself on the bench near the steps, and while he tremblingly took his place beside her, she had continued.

Starting point is 09:04:17 My father told me this morning to hold myself in readiness because he has business and we may go away from here. Marius shivered from head to foot. When one is at the end of one's life, to die means to go away. When one is at the beginning of it, to go away means to die. For the last six weeks Marius had little by little, slowly by degrees, taken possession of Cosette each day. as we have already explained in the case of first love the soul is taken long before the body later on one takes the body long before the soul sometimes one does not take the soul at all the foblas and the prudhomes add because there is none but the sarcasm is fortunately a blasphemy so marius possessed cosette as spirits possess but he enveloped her with all his soul and seized her jealously with incredible conviction he possessed her smile her breath her perfume the profound radiance of her blue eyes the sweetness of her sea skin when he touched her hand, the charming mark which she had on her neck, all her thoughts. Therefore, he possessed all Cosette's dreams. He incessantly gazed at, and he sometimes touched lightly with his breath the short locks on the nape of her neck, and he declared to himself that there was not one of those

Starting point is 09:05:51 short hairs which did not belong to him, Marius. He gazed upon and adored the things that she wore. her knot of ribbon, her gloves, her sleeves, her shoes, her cuffs, as sacred objects of which he was the master. He dreamed that he was the lord of those pretty shell combs which he wore in her hair. And he even said to himself, in confused and suppressed stammerings of voluptuousness, which did not make their way to the light, that there was not a ribbon of her gown, not a mesh in her stockings, not a fold in her bodice, which was not his. Beside Cosette he felt himself beside his own property, his own thing, his own despot and his slave.

Starting point is 09:06:39 It seemed as though they had so intermingled their souls that it would have been impossible to tell them apart, had they wished to take them back again. This is mine. No, it is mine. I assure you that that you are mistaken, This is my property. What you are taking as your own is myself. Marius was something that made a part of Cosette, and Cosette was something which made a part of Marius. Marius felt Cosette within him.

Starting point is 09:07:09 To have Cosette, to possess Cosette, this to him was not to be distinguished from breathing. It was in the midst of this faith, of this intoxication, of this virgin possession, unprecedented and absolute of this sovereignty that these words, we are going away, fell suddenly at a blow, and that the harsh voice of reality cried to him, Cosette is not yours.

Starting point is 09:07:39 Marius awoke. For six weeks Marius had been living, as we have said, outside of life. Those words, going away, caused him to reinter it harshly. He found not a word to say. Cosette merely felt that his hand was very cold. She said to him in her turn, What is the matter? He replied in so low a tone that Cosette hardly heard him.

Starting point is 09:08:05 I did not understand what you said. She began again. This morning, my father told me to settle all my little affairs and to hold myself in readiness that he would give me his linen to put in a trunk, that he was obliged to be. to go on a journey, that we were to go away, that it is necessary to have a large trunk for me and a small one for him, and that all is to be ready in a week from now, and that we might go

Starting point is 09:08:34 to England. But this is outrageous! exclaimed Marius. It is certain that, at that moment, no abuse of power, no violence, not one of the abominations of the worst tyrants, no action of Bissarice, of Tiberius or of Henry the Eighth could have equaled this in atrocity in the opinion of Marius. Monsieur Fauch-Levant, taking his daughter off to England because he had business there. He demanded in a weak voice, When do you start? He did not say when.

Starting point is 09:09:10 And when shall you return? He did not say when. Marius rose and said coldly, "'Cossette, shall you go?' Cosette turned toward him, her beautiful eyes, all filled with anguish, and replied in a sort of bewilderment. "'Where?' "'To England. Shall you go?'

Starting point is 09:09:33 "'Why do you say you to me? "'I ask you whether you will go.' "'What do you expect me to do?' she said, clasping her hands. "'So you will go? "'If my father goes?' "'So you will go.' go? Cosette took Marius's hand and pressed it without replying. Very well, said Marius. Then I will go elsewhere. Cosette felt rather than understood

Starting point is 09:10:00 the meaning of these words. She turned so pale that her face shone white through the gloom. She stammered, What do you mean? Marius looked at her, then raised his eyes to heaven and answered, nothing. When his eyes fell again, he saw Cosette smiling at him, the smile of a woman whom one loves possesses a visible radiance, even at night. How silly we are, Marius, I have an idea! What is it? If we go away, do you go too? I will tell you where.

Starting point is 09:10:35 Come and join me wherever I am! Marius was now a thoroughly roused man. He had fallen back into reality. He cried to Cosette. set. Go away with you. Are you mad? Why, I have to have money, and I have none. Go to England, but I am in debt now. I owe. I don't know how much. More than ten Louis to Koufoufrock, one of my friends with whom you are not acquainted. I have an old hat, which is not worth three francs. I have a coat, which lacks buttons in front. My shirt is all ragged. My elbows

Starting point is 09:11:12 are torn. My boots led in water. For the last six weeks I have not thought about it, and I have not told you about it. You only see me at night, and you give me your love. If you were to see me in the daytime, you would give me a sou. Go to England. Ah, I haven't enough money to pay for a passport. He threw himself against a tree, which was close at hand, erect, his brow pressed close to the bark, feeling neither the wood which flayed his skin nor the fever which was throbbing in his temples, and there he stood motionless, on the point of falling, like the statue of despair. He remained a long time thus. One could remain for eternity in such abysses. At last he turned around. He heard behind him a faint stifled noise, which was sweet yet sad.

Starting point is 09:12:08 It was Cosette sobbing. She had been weeping for more than two hours beside Marius as he meditated. He came to her, fell at her knees, and slowly prostrating himself, he took the tip of her foot, which peeped out from beneath her robe, and kissed it. She let him have his way in silence. There are moments when a woman accepts, like a somber and resigned goddess, the religion of love. Do not weep, he said. She murmured.

Starting point is 09:12:38 "'Not when I may be going away, and you cannot come!' He went on. "'Do you love me?' She replied sobbing by that word from paradise, which is never more charming than amid tears. "'I adore you.' Marius resumed. He continued in a tone which was an indescribable caress.

Starting point is 09:13:00 "'Do not weep. Tell me, will you do this for me and cease to weep? "'Do you love me?' said she. He took her hand. "'Cossette, I have never given my word of honor to anyone, because my word of honor terrifies me. I feel that my father is by my side. Well, I give you my most sacred word of honor,

Starting point is 09:13:24 that if you go away, I shall die.' In the tone with which he uttered these words, there lay a melancholy so solemn and so tranquil that Cosette trembled. She felt that chill which is produced by a true and gloomy thing as it passes by. The shock made her cease weeping. Now listen, said he. Do not expect me tomorrow. Why?

Starting point is 09:13:50 Do not expect me until the day after tomorrow. Oh, why? You will see. A day without seeing you, but that is impossible. Let us sacrifice one day in order to gain our whole lives, perhaps. and Marius added in a low tone and in and aside. He is a man who never changes his habits, and he has never received any one except in the evening.

Starting point is 09:14:17 "'Of what man are you speaking?' asked Cosette. "'I—I said nothing. "'What do you hope, then? "'Wait until the day after tomorrow. "'You wish it?' "'Yes, Cosette.' "'She took his hand in both her hands, "'raising herself on tiptoe in order

Starting point is 09:14:35 to be on a level with him and try to read his hope in his eyes. Marius resumed, Now that I think of it, you ought to know my address. Something might happen, one never knows. I live with that friend named Corfrey Rock, Rue de la Verre No. 16. He searched in his pocket, pulled out his penknife, and with the blade he rode on the plaster of the wall,

Starting point is 09:15:04 16 Rue de la Verie In the meantime Cosette had begun to gaze into his eyes once more Tell me your thought Marius You have some idea

Starting point is 09:15:17 Tell it to me Oh tell me So I may pass a pleasant night This is my idea That it is impossible That God should mean to part us Wait Expect me the day after tomorrow

Starting point is 09:15:32 What shall I do until then, said Cosette. You are outside. You go and come. How happy men are! I shall remain entirely alone. Oh, how sad I shall be. What is it that you are going to do tomorrow evening? Tell me, I am going to try something. Then I will pray to God, and I will think of you here so that you may be successful. I will question you no further, since you do not wish it. You are my master. I shall pass the evening. I shall pass the evening. evening tomorrow and singing that music from Youronthe that you love, and that you came one evening to listen to outside my shutters. But day after tomorrow, you will come early. I shall expect you

Starting point is 09:16:16 at dusk. At nine o'clock precisely, I warn you, Mondieu, how sad it is that these days are so long. On the stroke of nine, do you understand I shall be in the garden? And I also. And without having uttered moved by the same thought, impelled by those electric currents which place lovers in continual communication, both being intoxicated with delight, even in their sorrow, they fell into each other's arms, without perceiving that their lips met while their uplifted eyes, overflowing with rapture and full of tears, gazed upon the stars. When Marius went forth the street was deserted. This was the moment, when ever after, Eponine was following the ruffians to the boulevard.

Starting point is 09:17:05 While Marius had been dreaming with his head pressed to the tree, an idea had crossed his mind, an idea, alas, that he himself judged to be senseless and impossible. He had come to a desperate decision. End of Book 8, chapters 5 and 6. Chapter 7 of Book 8 of Les Miserables Volume 4 by Victor Hugo This is a Libravox recording. All Libravox recordings are in the public domain.

Starting point is 09:17:42 For more information or to volunteer, please visit Libravox.org. Recording by Robert Kuiper. Le Miserables, Volume 4 by Victor Hugo, translated by Elizabeth Florence Hapgood, Book 8, Enchantments and Desolations. Chapter 7. The Old Heart and the Young Heart In the Presence of Each Other. At that epoch, Father Gil Norman was well past his 91st birthday.

Starting point is 09:18:12 He still lived with Mademoiselle Gilnormand in the Rue des Filles de Calvert, Numerose Six, in the old house which he owned. He was, as the reader will remember, one of those antique old men who await death perfectly erect, whom age bears down without bending, and whom even sorrow cannot curve. Still, his daughter had been saying for some time, My father is sinking. He no longer boxed the maid's ears. He no longer thumped the landing place so vigorously with his cane

Starting point is 09:18:45 when Basque was slow in opening the door. The Revolution of July had exasperated him for the space of barely six months. He had viewed almost tranquilly that coupling of words in the monitor, Monsieur Humboldt Compt Pierre of France. The fact is that the old man was deeply dejected. He did not bend, he did not yield.

Starting point is 09:19:13 This was no more a characteristic of his physical than of his moral nature. But he felt himself giving way internally. For four years he had been waiting for Marius, with his foot firmly planted, that is the exact word, in the conviction that that good-for-nothing young scamp would ring at his door someday or other. Now he had reached the point where, at certain gloomy hours, he said to himself that if Marius made him wait much longer, it was not death that was insupportable to him. It was the idea that perhaps he should never see Marius again. The idea of never seeing Marius again had never entered his brain until that day.

Starting point is 09:20:00 Now the thought began to recur to him and it chilled him. Absence, as is always the case in genuine and natural sentiments, had only served to augment the grandfather's love for the ungrateful child, who had gone off like a flash. It is during December nights when the cold stands at ten, degrees that one thinks oftenest of the son. Monsieur Gil-Normand was, or thought himself above all things, incapable of taking a single step, he, the grandfather, towards his grandson.

Starting point is 09:20:38 I would die, rather, he said to himself. He did not consider himself as the least to blame, but he thought of Marius only with profound tenderness, and the mute despair of an elderly, kindly old man, who is about to vanish in the dark. He began to lose his teeth, which added to his sadness. Monsieur Gil Norman, without, however, acknowledging it to himself, for it would have rendered him furious and ashamed,

Starting point is 09:21:12 had never loved a mistress as he loved Marius. He had had placed in his chamber opposite the head of his bed so that it should be the first thing on which his eyes fell on waking, an old portrait of his other daughter who was dead, Madame Pomercy, a portrait which had been taken when she was eighteen. He gazed incessantly at that portrait. One day, he happened to say as he gazed upon it,

Starting point is 09:21:40 I think the likeness is strong. To my sister, inquired Mademoiselle Gil Norman. Yes, certainly. The old man added, And to him also. Once, as he sat with his knees pressed together and his eyes almost closed, in a despondent attitude,

Starting point is 09:22:05 his daughter ventured to say to him, Father, are you as angry with him as ever? She paused, not daring to proceed further. With whom, he demanded. With that poor Marius. He raised his aged head, laid his withered and emaciated fist on the table, and exclaimed in his most irritated and vibrant tone. Poor Marius do you say!

Starting point is 09:22:37 That gentleman is a knave, a wretched scoundrel, a vain little ingrate, a heartless, soulless, haughty and wicked man. he turned away so that his daughter might not see the tear that stood in his eye. Three days later, he broke a silence which had lasted four hours to say to his daughter, point blank, I had the honor to ask Mademoiselle Gil Norman never to mention him to me. Aunt Gil Norman renounced every effort and pronounced this acute diagnosis. My father never cared very much for my sister after her folly. it is clear that he detests Marius.

Starting point is 09:23:24 After her folly meant after she had married the colonel. However, as the reader has been able to conjecture, Mademoiselle Gil Normand had failed in her attempt to substitute her favorite, the officer of Lancers, for Marius. The substitute, Theodore, had not been a success. Mr. Gil Norman had not accepted the quid proclamation. quo. A vacancy in the heart does not accommodate itself to a stopgap. Theodol, on his side, though he scented the inheritance, was disgusted at the task of

Starting point is 09:24:01 pleasing. The good man bored the Lancer, and the Lancer shocked the good man. Lieutenant Theodle was gay, no doubt, but a chatterbox, frivolous, but vulgar, a high liver, but a frequenter of bad company. He had mistresses, it is true, and he had a great deal to say about them. It is true also. But he talked badly. All his good qualities had a defect. Mr. Gilnormand was worn out with hearing him tell about the love affairs that he had

Starting point is 09:24:36 in the vicinity of the barracks in the Rue de Babylon. And then, Lieutenant Gil Norman sometimes came in his uniform with the tricolored cockade. This rendered him downright intolerable. Finally, Father Gil Norman had said to his daughter, I've had enough of that Theodal. I haven't much taste for warriors in time of peace. Receive him if you choose. I don't know, but I prefer slashes to fellows that drag their swords. The clash of blades in battle is less dismal, after all, than the clank of the scabbard on the pavement. And then throwing out your chest like a bully and lacing yourself like a girl with stays under your cuirass is doubly ridiculous.

Starting point is 09:25:26 When one is a veritable man, one holds equally aloof from swagger and from affected heirs. He is neither a blusterer nor a finicky-hearted man. Keep your Theodore for yourself. It was in vain that his daughter said to him, but he is your grand-nevue, nevertheless. It turned out that Monsieur Gil Norman, who was a grandfather to the very fingertips, was not in the least a grand uncle.

Starting point is 09:25:58 In fact, as he had good sense, and as he had compared the two, Theodle had only served to make him regret Marius all the more. One evening, it was the 24th of June, which did not prevent Father Gil Norman having a rousing fire on the hearth. He had dismissed his daughter, who was sowing in a neighboring apartment. He was alone in his chamber amidst its pastoral scenes,

Starting point is 09:26:27 with his feet propped on the andirons, half enveloped in his huge screen of Comorandelle Lacquer, with its nine leaves, with his elbow resting on a table where burned two candles under a green shade, engulfed in his tapestry armchair and in his hand a book which he was not reading. He was dressed, according to his want, like an incoieble, and resembled an antique portrait by Garat. This would have made people run after him in the street had not his daughter covered him up whenever he went out in a vast bishop's wadded cloak which concealed his attire.

Starting point is 09:27:08 At home he never wore a dressing-gown, except when he rose, and retired. It gives one a look of age, said he. Father Gil Norman was thinking of Marius lovingly and bitterly, and as usual, bitterness predominated. His tenderness, once soured, always ended by boiling and turning to indignation. He had reached the point where a man tries to make up his mind and to accept that which rends his heart. He was explaining to himself that there was no longer any reason why Marius should return, that if he intended to return, he should have done it long ago, that he must renounce the idea. He was trying to accustom himself to the thought

Starting point is 09:27:56 that all was over, that he should die without having beheld that gentleman again. But his whole nature revolted. His aged paternity would not consent to this. Well, said he, this was his doleful refrain. He will not return. His bald head had fallen upon his breast, and he fixed a melancholy and irritated gaze upon the ashes on his hearth. In the very midst of his reverie, his old servant Basque entered and inquired,

Starting point is 09:28:35 Can monsieur receive Monsieur Marius? The old man sat up, erect, pallid, and like a corpse which rises under the influence of a galvanic shock, all his blood had retreated to his heart. He stammered, Monsieur Marius, what? I don't know, replied Basque, intimidated and put out of countenance by his master's air. I have not seen him. Nicolet came in and said to me, there's a young man here, say that it is Monsieur Marius.

Starting point is 09:29:12 Father Gil Norman stammered in a low voice, Show him in, and he remained in the same attitude with shaking head and his eyes fixed on the door. It opened once more. A young man entered. It was Marius. Marius halted at the door

Starting point is 09:29:34 as though waiting to be bidden to enter. His almost squalid attire was not perceptible in the obscurity caused by the shade. Nothing could be seen but his calm, grave, and strangely sad face. It was several minutes before Father Gil Norman dulled with amazement and joy, could see anything except a brightness, as when one is in the presence of an apparition. He was on the point of swooning. He saw Marius through a dazzling light.

Starting point is 09:30:07 It was certainly he. It certainly he. was, Marius. At last, after the lapse of four years, he grasped him entire, so to speak, in a single glance. He found him noble, handsome, distinguished, well-grown, a complete man, with a suitable mean and a charming air. He felt a desire to open his arms, to call him, to fling himself forward. His heart melted with rapture. Affectionate words swells. and overflowed his breast. At length all his tenderness

Starting point is 09:30:44 came to the light and reached his lips, and by a contrast, which constituted the very foundation of his nature, what came forth was harshness. He said abruptly, What have you come here for? Marius replied with embarrassment.

Starting point is 09:31:02 Monsieur. Monsieur Gil Norman would have liked to have Marius throw himself into his arms. He was displeased, with Marius, and with himself, he was conscious that he was brusque, and that Marius was cold. It caused the good man unendurable and irritating anxiety to feel so tender and forlorn within, and only to be able to be hard outside. Bitterness returned.

Starting point is 09:31:28 He interrupted Marius in a peevish tone. Then why did you come? That then signified, if you do not come to embrace me. Marius looked at his grandfather, whose pallor gave him a face of marble. Monsieur, have you come to beg my pardon? Do you acknowledge your faults? He thought he was putting Marius on the right road, and that the child would yield. Marius shivered. It was the denial of his father that was required of him. He dropped his eyes and replied,

Starting point is 09:32:04 No, sir. Then, exclaimed. the old man impetuously, with a grief that was poignant and full of wrath. What do you want of me? Marius clasped his hands, advanced a step, and said in a feeble and trembling voice, Sir, have pity on me. These words touched, Monsieur Girinormand, uttered a little sooner they would have rendered him tender, but they came too late. The grandfather rose. He supported himself with both hands on his cane. His lips were white, his brow wavered, but his lofty form towered above Marius, as he bowed. "'Pity on you, sir. It is youth demanding pity of the old man of 91. You are entering into

Starting point is 09:32:51 life. I am leaving it. You go to the play, to balls, to the cafe, to the billiard hall. You have wit. You please the women. You are a handsome fellow as for me. I spit on my brands in the heart of summer. You are rich with the only riches that are really such. I possess all the poverty of age, infirmity, isolation. You have your 32 teeth, a good digestion, bright eyes, strength, appetite, health, gaiety, a forest of black hair. I have no longer even white hair. I have lost my teeth. I am losing my legs. I am losing my memory. There are three names of streets that I confound incessantly, the Rue Chardt, the Rue de Chalm, and the Rue Saint-Claude. That is what I have come to.

Starting point is 09:33:40 You have before you the whole future, full of sunshine, and I am beginning to lose my sight. So far am I advanced into the night. You are in love, that is a matter of course. I am beloved by no one in all the world, and you ask pity of me, Pabler. Molière forgot that. If that is the way you jest in the courthouse, monsieur's, the lawyers, I sincerely compliment you. You are droll. And the octogenarian went on in a grave and angry voice. Come now. What do you want of me? Sir, said Marius, I know that my presence is displeasing to you. But I have come merely to ask one thing of you, and then I shall go away

Starting point is 09:34:31 immediately. You are a fool, said the old man, who said that you were to go away. This was the translation of the tender words which lay at the bottom of his heart. Ask my pardon. Throw yourself on my neck. Monsieur Gil Norman felt that Marius would leave him in a few moments, that his harsh reception had repelled the lad, that his hardness was driving him away. He said all this to himself, and it augmented his grief, and as his grief was straightway, convermed. verted into wrath, it increased his harshness. He would have liked to have had Marius understand, and Marius did not understand which made the good man furious. He began again.

Starting point is 09:35:15 What? You deserted me, your grandfather. You left my house to go, no one knows whither. You drove your aunt to despair. You went off. It is easily guessed to lead a bachelor life. It's more convenient to play the dandy, to come in at all hours, to amuse yourself. You have given me no signs of life. You have contracted debts without even telling me to pay them. You have become a smasher of windows and a blusterer, and at the end of four years, you come to me, and that is all you have to say to me. This violent fashion of driving a grandson to tenderness was productive only of silence on the part of Marius. Monsieur Gil Norman folded his arms,

Starting point is 09:36:02 a gesture which with him was peculiarly imperious, and apostrophies Marius bitterly. Let us make an end of this. You have come to ask something of me, you say? Well, what? What is it? Speak. Sir, said Marius, with a look of a man

Starting point is 09:36:20 who feels that he is falling over a precipice. I have come to ask him. your permission to marry. Monsieur Gilnormand rang the bell. Basque, opened the door halfway. Call my daughter! A second later, the door was opened once more. Mademoiselle Gier-Norman did not enter but showed herself.

Starting point is 09:36:44 Marius was standing mute, with pendant arms and a face of a criminal. Monsieur Gilnourman was pacing back and forth in the room. He turned to his daughter and said to her, nothing. It is Monsieur Marius. Say good day to him. Monsieur wishes to marry. That is all. Go away. The curt, hoarse sound of the old man's voice announced a strange degree of excitement. The aunt gazed at Marius with a frightened air, hardly appeared to recognize him, did not allow a gesture or a syllable to escape her, and disappeared at her father's breath,

Starting point is 09:37:22 more swiftly than a straw before the hurricane. In the meantime, Father Gil Norman had returned and placed his back against the chimney-piece once more. You marry, at one and twenty, you have arranged that. You have only a permission to ask, a formality. Sit down, sir. Well, you have had a revolution since I had the honor to see you last. The Jacobins got the upper hand. You must have been delighted.

Starting point is 09:37:59 Are you not a Republican since you are a baron? You can make that agree. The Republic makes a good sauce for the barony. Are you one of those decorated by July? Have you taken the Louvre at all, sir? Quite near here in the Rue Saint-Antoine, opposite the Rue des Normandiere, there is a cannonball encrusted in the wall of the third story of a house with this inscription, July 28, 1830. Go, take a look at that. It produces a good effect. Aha, those friends of yours do pretty things.

Starting point is 09:38:42 By the way, aren't they erecting a fountain in the place of the monument of Monsieur Le Duc de Barry? So... You want to marry? Whom? Can one inquire without indiscretion? He paused. And before Marius had time to answer, he added violently,

Starting point is 09:39:07 Come now! You have a profession, a fortune made? How much do you earn at your trade of lawyer? Nothing, said Marius, with a sort of firmness and resolution that was almost fierce. Nothing? Then all you have to live upon is the twelve hundred livres that I allow you? Marius did not reply, Monsieur Gil Norman continued. Then I understand the girl is rich.

Starting point is 09:39:34 As rich as I am. What? No dowry? No. Expectations. I think not. Utterly naked. What's the father? I don't know.

Starting point is 09:39:49 And what's her name? Mademoiselle Fauchelevent. Foche-Elevant. Ptt! ejaculated the old gentleman. Sir, exclaimed Marius. Monsieur Gilnourmand interrupted him

Starting point is 09:40:08 with the tone of a man who is speaking to himself. That's right. One and twenty years, no profession. Twelve hundred livres a year. Madame la Baron de Pontmercy will go and purchase

Starting point is 09:40:20 of a couple of sous worth of parsley from the froucier. Sir, repeated Marius in the despair of the last hope, which was vanishing. I entreat you. I conjure you in the name of heaven with clasped hands, sir. I throw myself at your feet. Permit me to marry her. The old man burst into a shout of strident and mournful laughter, coughing and laughing at the same time. Ha ha ha ha! You said to yourself,

Starting point is 09:40:53 Padine! I'll go hunt up that old blackhead, that absurd numbskull. What a shame that I'm not twenty-five, how I'd treat him to a nice, respectful summons. How nicely I'd get along without him. It's nothing to me, I'd say to him, You're only too happy to see me, you old idiot. I want to marry. I desire to wed mademoiselle no matter whom,

Starting point is 09:41:17 daughter of Monsieur no matter what. I have no shoes, she has no chemise, that just suits. I want to throw my career, my future, my youth, my life to the dogs. I wish to take a plunge into wretchedness with a woman around my neck. That's an idea, and you must consent to it. And the old fossil will consent. Go, my lad, do as you like. Attach your paving stone, marry your pusset-le-von, your coupe-le-von. Never, sir, never. Father, never! At the tone in which that never was uttered, Marius lost all hope. He traversed the chamber with slow steps, with bowed head, tottering and more like a dying man

Starting point is 09:42:07 than like one merely taking his departure. Monsieur Gilnourman followed him with his eyes, and at the moment when the door opened and Marius was on the point of going, out, he advanced four paces with a senile vivacity of impetuous and spoiled old gentleman, seized Marius by the collar, brought him back energetically into the room, flung him into an armchair, and said to him, tell me all about it. It was that single word, father, which had affected this revolution. Marius stared at him in bewilderment. Monsieur Gil Norman's mobile face was no longer expressive of anything but rough and ineffable good nature.

Starting point is 09:42:51 The grandsire had given way before the grandfather. Come, see here, speak. Tell me about your love affairs. Jabber, tell me everything. Supriesty, how stupid young folks are. Father, repeated Marius. The old man's entire countenance lighted up with indescribable radiance. Yes, that's right.

Starting point is 09:43:15 "'Call me father, and you'll see.' There was now something so kind, so gentle, so open-hearted, and so paternal in this bruspness, that Marius, in the sudden transition from discouragement to hope, was stunned and intoxicated by it, as it were. He was seated near the table. The light from the candles brought out the dilapidation of his costume, which Father Gil Norman regarded with amazement.

Starting point is 09:43:42 "'Well, Father,' said Mary. "'Ah, by the way,' interrupted Monsieur Gil Norman. "'You really have not a penny, then? "'You are dressed like a pickpocket.' "'He rummaged in a drawer, drew forth a purse, "'which he laid on the table. "'Here are a hundred louis. "'Buy yourself a hat!'

Starting point is 09:44:05 "'Father,' pursued Marius, "'my good father. "'If you only knew, I love her. "'You cannot imagine it. "'The first time I saw her was at the look She came there. In the beginning, I did not pay much heed to her, and then, I don't know how it came about, I fell in love with her. Oh, how unhappy that made me. Now at last I see her every day, at her own home. Her father does not know it. Just fancy. They are going away. It is in the garden that we meet, in the evening. Her father means to take her to England. Then I said to myself, I'll go and see my grandfather. and tell him all about the affair. I should go mad first.

Starting point is 09:44:49 I should die. I should fall ill. I should throw myself into the water. I absolutely must marry her, since I should go mad otherwise. This is the whole truth, and I do not think that I have omitted anything. She lives in a garden with an iron fence in the rue plummet.

Starting point is 09:45:07 It is in the neighborhood of the invalide. Father Gil Norman had seated himself with a beaming countenance beside Maddie, As he listened to him and drank in the sound of his voice, he enjoyed at the same time a protracted pinch of snuff. At the words Rue Plumet, he interrupted his inhalation and allowed the remainder of his snuff to fall upon his knees. The Rue Plumet, did you say? Let us see. Are there not barracks in that vicinity? But yes, that's it. Your cousin, Theodore, has spoken to me about it. The Lancer, the officer.

Starting point is 09:45:44 A gay girl, my good friend, a gay girl. Pardieu, yes, the Rue Plumet. It is what used to be called the Rue Plomet. It all comes back to me now. I have heard of that little girl of the iron railing in the Rue Plumet in a garden. Uh, Pamela, your taste is not bad. She is said to be a very tidy creature. Between ourselves, I think that Simpleton of a Lancer has been courting.

Starting point is 09:46:14 her a bit. I don't know where he did it. However, that's not to the purpose. Besides, he is not to be believed. He brags, Marius. I think it quite proper that a young man, like you, should be in love. It's the right thing at your age. I like you better as a lover than a Jacobin. I like you better in love with a petticoes, sa pristine, with twenty petticoats, than with Monsieur de Robespierre. For my part, I will do myself the justice to say that in the line of Sans Coulette. I have never loved anyone but women. Pretty girls are pretty girls, the deuce. There's no objection to that. As for the little one, she receives you without her father's knowledge. Well, that's in the established order of things. I have had adventures of that same

Starting point is 09:47:03 sort myself more than one. Do you know what is done then? One does not take the matter ferociously. one does not precipitate himself into the tragic, one does not make one's mind to marriage, and Monsieur Le Maire with his scarf, one simply behaves like a fellow of spirit. One shows good sense. Slip along, mortals, don't marry. You come and look up your grandfather, who is a good-natured fellow at bottom, and who always has a few rolls of Louis in an old drawer, you say to him, see here, grandfather, and the grandfather. And the grandfather says, that's a simple matter. Youth must amuse itself,

Starting point is 09:47:44 and old age must wear out. I have been young. You will be old. Come, my boy, you shall pass it on to your grandson. Here are two hundred pistoles. Amuse yourself. Duce take it?

Starting point is 09:47:58 Nothing better. That's the way the affair should be treated. You don't marry, but that does no harm, you understand me. Marius, petrified, and incapable of uttering a syllable, made a sign with his head that he did not. The old man burst out laughing, winked his aged eye,

Starting point is 09:48:17 gave him a slap on the knee, stared him full in the face with a mysterious and beaming air, and said to him with the tenderest of shrugs of the shoulder, ha, ha, ha, booby, ha, ha, ha, make her your mistress. Madias turned pale. He had understood nothing of what his grandfather had just said, This twaddle about the Rue Plomet, Pamela, the Barracks, the Lancer,

Starting point is 09:48:44 had passed before Marius like a dissolving view. Nothing of all that could bear any reference to Cosette, who was a lily. The good man was wandering in his mind, but this wandering terminated in words which Marius did understand, and which were a mortal insult to Cosette. Those words, make her your mistress, entered the heart of the strict young man like a sword. He rose, picked up his hat which lay on the floor,

Starting point is 09:49:18 and walked to the door with a firm, assured step. There he turned round, bowed deeply to his grandfather, raised his head erect again, and said, Five years ago you insulted my father. Today you have insulted my wife. I ask nothing more of you, sir. Farewell. Father Gil Norman,

Starting point is 09:49:47 utterly confounded, opened his mouth, extended his arms, tried to rise, and before he could utter a word, the door closed once more, and Marius had disappeared. The old man remained for several minutes motionless, and as though struck by lightning, without the power to speak or breathe,

Starting point is 09:50:08 as though a clenched, fist grasped his throat. At last he tore himself from his armchair, ran so far as a man can run at 91, to the door, opened it, and cried, help, help! His daughter made her appearance. Then the domestics. He began again with a pitiful rattle. Run after him. Bring him back. What have I done to him? He is mad. He is going away. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. This time he will not come back he went to the window which looked out on the street threw it open with his aged and palsied hands leaned out more than half-way while basque and nicolet held him behind and shouted marius marius marius but marius could no longer hear him for at that moment he was turning the corner of the rue san luis the octogenarian raised his hands to his temples two or three times with a an expression of anguish, recoiled tottering and fell back into the armchair, pulseless,

Starting point is 09:51:17 voiceless, tearless, with quivering head and lips which moved with a stupid air, with nothing in his eyes and nothing any longer in his heart, except a gloomy and profound something which resembled night. End of book eight, chapter seven. Chapter 1 to 3 of Book 9 of Le Miserables, Volume 4 by Victor Hugo. This is a Librevox recording. All Libravox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Libravox.org.

Starting point is 09:51:58 Recording by Robert Kuiper Le Miserables, Volume 4 by Victor Hugo, translated by Elizabeth Florence Hapgood. Book 9, Wither Are They Going? chapters one to three. Chapter 1. Jean Valjean. That same day, towards four o'clock in the afternoon, Jean Valjean was sitting alone on the backside of one of the most solitary slopes in the Chant de Mal's. Either from prudence or from a desire to meditate, or simply in consequence of one of those insensible changes of habit which gradually introduced themselves into the existence of everyone,

Starting point is 09:52:37 he now rarely went out with Cosette. He had on his workman's waistcoat and trousers of gray linen, and his long-visored cap concealed his countenance. He was calm and happy now beside Cosette. That which had for a time alarmed and troubled him had been dissipated. But for the last week or two anxieties of another nature had come up. One day, while walking on the boulevard, he had caught sight of Thénardier. Thanks to his disguise, Thénardier had not recognized him. But since that day,

Starting point is 09:53:11 Jean Valjean had seen him repeatedly, and he was now certain that Thénardier was prowling about in their neighborhood. This had been sufficient to make him come to a decision. Moreover, Paris was not tranquil. Political troubles presented this inconvenient feature

Starting point is 09:53:29 for anyone who had anything to conceal in his life that the police had grown very uneasy and very suspicious, and that while seeking to ferret out a man like Pepin or Mori, they might very readily discover a man like Jean Valjean. Jean Valjean had made up his mind to quit Paris and even France and go over to England. He had warned Cosette.

Starting point is 09:53:55 He wished to set out before the end of the week. He had seated himself on the slope in the Chans de Miles, turning over all sorts of thoughts in his mind, the Nardier, the police, the journey, and the difficulty of procuring a passport. He was troubled from all these points of view. Last of all, an inexplicable circumstance, which had just attracted his attention

Starting point is 09:54:20 and from which he had not yet recovered, had added to his state of alarm. On the morning of that very day, when he alone of the household was stirring while strolling in the garden before Cosette's shutters were open. He had suddenly perceived on the wall the following line, engraved, probably with a nail. Sixteen Rue de la Berriere. This was perfectly fresh.

Starting point is 09:54:48 The grooves in the ancient black mortar were white. A tuft of nettles at the foot of the wall was powdered with a fine, fresh plaster. This had probably been written on the preceding night, What was this? A signal for others, a warning for himself? In any case, it was evident that the garden had been violated and that strangers had made their way into it. He recalled the odd incidents which had already alarmed the household. His mind was now filled with this canvas. He took good care not to speak to Cosette of the line written on the wall for fear of alarming her. In the midst of his preoccupations, he perceived from a shadow cast by the sun that someone had halted on the crest of the slope immediately behind him.

Starting point is 09:55:38 He was on the point of turning round when a paper folded in four fell upon his knees as though a hand had dropped it over his head. He took the paper, unfolded it, and read these words written in large characters with a pencil. move away from your house. Jean Valjean sprang hastily to his feet. There was no one on the slope. He gazed all around him and perceived a creature larger than a child, not so large as a man, clad in a gray blouse and trousers of dust-colored cotton velvet,

Starting point is 09:56:13 who was jumping over the parapet and who slipped into the moat of the Champs de Marse. Jean Valjean returned home at once in a very thoughtful mood. Chapter 2. Marius Marius had left Monsieur Gil Normand in despair. He had entered the house with very little hope, and quitted it with immense despair. However, and those who have observed the depths of the human heart will understand this, the officer, the lancer, the nini, cousin Theodil, had left no trace in his mind, not the slightest. The dramatic poet might appear

Starting point is 09:56:54 expect some complications from this revelation made point-blank by the grandfather to the grandson, but what the drama would gain thereby, truth would lose. Marius was at an age when one believes nothing in the line of evil. Later on comes the age when one believes everything. Suspitions are nothing else than wrinkles. Early youth has none of them. That which overwhelmed Otello, glides innocuous over Candide. Suspect Cosette? There are hosts of crimes which Marius could sooner have committed. He began to wander about the streets, the resource of those who suffer.

Starting point is 09:57:37 He thought of nothing so far as he could afterwards remember. At two o'clock in the morning he returned to Corféry's quarters and flung himself without undressing on his mattress. The sun was shining brightly when he sank into that frightful leaden slumber, which permits ideas to go and come in the brain. When he awoke, he saw Courféry, Angéolras, Feilet, and Combeferre, standing in the room with her hats on and all ready to go out. Cufferet said to him, Are you coming to General de Mark's funeral?

Starting point is 09:58:14 It seemed to him that Courféry was speaking Chinese. He went out some time after them. He put in his pocket the pistols, which Javert had given him at the time of the adventure on the 3rd of February, and which had remained in his hands. These pistols were still loaded. It would be difficult to say what vague thought he had in his mind when he took them with him. All day long he prowled about without knowing where he was going. It rained at times.

Starting point is 09:58:45 He did not perceive it. For his dinner, he purchased a penny roll at a baker's, put it in his pocket, and forgot it. It appears that he took a bath in the seine without being aware of it. There are moments when a man has a furnace within his skull. Marius was passing through one of those moments. He no longer hoped for anything, this step he had taken since the preceding evening. He waited for night with feverish impatience. He had but one idea clearly before his mind. This was that at nine o'clock he should see Cosette. This last half. now constituted his whole future. After that, gloom. At intervals as he roamed through the most deserted

Starting point is 09:59:29 boulevards, it seemed to him that he heard strange noises in Paris. He thrust his head out of his reverie and said, is there fighting on hand? At nightfall, at nine o'clock precisely, as he had promised Cosette, he was in the rue plummet. When he approached the grating, he forgot everything. It was 48 hours since he had Cosette. He was about to behold her once more. Every other thought was effaced, and he felt only a profound and unheard-of joy. Those minutes in which one lives centuries always have this sovereign and wonderful property, that at the moment when they are passing, they fill the heart completely. Marius displaced the bar and rushed headlong into the garden. Cosette was not at the spot where she ordinarily waited for him. He traversed the thicket and approached the recess

Starting point is 10:00:21 near the flight of steps. She is waiting for me there, said he. Cosette was not there. He raised his eyes and saw that the shutters of the house were closed. He made the tour of the garden. The garden was deserted. Then he returned to the house and rendered senseless by love, intoxicated, terrified, exasperated with grief and uneasiness.

Starting point is 10:00:43 Like a master who returns home at an evil hour, he tapped on the shutters. He knocked and knocked again, at the risk of seeing the window open and her father's gloomy face make its appearance and demand, What do you want? This was nothing in comparison

Starting point is 10:00:58 with what he dimly caught a glimpse of. When he had rapped, he lifted up his voice and called Cosette. Cosette! he cried. Cosette! he repeated imperiously. There was no reply. All was over. No one in the garden.

Starting point is 10:01:16 No one in the house. Marius fixed his despairing eyes on that dismal house, which was as black and silent as a tomb, and far more empty. He gazed at the stone seat on which he had passed so many adorable hours with Cosette. Then he seated himself on the flight of steps, his heart filled with sweetness and resolution. He blessed his love in the depths of his thought, and he said to himself that, since Cosette was gone, all that there was left for him was to die. All at once he heard a voice which seemed to proceed from the street and which was calling to him through the trees.

Starting point is 10:01:58 Mr. Marius, he started to his feet. Hey? said he. Mr. Marius, are you there? Yes. Mr. Marius went on the voice. Your friends are waiting for you at the barricade of the Rue de la Chondri. This voice was not wholly unfamiliar to him. It resembled the hoarse, rough voice of Eponine. Marius hastened to the gate, thrust aside the movable bar, passed his head through the aperture,

Starting point is 10:02:29 and saw someone who appeared to him to be a young man, disappearing at the run, into the gloom. Chapter 3. Monsieur Mabeuf Jean Valjean's purse was of no use to Monsieur Mabeuf. Monsieur Mabeuf, in his venerable infantile austerity, had not accepted the gift of the stars. He had not admitted that a star could coin itself into Louis d'Or. He had not divined that what had fallen from heaven had come from Gavroche. He had taken the purse to the police commissioner of the courtier.

Starting point is 10:03:08 as a lost article placed by the finder at the disposal of claimants. The purse was actually lost. It is unnecessary to say that no one claimed it and that it did not succor Monsieur Mabeuf. Moreover, Monsieur Mabeuf had continued his downward course. His experiments on indigo had been no more successful in the Gardeau de Plante than in his garden at Ostrelitz. the year before he had owed his housekeeper's wages. Now, as we have seen, he owed three-quarters of his rent.

Starting point is 10:03:46 The pawnchap had sold the plates of his flora after the expiration of 13 months. Some coppersmith had made stupans of them. His copper plates gone, and being unable to complete even the incomplete copies of his flora which were in his possession, he had disposed of the text at a miserable price as waste paper to a second-hand bookseller. Nothing now remained to him of his life's work. He set to work to eat up the money for these copies. When he saw that this wretched resource was becoming exhausted, he gave up his garden and allowed it to run to waste. Before this, a long time before, he had given up his two eggs and the morsel of beef,

Starting point is 10:04:32 which he ate from time to time. He dined on bread and potatoes. He had sold the last of his furniture, then all duplicates of his bedding, his clothing, his blankets, then his herbariums and prints, but he still retained his most precious books, many of which were of the greatest rarity. Among others, the quadrine historic de la Béble, edition of 1560, La Concordance de Béble by Pierre de Bess, The Marguerites de la Marguerite of Jean de la Haye, with a dedication to the Queen of Navarre. The book of the charge is dignite of the ambassador by the sieur de Ville Haughtmann, a Florilicum rabbinicum of 1644, a tibulus of 1567 with this magnificent inscription, Venetus in Oedipus Manutianus.

Starting point is 10:05:24 And lastly, a Diogenes Laertius printed at Lyon in 16. which contained the famous variant of the manuscript 411-13th century of the Vatican, and those of the two manuscripts of Venice 393 and 394, consulted with such fruitful results by Henri Estienne, and all the passages in Doric dialect, which are only found in the celebrated manuscript of the 12th century belonging to the Naples Library. Monsieur Mabufe never had any fire in his chamber and went to bed at sundown in order not to consume any candles. It seemed as though he had no longer any neighbors.

Starting point is 10:06:08 People avoided him when he went out. He perceived the fact. The wretchedness of a child interests a mother. The wretchedness of a young man interests a young girl. The wretchedness of an old man interests no one. It is of all distresses the co-werects the cold. oldest. Still, Father Maburf had not entirely lost his childlike serenity. His eyes acquired some vivacity when they rested on his books, and he smiled when he gazed at the Diogenes Lierteus, which was a

Starting point is 10:06:41 unique copy. His bookcase with glass doors was the only piece of furniture which he has kept beyond what was strictly indispensable. One day Mother Plutarch said to him, I have no money to buy any dinner. What she called dinner was a loaf of bread and four or five potatoes. On credit, suggested Monsieur Mabeuf. You know very well that people refuse me. Monsieur Mabeuf opened his bookcase, took a long look at all his books one after another, as a father obliged to decimate his children, would gaze upon them before making a choice,

Starting point is 10:07:22 then seized one hastily, put it under his arm, and went out. He returned two hours later, without anything under his arm, laid thirty sous upon the table, and said, You will get something for dinner. From that moment forth, Mother Plutarch saw a somber veil, which was never more lifted, descend over the old man's candid face. On the following day, on the day after, and on the day after that, it had to be done again. Monsieur Mabeuf went out with a book and returned with a coin.

Starting point is 10:08:02 As the second-hand dealers perceived that he was forced to sell, they purchased of him for 20 sous, that for which he had paid 20 francs, sometimes at those very shops. Volume by volume, the whole library went the same road. he said at times, But I am 80, as though he cherished some secret hope that he should arrive at the end of his days

Starting point is 10:08:27 before reaching the end of his books. His melancholy increased. Once, however, he had a pleasure. He had gone out with a Robert Estienne, which he had sold for 35 sous under the K. Malacays, and he returned with an Aldous, which he had bought for 40 sous in the Rue de Gris. I-O-5 Sue, he said, beaming on Mother Plutarch.

Starting point is 10:08:54 That day he had no dinner. He belonged to the Horticultural Society. His destitution became known there. The president of the society came to see him, promised to speak to the Minister of Agriculture and Commerce about him, and did so. Why what? exclaimed the Minister. I should think so.

Starting point is 10:09:15 An old savant, a botanist, inoffensive man. Something must be done for him. On the following day, Monsieur Mabeuf received an invitation to dine with the minister. Trembling with joy, he showed the letter to Mother Plutarch, We are saved, said he. On the day appointed, he went to the minister's house. He perceived that his ragged cravat, his long square coat, and his waxed shoes astonished the ushers. No one spoke to him, not even the minister. About ten o'clock in the evening, while he was still waiting for a word,

Starting point is 10:09:52 he heard the minister's wife, a beautiful woman in a low-neck gown, whom he had not ventured to approach, inquire, Who is that old gentleman? He returned home on foot at midnight in a driving rainstorm. He had sold an Elsevier

Starting point is 10:10:11 to pay for a carriage in which to go thither. He had acquired the habit of reading a few pages in his Diogenes Laertius every night before he went to bed. He knew enough Greek to enjoy the peculiarities of the text which he owned. He had now no other enjoyment. Several weeks passed. All at once, Mother Plutarch fell ill. There is one thing sadder than having no money with which to buy bread at the bakers, and that is having no money to purchase drugs at the apothecaries. One evening, the doctor had ordered a very expensive potion, and the malady was growing worse. A nurse was required. Monsieur Mabeuf opened his bookcase. There was nothing

Starting point is 10:11:00 there. The last volume had taken its departure. All that was left to him was Diogenes Leertius. He put this unique copy under his arm and went out. It was the four. It was the four 4th of June 1832. He went to the Port Saint-Jacques, to Royal's successor, and returned with 100 francs. He laid the pile of five franc pieces on the old serving woman's nightstand, and returned to his chamber without saying a word. On the following morning, at dawn, he seated himself on the overturned post in his garden, and he could be seen over the top of the hedge, sitting the whole morning motionless, with drooping head, his eyes vaguely fixed on the withered flower beds. It rained at intervals the old man did not seem to perceive the fact.

Starting point is 10:11:56 In the afternoon, extraordinary noises broke out in Paris. They resembled shots and the clamors of the multitude. Father Maburf raised his head. He saw a gardener passing and inquired, "'What is it?' The gardener spayed on back, replied in the most unconcerned tone, "'It's the riots.' "'What riots? "'Yes, they are fighting.'

Starting point is 10:12:23 "'Why are they fighting?' "'Ah, good heavens!' ejaculated the gardener. "'In what direction?' went on Monsieur Mabourf. "'In the neighbourhood of the Arsenal.' Father Maburf went to his room, took his hat mechanically, sought for a book to place under his arm, found none, said, Ah, truly, and went off with a bewildered air. End of Book 9, chapters 1 to 3. Chapter 1 of Book 10 of Les Miserables, Volume 4 by Victor Hugo.

Starting point is 10:13:05 This is a Libre Vox recording. If Librivox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Librivox.org. Recording by Kate McKenzie. Les Miserables, Volume 4 by Victor Hugo, translated by Isabel Florence Hapgood. Book 10, the 5th of June, 1832. Chapter 1. The surface of the question. Of what is revolt composed? Of nothing and of everything.

Starting point is 10:13:32 Of an electricity disengaged, little by little. of a flame, suddenly darting forth, of a wandering force, of a passing breath. This breath encounters heads which speak, brains which dream, souls which suffer, passions which burn, wretchedness which howls and bears them away, whither, at random, athwart the state, the laws, athwart prosperity and the insolence of others, irritated convictions, embittered enthusiasms, agitated indignations, instincts of war which have been repressed, youthful courage which has been exalted. generous blindness, curiosity, the taste for change, the thirst for the unexpected, the sentiment which causes one to take pleasure in reading the posters for the new play, and love, the prompters whistle at the theatre, the vague hatreds, rancers, disappointments, every vanity which thinks that destiny has bankrupted it, discomfort, empty dreams, ambitious that are hedged

Starting point is 10:14:26 about, whoever hopes for a downfall, some outcome, in short at the very bottom, the rabble, that mud which catches fire, such are the elements of revolt, that which is grandest and that which is basest. The beings who prowl outside of all bounds, awaiting an occasion, bohemians, vagrants, vagabonds of the crossroads, those who sleep at night in a desert of houses with no other roof than the cold clouds of heaven, those who, each day, demand their bread from chance and not from toil, the unknown of poverty and nothingness, the bare-armed, the barefooted, belong to revolt. Whoever cherishes in his soul a secret revolt against any deed whatever on the part of the state of life or a fate is ripe for riot, and as soon as it

Starting point is 10:15:09 makes its appearance, he begins to quiver and to feel himself born away with the whirlwind. Revolt is a sort of water spout in the social atmosphere which forms suddenly in certain conditions of temperature, and which, as it eddies about mounts, descends, thunders, tears, raises, crushes, demolishes, uproats, bearing with it great natures and small, the strong man and the feeble mind, the tree trunk on the stalk of straw. Woe to him whom it bears away, as well as to him whom it strikes. It breaks the one against the other. It communicates to those whom it sees as an indescribable and extraordinary power.

Starting point is 10:15:45 It fills the first comer with the force of events. It converts everything into projectiles. It makes a cannonball of a rough stone and a general of a porter. If we are to believe certain oracles of crafty political views, a little revolt is desirable from the point of view of power. system. Revolt strengthened those governments which it does not overthrow. It puts the army to the test. It consecrates the bourgeoisie. It draws out the muscles of the police. It demonstrates the force of the social framework. It is an exercise in gymnastics. It is almost hygiene. Power is in better health

Starting point is 10:16:19 after a revolt, as a man is, after a good rubbing down. Revolt, 30 years ago, was regarded from still other points of view. There is for everything a theory, which proclaims itself good sense, philintus against Alcestis, mediation offered between the false and the true, explanation, admonition, rather haughty extenuation, which, because it is mingled with blame and excuse, thinks itself wisdom, and is often only pedantry. A whole political school called the golden mean has become the outcome of this, as between cold water and hot water, it is the lukewarm water party, This school with its false depth, all on the surface, which dissects effects without going back to first causes, chides from its height of a demi-science, the agitation of the public square.

Starting point is 10:17:06 If we listen to this school, the riots which complicated the affair of 1830, deprived that great event of a portion of its purity. The revolution of July had been a fine popular gale, abruptly followed by blue sky. They made the cloudy sky reappear. they caused that revolution, a fur-so-remarkable for its unanimity, to degenerate into a quarrel. In the Revolution of July, as an old progress accomplished by fits and starts,

Starting point is 10:17:32 there had been secret fractures. These riots rendered them perceptible. It might have been said, ah, this is broken. After the Revolution of July, one was sensible only of deliverance. After the riots, one was conscious of a catastrophe. All revolt closes the shops,

Starting point is 10:17:48 depresses the funds, throws the exchange into consternation, suspense commerce, clogs business, precipitates failures. No more money. Private fortunes rendered uneasy. Public credit shaken. Industry disconcerted.

Starting point is 10:18:01 Capital withdrawing, worker to discount. Fear everywhere. Counter-shocks in every town. Hence golfs. It has been calculated that the first day of a riot cost France 20 millions. The second day 40, the third 60, a three days uprising,

Starting point is 10:18:15 costs 120 millions. That is to say, if only the financial result, be taken into consideration. It is equivalent to a disaster, a shipwreck or a lost battle which should annihilate a fleet of sixty ships of the line. No doubt historically, uprisings have their beauty. The war of the pavements is no less grandiose, and no less pathetic than the war of thickets. In the one there is the soil of forests, in the other the heart of cities. The one has Jean-choin, the other has a Jean. Revolts have illuminated with a red glare all the most original points of the Parisian character, generosity, devotion, stormy gaiety, students proving that bravery

Starting point is 10:18:52 forms part of intelligence, the National Guard invincible, bivalax of shopkeepers, fortresses of street urchins, contempt of death on the part of passes by. Schools and legions clash together. After all, between the combatants, there was only a difference of age. The race is the same. It is the same stoical men who died at the age of 20 for their ideas, at 40 for their families. The army always a sad thing in civil wars, opposed prudence to audacity. Uprisings, while proving popular intrepidity, also educated the courage of the bourgeois. This is well, but is all this worth a bloodshed? And to the bloodshed, add the future darkness, progress compromised, uneasiness among the best men,

Starting point is 10:19:33 honest liberals in despair, foreign absolutism happy in these wounds dealt to revolution by its own hand, the vanquished of 1830 triumphing and saying, we told you so. Ad Paris enlarged, possibly, but France most assuredly diminished. Add, for all must needs be told, the massacres, which have too often dishonoured the victory of order, grown ferocious over liberty gone mad.

Starting point is 10:19:57 To sum up all, uprisings have been disastrous. Thus speaks that approximation to wisdom, with which the bourgeoisie, that approximation to the people, so willingly contends itself. For our part, we reject this one, word uprisings is too large and consequently as too convenient. We make a distinction between one popular movement and another popular movement. We do not inquire whether an uprising costs as much as a

Starting point is 10:20:22 battle. Why a battle in the first place? Here the question of war comes up. Is war less of a scourge than an uprising is of a calamity? And then, are all uprising's calamities? And what if the revolt of July did cost 120 millions? The establishment of Philip V in Spain cost France two million. even at the same price, we should prefer the 14th of July. However, we reject these figures, which appear to be reasons and which are only words. An uprising being given, we examine it by itself. In all that is said by the doctrinairean objection above presented, there is no question of anything but effect.

Starting point is 10:21:00 We seek the cause. We will be explicit. End of Book 10, Chapter 1. Recording by Kate McKenzie. Chapter 2 of Book 10. of Les Miserables, Volume 4 by Victor Hugo. This is a Libravox recording. All Libravox recordings are in the public domain.

Starting point is 10:21:21 For more information or to volunteer, please visit Libravox.org. Recording by Caitlin Tetmayer. Le Miserab Volume 4 by Victor Hugo. Translated by Isabel Florence Hapgood. Book 10, the 5 June 1832. Chapter 2, The Root of the Matter. There is such a thing as an uproar rising, and there is such a thing as insurrection. These are two separate phases of wrath. One is in the

Starting point is 10:21:51 wrong, the other is in the right. In democratic states, the only ones which are founded on justice, it sometimes happens that the fraction usurps. Then the whole rises and the necessary claim of its rights may proceed as far as resort to arms. In all questions which result from collective sovereignty, the war of the whole against the fraction is insurrection. The attack of the fraction against the whole is revolt. According as the tuileries contain a king or the convention, they are justly or unjustly attacked. The same canon, pointed against the populace,

Starting point is 10:22:30 is wrong on the 10th of August and right on the 14th of Vondamier. Unlike in appearance, fundamentally different in reality, The Swiss defend the false, Bonaparte defends the true. That which universal suffrage has effected in its liberty and in its sovereignty cannot be undone by the street. It is the same in things pertaining purely to civilization. The instinct of the masses, clear-sighted today, may be troubled tomorrow. The same fury legitimate when directed against Trey and absurd when directed against Turgot. The destruction of machines, the pillage of warehouses, the breaking of rails, the demolition of docks,

Starting point is 10:23:18 the false roots of multitudes, the refusal by the people of justice to progress, Ramos assassinated by students, Rousseau driven out of Switzerland and stoned, that is revolt. Israel against Moses, Athens against Foshin, Rome against Cicero, that is an uprising. Paris against the Bastille, that is insurrection. The soldiers against Alexander, the sailors against Christopher Columbus. This is the same revolt. Impious revolt. Why?

Starting point is 10:23:52 Because Alexander is doing for Asia with the sword, that which Christopher Columbus is doing for America with the compass. Alexander, like Columbus, is finding a world. These gifts of a world to civilization are such augmentations of light that all resistance in that case is culpable. Sometimes the populace counterfeits fidelity to itself. The masses are traitors to the people. Is there, for example, anything stranger

Starting point is 10:24:21 than that long and bloody protest of dealers in contraband salt, a legitimate chronic revolt, which at the decisive moment, on the day of salvation, at the very hour of popular victory, espouses the throne, turns into shonnery, and from having been an insurrection against becomes an uprising for somber masterpieces of ignorance. The contraband salt dealer escapes the royal gibbets

Starting point is 10:24:49 and with a rope's end round his neck mounts the white cockade. Death to the salt duties brings forth, Long live the king! The assassins of St. Bartholome, the cutthroats of September, the manslaughterers of Avignon, the assassins of Colourers, of Colligny, the assassins of Madame Lambal, the assassins of Brune, Michelet, Verdez,

Starting point is 10:25:14 Cadinets, the companions of Jihu, the Chevaliers of Brassard, behold an uprising. La Vendee is a grand Catholic uprising. The sound of right in movement is recognizable. It does not always proceed from the trembling of excited masses. There are mad rages, there are cracked bells, all toxins do not give out the sound of bronze. The brawl of passions and ignorances is quite another thing from the shock of progress. Show me in what direction you are going. Rise, if you will, but let it be that you may grow great. There is no insurrection except in a forward direction. Any other sort of rising is bad. Every violent step towards the rear is a revolt. To retreat is to commit a deed of violence against the human race.

Starting point is 10:26:04 Insurrection is a fit of rage on the part of truth. The pavements which the uprising disturbs give forth the spark of right. These pavements bequeath to the uprising only their mud. Dantan against Louis XIV is insurrection. A bear against Dantan is revolt. Hence it results that if insurrection in given cases may be, as Lafayette says, the most holy of duties, an uprising may be the most fatal of cruxel. crimes. There is also a difference in the intensity of heat. Insurrection is often a volcano.

Starting point is 10:26:41 Revolt is often only a fire of straw. Revolt, as we have said, is sometimes found among those in power. Polignac is a rioter. Camille de Moulin is one of the governing powers. Insurrection is sometimes resurrection. The solution of everything by universal suffrage being an absolutely modern fact, and all history anterior to this fact being for the space of four thousand years filled with violated right, and the suffering of peoples, each epoch of history brings with it that protest of which it is capable. Under the Caesars, there was no insurrection, but there was juvenile. The facet indignatio replaces the gracchi. Under the Caesars, there is the exile to Saini. There is also the man of the anales. We do not speak of the immense exile of Patmos, who, on his part also,

Starting point is 10:27:39 overwhelms the real world with a protest in the name of the ideal world, who makes of his vision an enormous satire and casts on Rome Nineveh, on Rome Babylon, on Rome Sodom, the flaming reflection of the apocalypse. John on his rock is the sphinx on its pedestal. We may understand him, he is a Jew, and it is Hebrew, but the man who writes the Analis is of the Latin race. Let us rather say he is a Roman. As the Nero's reign in a black way, they should be painted to match. The work of the graving tool alone would be too pale. There must be poured into the channel a concentrated prose which bites.

Starting point is 10:28:22 Despots count for something in the question of philosophers. A word that is chained is a terrible word. The writer doubles and troubles his style when silence is imposed on a nation by its master. From this silence there arises a certain mysterious plenitude which filters into thought and there congeals into bronze. The compression of history produces conciseness in the historian. The granite solidity of such and such a celebrated prose is nothing but the accumulation effected by the tyrant. tyranny constrains the writer to conditions of diameter which are augmentations of force. The Ciceronian period, which hardly sufficed for Verus, would be blunted on Caligula.

Starting point is 10:29:09 The less spread of sail in the phrase, the more intensity in the blow. Tacitus thinks with all his might. The honesty of a great heart, condensed in justice and truth, overwhelms as with lightning. Be it remarked in passing, that Tacitus is not historically superposed upon Caesar. The Tiberi were reserved for him. Caesar and Tacitus are two successive phenomena, a meeting between whom seems to be mysteriously avoided by the one who, when he sets the centuries on the stage, regulates the entrances and the exits.

Starting point is 10:29:47 Caesar is great, Tacitus is great. God spares these two greatnesses by not allowing them to clash with one another. The guardian of justice in striking Caesar might strike too hard and be unjust. God does not will it. The great wars of Africa and Spain, the pirates of Sicily destroyed, civilization introduced into Gaul, into Brittany, into Germany. All this glory covers the Rubicon. There is here a sort of delicacy of the divine justice, hesitating to let loose upon the illustrious

Starting point is 10:30:21 usurper, the formidable historian, spare it. Caesar, Tacitus, and according extenuating circumstances to genius. Certainly, despotism remains despotism, even under the despot of genius. There is corruption under all illustrious tyrants, but the moral pest is still more hideous under infamous tyrants. In such reigns, nothing veils the shame, and those who make examples, Tacitus, as well as juvenile, slap this ignominy which cannot reply in the face more usefully in the presence of all humanity. Rome smells worse under Vitellius than under Silla. Under Claudius and under Domitian, there is a deformity of baseness

Starting point is 10:31:08 corresponding to the repulsiveness of the tyrant. The villainy of slaves is a direct product of the despot. A miasma exhales from these cowering consciences wherein the master is reflected. Public powers are unclean, hearts are small, consciences are dull, souls are like vermin. Thus it is under Caracalla, thus it is under Cometus, thus it is under Helia Gabulus, while from the Roman Senate under Caesar, there comes nothing but the odor of the dung which is peculiar to the Ares of the Eagles. Hence the Advent, apparently tardy, of the Tacitus's and the juveniles, it is in the hour for evidence that the demonstrator makes his appearance.

Starting point is 10:31:57 But juvenile and tacitus, like Isaiah in biblical times, like Dante in the Middle Ages, is man. Riot and insurrection are the multitude, which is sometimes right and sometimes wrong. In the majority of cases, riot proceeds from a material fact. Insurrection is always a moral phenomenon. Riot is Massanielo, insurrection, Spartacian. Insurrection borders on mind, riot on the stomach. Gaster grows irritated, but Gaster, assuredly, is not always in the wrong. In questions of famine, riot, Buzonké, for example, holds a true, pathetic, and just point of departure. Nevertheless, it remains a riot. Why? It is because,

Starting point is 10:32:43 right at bottom, it was wrong in form. Shy, although in the right, violent, although strong, it struck at random. It walked like a blind elephant. It left behind it the corpses of old men, of women, and of children. It wished the blood of inoffensive and innocent persons without knowing why. The nourishment of the people is a good object. To massacre them is a bad means. All armed protest, even the most legitimate, even that of the 10th of August, even that of July 14th, begin with the same troubles. Before the right gets set free, there is foam and tumult. In the beginning, the insurrection is a riot, just as a river is a torrent.

Starting point is 10:33:28 Ordinarily, it ends in that ocean, revolution. Sometimes, however, coming from those lofty mountains which dominate the moral horizon, justice, wisdom, reason, right, formed of the pure snow of the ideal, after a long fall from rock to rock, after having reflected the sky in its transatlice, and increased by a hundred affluence in the majestic mean of triumph, insurrection is suddenly lost in some quagmire, as the Rhine is in a swamp. All this is of the past, the future is another thing. Universal suffrage has this admirable property that it dissolves riot in its inception,

Starting point is 10:34:10 and by giving the vote to insurrection, it deprives it of its arms. The disappearance of wars, of street wars as well as of wars on the frontiers, such is the inevitable progression. Whatever today may be, tomorrow will be peace. However, insurrection, riot, and points of difference between the former and the latter. The bourgeois, properly speaking, knows nothing of such shades. In his mind, all is sedition, rebellion pure and simple, the revolt of the dog against his master, an attempt to bite whom must be punished by the chain and the kennel, barking, snapping, until such day as the head of the dog, suddenly enlarged,

Starting point is 10:34:53 is outlined vaguely in the gloom face to face with the lion. Then the bourgeois shouts, Long live the people! This explanation given, what does the movement of June 1832 signify so far as history is concerned? Is it a revolt? Is it an insurrection? It may happen to us, in placing this formidable event on the stage to say revolt now and then,

Starting point is 10:35:18 but merely to distinguish superficial facts and always preserving the distinction between revolt, the form and insurrection, the foundation. This movement of 1832 had, in its rapid outbreak and in its melancholy extinction, so much grandeur that even those who see in it only an uprising never refer to it otherwise than with respect. For them, it is like a relic of 1830.

Starting point is 10:35:43 excited imaginations, say they, are not to be calmed in a day. A revolution cannot be cut off short. It must needs undergo some undulations before it returns to a state of rest, like a mountain sinking into the plain. There are no Alps without their Jura, nor Pyrenees without the Asturias. This pathetic crisis of contemporary history, which the memory of Parisians calls the epoch of the riots, is certainly a characteristic.

Starting point is 10:36:13 hour amid the stormy hours of this century. A last word before we enter on the recital. The facts which we are about to relate belong to that dramatic and living reality which the historian sometimes neglects for lack of time and space. There, nevertheless, we insist upon it is life, palpitation, human tremor. Petty details, as we think we have already said, are, so to speak, the foliage of great events and are lost in the distance of history. The epoch, surnamed of the riots, abounds in details of this nature. Judicial inquiries have not revealed, and perhaps have not sounded the depths, for another reason than history.

Starting point is 10:36:56 We shall therefore bring to light among the known and published peculiarities, things which have not heretofore been known, about facts over which have passed the forgetfulness of some and the death of others. The majority of the actors in these gigantic scenes have disappeared, beginning with the very next day they held their peace, but of what we shall relate, we shall be able to say, we have seen this. We alter a few names, for history relates and does not inform against, but the deed which we shall paint will be genuine. In accordance with the conditions of the book which we are now writing, we shall show only one side and one episode, and certainly the least known

Starting point is 10:37:34 that of the two days, the fifth and the sixth of June 1832, but we shall do it in such wise that the reader may catch a glimpse beneath the gloomy veil which we are about to lift of the real form of this frightful public adventure. End of Book 10, Chapter 2. Recording by Caitlin Tepmeyer, Emos, Philippines, www. www.c-A-T-L-Y-N-I-S-H-E-R dot X-A-N-G-A.com. Chapter 3 of Book 10 of Les Miserables, Volume 4 by Victor Hugo. This is a liberal. Libravox recording, all Libravox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visitlibrovox.org. Recording by Robert Kuyper.

Starting point is 10:38:28 Les Miserables, Volume 4 by Victor Hugo, translated by Elizabeth Florence Hapgood, Book 10, the 5th of June, 1832. Chapter 3. A Burial. An occasion to be born again. In the spring of 1832, although the cholera had been chilling all mines for the last three months, and had cast over their agitation an indescribable and gloomy pacification, Paris had already long been ripe for commotion. As we have said, the great city resembles a piece of artillery.

Starting point is 10:39:09 When it is loaded, it suffices for a spark to fall, and the shot is discharged. In June 1832, the spark was the death of General Lamarck. Lamarck was a man of renown and of action. He had had in succession under the empire and under the restoration the sorts of bravery requisite for the two epochs, the bravery of the battlefield and the bravery of the tribune. He was as eloquent as he had been valiant. A sword was discernible in his speech. Like Foy, his predecessor, after upholding the command, he upheld liberty. He sat between the left and the extreme left, beloved of the people, because he accepted the chances of the future, beloved of the populace, because he had served the emperor well.

Starting point is 10:40:03 He was in company with Compt Gerard and Rouet, one of Napoleon's marshals in Petto. The treaties of 1815 removed him as a personal offense. He hated Wellington with a downright hatred which pleased the multitude, and for 17 years he majestically preserved the sadness of Waterloo, paying hardly any attention to intervening events. In his death agony at his last hour, he clasped to his breast a sword which had been presented to him by the officers of the hundred days. Napoleon had died uttering the word army, Lamarck, uttering the word country.

Starting point is 10:40:47 His death, which was expected, was dreaded by the people as a loss, and by the government as an occasion. This death was an affliction. Like everything that is bitter, affliction may turn to revolt. This is what took place. On the preceding evening, and on the morning of the 5th of June, the day appointed for a la marx burial the fobert san antoine which the procession was to touch at assumed a formidable aspect this tumultuous network of streets was filled with rumors they armed themselves as best they might joiners carried off door-wates of their establishments to break down doors one of them had made himself a dagger of a stocking weaver's hook by breaking off the hook and sharpening the stump. Another, who was in a fever to attack, slept wholly dressed for three days. A carpenter named Lombier met a comrade who asked him, "'Whither are you going?'

Starting point is 10:41:54 "'Eh? Well, I have no weapons.' "'What then?' "'I'm going to my timber yard to get my compasses.' "'What for?' "'I don't know,' said Lombier. A certain Jacqueline, an expeditious man, accosted some passing artisans. Come here, you! He treated them to ten sous worth of wine and said,

Starting point is 10:42:21 Have you work? No. Go to Fie Pierre between the Barrier-Charon and the Barrier-Montreal, and you will find work. At Fierre's, they found cartridges and arms. certain well-known leaders were going the rounds that is to say running from one house to another to collect their men at barthelmys near the barrier de tron at capels near the petit chapeau the drinkers accosted each other with a grave air they were heard to say have you your pistol under my blouse an you under my shirt In the Rue Traverseer in front of the bland workshop and in the yard of the Maison Brouli in front of tool-makers Berniers, groups whispered together. Among them was observed a certain Mavo, who never remained more than a week in one shop as the masters always discharged him because they were obliged to dispute with him every day.

Starting point is 10:43:24 Mavaux was killed the following day at the barricade of the Rue Menil Montaigne. Prito, who was destined to perish also in the struggle, and to the question, what is your object, he replied, insurrection. Workmen assembled at the corner of the Rue de Bersie, waited for a certain Le Marín, the revolutionary agent for the Foburg Saint-Mersault. Watchwords were exchanged almost publicly. On the 5th of June, accordingly, a day of mingled rain and sun, General Lamarck's funeral procession traversed Paris with a military pomp, somewhat augmented through precaution. Two battalions with draped drums and reversed arms, 10,000 national guards with their swords at their sides, escorted the coffin. The hearse was drawn by young men. The officers of the invalides came immediately behind it,

Starting point is 10:44:20 bearing laurel branches. Then came an innumerable, strange, agitated multitude, The sectionaires of the friends of the people, the law school, the medical school, refugees of all nationalities, and Spanish, Italian, German, and Polish flags, tricolored horizontal banners, every possible sort of banner, children waving green boughs, stone cutters and carpenters who were on strike at the moment, printers who were recognizable by their paper caps, March two by two, three by three, Uttering cries, nearly all of them brandishing sticks, some banishing sabers, without order and yet with a single soul. Now a tumultuous route, again a column. Squads chose themselves leaders. A man armed with a pair of pistols in full view, seemed to pass the host in review, and the files separated before him. On the side alleys of the boulevards,

Starting point is 10:45:20 in the branches of the trees, on balconies, in windows, on the roof, swarmed the heads of men, women and children. All eyes were filled with anxiety. An armed throng was passing, and a terrified throng looked on. The government on its side was taking observations. It observed with its hand on its sword. Four squadrons of carabineers could be seen at the Place Louis Caes, in their saddles, with their trumpets at their head, cartridge boxes filled and muskets loaded, all in readiness to march. In the Latin country and in the Gardin de Plaint,

Starting point is 10:46:00 the municipal guard echelon from street to street. At the Hall Ovin, a squadron of dragoons, at the grave half of the 12th light infantry, the other half being at the Bastille, the sixth dragoons at the Celestines, and the courtyard of the Louvre full of artillery. The remainder of the troops were confined to their barracks without reckoning the regiments of the environs of Paris.

Starting point is 10:46:27 Power being uneasy, held suspended over the menacing multitude 24,000 soldiers in the city, and 30,000 in the Banniers. Divers' reports were in circulation in the cortege. Legitimous tricks were hinted at. They spoke of the Duke de Reichstad, whom God had marked out for death at that very moment when the populace were designating him for the empire. One personage, whose name has remained unknown, announced that at a given hour two overseers,

Starting point is 10:46:59 who had been won over, would throw open the doors of a factory of arms to the people. That which predominated on the uncovered brows of the majority of those present was enthusiasm mingled with dejection. Here and there also, in that multitude given over to such violence, violent but noble emotions, there were visible genuine visages of criminals and ignoble mouths which said, let us plunder. There are certain agitations which stir up the bottoms of marshes and make

Starting point is 10:47:32 clouds of mud rise through the water, a phenomenon to which well-drilled policemen are no strangers. The procession proceeded, with feverish slowness from the house of the deceased by way of the boulevards as far as the Bastille. It rained from time to time. The rain mattered nothing to that throng. Many incidents. The coffin borne round the von Dome column. Stones thrown at the Duke de Fritz James, who was seen on a balcony with his hat on his head. The gallic cock torn from a popular flag and dragged in the mire. A policeman wounded with a blow from a sword at the Port Saint-Martine, an officer of the 12th light infantry saying aloud, I am a Republican.

Starting point is 10:48:22 The polytechnic school coming up unexpectedly against orders to remain at home. The shouts of, long live the polytechnique, long live the republic, marked the passage of the funeral train. At the Bastille, long lines of curious and formidable people who descended from the Foubertas, San Antoine, affected a junction with a procession, and a certain terrible seething began to agitate the throng. One man was heard to say to another, Do you see that fellow with a red beard?

Starting point is 10:48:56 He's the one who will give the word when we are to fire. It appears that this red beard was present at another riot, the Quinisette affair, entrusted with this same function. The hearse passed the Bastille, traversed the small bridge, and reached the esplanade of the baronade of the baronet. bridge of Ostolitz. There it halted. The crowd, surveyed at that moment with a bird's eye view, would have presented the aspect of a comet whose head was on the esplanade and whose tail spread out over the Céberdon, covered the bastille, and was prolonged on the boulevard as far as Port

Starting point is 10:49:34 Saint-Martine. A circle was traced around the hearst. The vast route held its peace. Lafayette spoke and bad Lamarque farewell. This was a touching an August instant, all heads uncovered, all hearts beat high. All at once, a man on horseback, clad in black, made his appearance in the middle of the group with a red flag. Others say with a pike surmounted with a red liberty cap. Lafayette turned his head.

Starting point is 10:50:08 Exelman's quitted the procession. This red flag raised a storm. and disappeared in the midst of it. From the Boulevard Bordeaux, to the bridge of Austerlitz, one of those clamors which resembled billows stirred the multitude. Two prodigious shouts went up. Lamarck to the Pantheon, Lafayette to the town hall! Some young men, amid the declamations of the throng,

Starting point is 10:50:36 harnessed themselves and began to drag Le Mark in the hearse across the bridge of Austerlitz and Lafayette in a hackneyed coach along the Caymoreland. In the crowd which surrounded and cheered Lafayette, it was noticed that a German showed himself named Ludwig Snyder, who died a centenarian afterwards, who had also been in the war of 1776, and who had fought at Trenton under Washington and at Brandywine under Lafayette. In the meantime, the municipal cavalry on the last, left bank had been set in motion and came to bar the bridge. On the right bank, the dragoons emerged from the Celestine and deployed along the Caymoreland. The men who were dragging Lafayette

Starting point is 10:51:23 suddenly caught sight of them at the corner of the quay and shouted, the dragoons. The dragoons advanced at a walk in silence, with their pistols in their holsters, their swords in their scabbards, their guns slung in their leather sockets, with an air of, of gloomy expectation. They halted 200 paces from the little bridge. The carriage in which sat Lafayette advanced to them, their ranks opened and allowed it to pass, and then closed behind it.

Starting point is 10:51:55 At that moment, the dragoons and the crowd touched. The women fled in terror. What took place during that fatal minute? No one can say. It is the dark moment when two clouds come together. Some declare that a blast of trumpets sounding the charge was heard in the direction of the arsenal. Others, that a blow from a dagger, was given by a child to a dragoon. The fact is that three shots were suddenly discharged. The first killed Cholet, chief of the squadron. The second

Starting point is 10:52:32 killed an old, deaf woman who was in the act of closing her window. The third singed the shoulder of an officer. A woman screamed, they are beginning too soon! And all at once, a squadron of dragoons which had remained in the barracks up to this time was seen to debouch at a gallop, with barred swords, through the rue Bassem-Pierre, and the Boulevard Bourdain, sweeping all before them. Then all is said. The tempest is loosed. Stones reined down, a fuselade breaks forth, Many precipitate themselves to the bottom of the bank, and pass the small arm of the seine, now filled in the timber yard of the Ileuvire, that vast citadel ready to hand, bristle with combatants. Stakes are torn up, pistol shots fired, a barricade begun.

Starting point is 10:53:26 The young men who are thrust back past the Austerlitz bridge with a hearse at a run, and the municipal guard, the carabineers rush up, the dragoons ply their swords, The crowd disperses in all directions. A rumor of war flies to all four quarters of Paris. Men shout, Two arms! They run, tumble down, flee, resist. Wrath spreads abroad the riot as wind spreads a fire.

Starting point is 10:53:57 End of book 10, chapter 3. Chapters 4 and 5 of Book 10 of Les Miserables Volume 4 by Victor Hugo. This is a Librevox recording. all Libervox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Libravox.org. Recording by Robert Kuiper. Les Miserables, Volume 4 by Victor Hugo, translated by Elizabeth Florence Hapgood.

Starting point is 10:54:26 Book 10, the 5th of June, 1832, chapters 4 and 5. Chapter 4. The Ebulitions of Former Days Nothing is more extradict. than the first breaking out of a riot. Everything burst forth everywhere at once. Was it foreseen? Yes.

Starting point is 10:54:48 Was it prepared? No. Whence comes it from the pavements? Whence falls it from the clouds? Here insurrection assumes the character of a plot there of an improvisation. The first comer seizes a current of the throng and leads it whither he wills, a beginning full of terror in which is mingled a source. of formidable gaiety. First come clamors. The shops are closed. The displays of the merchants

Starting point is 10:55:16 disappear. Then come isolated shots. People flee. Blows from gunstocks beat against Port Coucher. Servants can be heard laughing in the courtyards of houses and saying, there's going to be a row. A quarter of an hour had not elapsed when this is what was taking place in 20 different spots in Paris at once. In the Rue Saint Croix de la Bretonair, twenty young men, bearded and with long hair, entered a dram shop, and emerged a moment later carrying a horizontal tricoloured flag,

Starting point is 10:55:52 covered with crape, and having at their head three men armed, one with a sword, one with a gun, and the third with a pike. In the Rue des Nondiere, a very well-dressed bourgeois, who had a prominent belly, a sonorous voice,

Starting point is 10:56:07 a bald head, a lofty brow, a black beard, and one of those stiff moustaches which will not lie flat, offered cartridges publicly to passers-by. In the Rue Saint-Pierre-Montre, men with bare arms carried about a black flag, on which could be read in white letters this inscription, Republic or Death. In the Rue designeurs, Rue de Cadran, Rue de Montorgie,

Starting point is 10:56:32 Rue Mander, groups appeared waving flags on which could be distinguished in gold letters the word section with a number. one of these flags was red and blue with an almost imperceptible stripe of white between. They pillaged a factory of small arms on the Boulevard Saint-Martine and three armorer shops, the first in the rue Beaubourg, the second in the rue Michel Le Compt, the other in the rue de Temple. In a few minutes the thousand hands of the crowd had seized and carried off 230 guns, nearly all double-barreled, 64 swords, and 80, 3,000. three pistols. In order to provide more arms, one man took the gun, the other the bayonet.

Starting point is 10:57:17 Opposite the Cé de la Greve, young men armed with muskets installed themselves in the houses of some women for the purpose of firing. One of them had a flintlock. They rang, entered, and set about making cartridges. One of these women relates, I did not know what cartridges were. It was my husband who told me. One cluster broke into a curiosity shop in the Rue de Villa Haudrieet and seized Yattigans and Turkish arms. The body of a mason who had been killed by a gunshot lay in the Rue de la Pearl. And then on the right bank, the left bank, on the Cays, on the boulevards, in the Latin country, in the Cartier de Halls, panting men, artisans, students, members of sections read proclamations

Starting point is 10:58:02 and shouted, to arms, broke street lanterns, unharnessed carriages, unpaved the streets, broke into doors of houses, uprooted trees, rummage cellars, rooted out hogsheads, heaped up paving stones, rough slabs, furniture and planks, and made barricades. They forced the bourgeois to assist them in this. They entered the dwellings of women. They forced them to hand over the swords and guns of their absent husbands, and they wrote on the door with writing, the arms have been delivered. Some signed their names to receipts for the guns and swords and said, send for them tomorrow at the mayor's office. They disarmed isolated sentinels and national guardsmen in the streets on their way to the town hall. They tore the epaulets from officers. In the rue de Cimiteros-Nocolas, an officer of the National Guard on being pursued

Starting point is 10:58:58 by a crowd armed with clubs and foils, took refuge with difficulty in a house, once he was only able to emerge at nightfall and in disguise. In the Cartier-Saint-Jacques, the students swarmed out of their hotels and ascended the Rue Saint-Hiazance to the Café de Progress, or descended to the Café desepbillard in the Rue de Maturine. There, in front of the door, young men mounted on the stone corner post distributed arms. They plundered the timber yard in the Rue Transnonian in order to obtain material for barricades. On a single point, the inhabitants resisted. at the corner of the Rue Santa Voie and the Rue Simone Lefranc, where they destroyed the barricade with their own hands. At a single point, the insurgents yielded. They abandoned a

Starting point is 10:59:48 barricade begun in the Rue de Tampble, after having fired on a detachment of the National Guard, and fled through the Rue de la Cordier. The detachment picked up in the barricades a red flag, a package of cartridges, and 300 pistol balls. The National Guardsmen tore up the flag, and carried off its tattered remains on the points of their bayonets. All that we are here relating slowly and successively took place simultaneously at all points in the city in the midst of a vast tumult, like a mass of tongues of lightning in one clap of thunder. In less than an hour, 27 barricades sprang out of the earth in the Cartier of the halls alone.

Starting point is 11:00:31 In the center was that famous house, Numeros Sankant, which was the fortress of Jeanne and her 600 companions, and which, flanked on the one hand by the barricade at Saint-Marie, and on the other by the barricade of the Rue Mobeuse, commanded three streets, the Rue des Arquille, the Rue de Sartin, and the Rue Obri Le Boucher, which it faced. The barricades at right angles fell back, the one of the Rue Montorgie on the Grand Touranderie, the other of the Rue Jeffrey Langevin on the Rue St. Avoy,

Starting point is 11:01:09 without reckoning innumerable barricades in 20 other quarters of Paris, in the mares, in the Mont Saint-Gernard-Viev, one in the Rue Manil-Montan, where was visible a port Coucher torn from its hinges, another near the little bridge of the Hotel Dure, made with an Ecosé, which had been unharnessed and overthrown 300 paces from the perfecteur of police. At the barricade of the Rue de Manitriere, a well-dressed man distributed money to the workman.

Starting point is 11:01:42 At the barricade of the Rue Grinitat, a horseman made his appearance and handed to the one who seemed to be the commander of the barricade what had the appearance of a roll of silver. Here, said he, this is to pay expenses, wine, etc. A light-haired young man without a cravat went from barricade to barricade carrying passwords. Another, with a naked sword, a blue police cap on his head, placed sentinels.

Starting point is 11:02:12 In the interior, beyond the barricades, the wine shops and porter's lodges were converted into guardhouses. Otherwise, the riot was conducted after the most scientific military tactics. The narrow, uneven, sinuous streets full of angles and turns were admirably chosen. the neighborhood of the halls in particular, a network of streets more intricate than a forest. The Society of the Friends of the People had, it was said, undertaken to direct the insurrection in the Cartier-Saint-Avoy,

Starting point is 11:02:45 a man killed in the Rue de Ponceau, who was searched, had on his person a plan of Paris. That which had really undertaken the direction of the uprising was a sort of strange impetuosity, which was in the air. The insurrection had, had abruptly built barricades with one hand and with the other seized nearly all the posts of the garrison.

Starting point is 11:03:08 In less than three hours, like a train of powder catching fire, the insurgents had invaded and occupied, on the right bank, the arsenal, the mayoralty of the place royale, the whole of the mares, the Poppancourt arms manufacturing, La Galliatt, the Chateau, and all the streets near the halls. On the left bank, the barracks of the veterans, Saint-Pellegris, the Place Mobert, the Powder magazine of the Doumoline, and all the barriers. At five o'clock in the evening, they were masters of the Bastille, of the Lingerie, of the Blancourt. Their scouts had reached the Place de Victoire and menaced the bank, the Petit Père Barracks, and the post office. A third of Paris was in the hands of the rioters.

Starting point is 11:03:58 The conflict had been begun. on a gigantic scale at all points, and, as a result of the disarming domiciliary visits and the armorer's shops hastily invaded, was that the combat which had begun with the throwing of stones was continued with gunshots. About six o'clock in the evening, the Passage du Soman became the field of battle. The uprising was at one end, the troops were at the other. They fired from one gate to the other. An observer, a dreamer, the author of this book, who had gone to get a near view of this volcano, found himself in the passage between the two fires. All that he had to protect him from the bullets was the swell of the two half columns which separate the shops. He remained in this

Starting point is 11:04:47 delicate situation for nearly half an hour. Meanwhile, the call to arms was beaten. The National Guard armed in haste, the legions emerged from the mailties. the regiments from their barracks. Opposite the passage de Lincre, a drummer received a blow from a dagger. Another, in the Rue de Sine, was assailed by 30 young men who broke his instrument and took away his sword.

Starting point is 11:05:12 Another was killed in the Rue Grignier-Sin-Lezard. In the room Michel Compt, three officers fell dead one after the other. Many of the municipal guards on being wounded in the Rue de Lombard retreated. In front of the Courbet. A detachment of national guards found a red flag bearing the following inscription.

Starting point is 11:05:34 Republican Revolution, No. 127. Was this a revolution, in fact? The insurrection had made of the center of Paris a sort of inextricable, torturous, colossal citadel. There was the hearth. There, evidently, was the question. All the rest was nothing but skirmishes. The proof that all would be decided there lay in the fact that there was no fighting going on there as yet. In some regiments the soldiers were uncertain, which added to the fearful uncertainty of the crisis. They recalled the popular ovation which had greeted the neutrality of the 53rd of the line in July 1830. Two intrepid men tried in great wars. The Marshal Lobao and General Bougot were in command.

Starting point is 11:06:28 Bugot under Lobau. Enormous patrols composed of battalions of the line enclosed in entire companies of the National Guard and preceded by a commissary of police wearing his scarf of office, went to reconnoiter the streets in rebellion. The insurgents on their side placed videts at the corners of all open spaces and audaciously sent their patrols outside the barricades. Each side was watching the other. The government, with an army in its hand, hesitated. The night was almost upon them, and the St. Mary Toxin began to make itself heard. The minister of war at that time, Marshal Sot, who had seen austerlitz, regarded this with a gloomy air.

Starting point is 11:07:17 These old sailors accustomed to correct maneuvers and having as resource and guide only tactics that compass of battles are utterly disconcerted in the presence of that immense foam which is called public wrath. The National Guards of the suburbs rushed up in haste and disorder. A battalion of the 12th light came at a run from Saint-Denise. The 14th of the line arrived from Cubevoire. The batteries of the military school had taken up their positions on the carousel. Canons were descending from Vincennes. Solitude was formed around the twilleries. Louis-Philippe was perfectly serene. End of Chapter 4. Chapter 5. Originality of Paris. During the last two years, as we have said,

Starting point is 11:08:18 Paris had witnessed more than one insurrection. Nothing is generally more serious. singularly calm than the physiognomy of Paris during an uprising beyond the bounds of the rebellious quarters. Paris very speedily accustoms herself to anything. It is only a riot, and Paris has so many affairs on hand that she does not put herself out for so small a matter. These colossal cities alone can offer such spectacles. These immense enclosures alone can contain at the same time civil war and an odd and indescribable tranquility. Ordinarily, when an insurrection commences, when the shopkeeper hears the drum, the call to arms, the general alarm,

Starting point is 11:09:04 he contends himself with a remark, There appears to be a squabble in the rue Saint-Martine, or in the Foubert Saint-Antoine, often he adds carelessly, or somewhere in that, direction. Later on, when the heart-rending and mournful hubbub of musketry and firing by platoons becomes audible, the shopkeeper says, it's getting hot. Hello, it's getting hot. A moment later, the riot approaches and gains in force, he shuts up his shop precipitously, hastily dons his

Starting point is 11:09:42 uniform, that is to say, he places his merchandise in safety and risks his own person. Men fire in a square in a passage in a blind alley. They take and retake the barricade, blood flows, the grape shot riddles the fronts of houses, the balls kill people in their beds, corpses encumber the streets, a few streets away, the shock of billiard balls can be heard in the cafes. The theaters open their doors and present vaudevilles. The curious laugh and chat a couple of paces distant from these streets filled with war. Hackney carriages go their way, passers-by are going to a dinner somewhere in town, sometimes in the very quarter where the fighting is going on. In 1831, a fusillade was stopped to allow a wedding party to pass.

Starting point is 11:10:33 At the time of the insurrection of 1839 in the Rue Saint-Martine, a little infirm old man pushing a hand-cart surmounted by a tricoloured rag in which he had carafts filled with some sort of liquid, went and came from barricade to troops and from troops to the barricade, offering his glasses of cocoa impartially, now to the government, now to anarchy. Nothing can be stranger, and this is the peculiar character of uprisings in Paris, which cannot be found in any other capital. To this end, two things are requisite, the size of Paris and its gaiety. The city of Voltaire and Napoleon is necessary. On this occasion, however, in the resort to arms of June 25, 1832, the great city felt something

Starting point is 11:11:26 which was perhaps stronger than itself. It was afraid. Closed doors, windows, and shutters were to be seen everywhere in the most distant and most disinterested quarters. The courageous took to arms, the paltroons hid. The busy and heedless passers-by disappeared. Many streets were empty at four o'clock in the morning. Alarming details were hawked about. Fatal news was disseminated. That they were masters of the bank, that there were 600 of them in the cloister of Saint-Marie alone, entrenched and embattled in the church, that the line was not to be depended on, that Armand Karel had been to see Marshal Closcel, and that the marshal had said, get a regiment first. That Lafayette was ill, but that he had said to them,

Starting point is 11:12:18 nevertheless, I am with you, I will follow you wherever there is room for a chair, that one must be on one's guard, that at night there would be people pillaging isolated dwellings in the deserted corners of Paris. There, the imagination of the police that Anne Radcliffe mixed up with the government was recognizable. That a battery had been established in the Rue-Obre-le-Boucher, that Lobau and Bougot were putting their heads together, and that at midnight, or at daybreak at latest, four columns would march simultaneously on the center of the uprising, the first coming from the Bastille, the second from the Port Saint-Martine, the third from the greve, the fourth from the halls, that perhaps also the troops would evacuate Paris and withdraw to

Starting point is 11:13:07 the Chans de Mars, that no one knew what would happen, but that this time it certainly was serious. People busied themselves over Marshall Salt's hesitations. Why did he not attack at once? It is certain that he was profoundly absorbed. The old lion seemed to scent an unknown monster in that gloom. Evening came, the theaters did not open. The patrols circulated with an air of irritation.

Starting point is 11:13:35 Passers-by were searched. Suspicious persons were arrested by nine o'clock, more than 800 persons had been arrested. The prefecture of police was encumbered with them. So was the conciergerie. So was La Force. At the conciergerie, in particular, the long vault, which is called the Rue de Paris,

Starting point is 11:13:54 was littered with trusses of straw, upon which lay a heap of prisoners, whom the men of Lyon, Lagrange, harangued valiantly. All that straw russled by all these men produced the sound of a heavy shower. Elsewhere, prisoners slept in the open air in the meadows, piled on top of each other. Anxiety reigned everywhere, and a certain tremor, which was not habitual with Paris.

Starting point is 11:14:20 People barricaded themselves in their houses. Wives and mothers were uneasy. Nothing was to be heard but this. Oh, my God, he has not come home. There was hardly even the distant rumble of a vehicle to be heard. People listened on their thresholds to the rumors, the shouts, the tumult, the dull and indistinct sounds, to the things that were said, it is the cavalry, or those are the caissons galloping, to the trumpets, the drums, the firing, and above all, to that lamentable alarm peal from Saint-Marie. They waited for the first cannon-shot. Men sprang up at the corners of the streets

Starting point is 11:14:56 and disappeared shouting, go home! And people made haste to bolt their doors. They said, How will all this end? From moment to moment in proportion as the darkness descended, Paris seemed to take on a more mournful hue from the formidable flaming of the revolt. End of Book 10, Chapters 4 and 5. Chapters 1 and 2 of Book 11 of Le Miserables, Volume 4 by Victor Hugo. This is a Libravox recording. All Libravox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Libravox.org. recording by Maylo

Starting point is 11:15:42 Les Miserables volume 4 by Victor Hugo translated by Isabel Florence Hapgood Book 11 The Atom fraternises with the hurricane Chapter 1 Some explanations with regard to the origin of Gavrosch's poetry The influence of an academician on this poetry At the instant when the insurrection

Starting point is 11:16:08 arising from the shock of the populace and the military, in front of the arsenal, started a movement in advance and towards the rear in the multitude which was following the hearse, and which, through the whole length of the boulevards, weighed, so to speak, on the head of the procession, there arose a frightful ebb. The rout was shaken, their ranks were broken. All ran, fled, made their escape, some with shouts of attack, others with the pallor of flight. The great river which covered the boulevards divided in a torrent. twinkling, overflowed to right and left, and spread in torrents over 200 streets at once

Starting point is 11:16:47 with the roar of a sewer that has broken loose. At that moment, a ragged child who was coming down through the Rue Menelmonton, holding in his hand a branch of blossoming laburnum, which he had just plucked out of the heights of the Belleville, caught sight of an old holster pistol in the show window of a bric-a-brac merchant's shop. Mother, what's your name? I'm going to borrow your machine. And off he ran with the pistol.

Starting point is 11:17:17 Two minutes later, a flood of frightened bourgeois who were fleeing through the Rue Amelot and the Rue Bus, encountered the lad, brandishing his pistol and singing, The night on never very well. In excrieffat, Le Bourgeois, is bourgeois, It was little gavurif, practique with you, tutu, shepu point-tou.

Starting point is 11:17:41 It was little Gavroche on his way to the wars. On the boulevard, he noticed that the pistol had no trigger. Who was the author of that couplet which served to punctuate his march, and of all the other songs which he was fond of singing on occasion? We know not. Who does know? Himself, perhaps. However, Gavroche was well up in all the popixtu.

Starting point is 11:18:05 popular tunes in circulation, and he mingled them with his own chirpings. An observing urchin and a rogue, he made a potpourri of the voices of nature and the voices of Paris. He combined the repertory of the birds with the repertory of the workshops. He was acquainted with thieves, a tribe contiguous to his own. He had, it appears, been for three months apprentice to a printer. He had one day executed a commission from Monsieur Bo Lomien, one of the 40.

Starting point is 11:18:39 Gavroche was a gammon of letters. Moreover, Gavroche had no suspicion of the fact that when he had offered the hospitality of his elephant to two brats on that villainously rainy night, it was to his own brothers that he had played the part of Providence. His brothers in the evening, his father in the morning. That is what his night had been like. On quitting the Rue de Ballet at daybreak, he had returned in haste to the elephant, had artistically extracted from it the two brats, had shared with them some sort of breakfast

Starting point is 11:19:13 which he had invented, and had then gone away, confiding them to that good mother, the street, who had brought him up almost entirely. On leaving them, he had appointed to meet them at the same spot in the evening, and had left them this discourse by way of a farewell. I break a cane, otherwise expressed, I cut my stick, or as they say at the court, I file off. If you don't find Papa and Mama, youngens, come back here this evening. I'll scramble you up some supper and I'll give you a shakedown. The two children, picked up by some policemen and placed in the refuge,

Starting point is 11:19:51 or stolen by some mountebank, or having simply strayed off in that immense Chinese puzzle of a Paris, did not return the lowest depths of the actual social world are full of these lost traces gavroche did not see them again ten or twelve weeks had elapsed since that night more than once he had scratched the back of his head and said where the devil are my two children in the meantime he had arrived pistol in hand in the rue du ponton-o-shaw he noticed that there was but one shop open in that street and and, a matter of worthy reflection, that it was a pastry-cook's shop. This presented a providential occasion to eat another apple turnover before entering the unknown. Gavroche halted, fumbled in his fob, turned its pocket inside out, found nothing, not even a sou, and began to shout, Help!

Starting point is 11:20:50 It is hard to miss the last cake. Nevertheless, Gavroche pursued his way. Two minutes later, he was in the room. Rue Saint-Louis. While traversing the Rue du Parque Royal, he felt called upon to make good the loss of the apple turnover which had been impossible, and he indulged himself in the immense delight of tearing down the theatre posters in broad daylight. A little further on, on catching sight of a group of comfortable-looking persons, who seemed to be landed proprietors, he shrugged his shoulders and spit out at random before him this mouthful of philosophical bile as they passed.

Starting point is 11:21:28 fat those moneyed men are. They're drunk. They just wallow in good dinners. Ask them what they do with their money. They don't know. They eat it. That's what they do. As much as their bellies will hold. Chapter 2. Gavrush on the march. The brandishing of a trigiless pistol, grasped in one's hand in the open street, is so much of a public function that Gavroche felt his fervor increasing with every moment. Amid the scraps of the mass-sacreder. which he was singing he shouted all goes well i suffer a great deal in my left paw i'm all broken up with rheumatism but i'm satisfied citizens all that the bourgeois have to do is to bear themselves well i'll sneeze them out subversive

Starting point is 11:22:18 couplets what are the police spies dogs and i'd just like to have one of them at the end of my pistol i'm just from the boulevard my friends it's getting hot there it's getting into a little boil, it's simmering. It's time to skim the pot. Forward march, men. Let an impure blood inundate the furrows. I give my days to my country. I shall never see my concubine more, Nini. finished? Yes, Nini, but never mind. Long live joy. Let's fight Crebbleu. I've had enough of despotism. At that moment, the horse of a lancer of the National Guard, having fallen, Gavroche laid his pistol on the pavement and picked up the man, then he assisted in raising the horse, after which he picked up his pistol and resumed his way. In the Rue de Thore

Starting point is 11:23:16 all was peace and silence. This apathy, peculiar to the marae, presented a contrast with the vast surrounding uproar. Four gossips were chatting in a doorway. Scotland has trios of witches. Paris has quartets of old gossiping hags, and the, Thou shalt be king, could be quite as mournfully hurled at Bonaparte, in the Cadephor Bordeauxiae, as at Macbeth on the heath of Armeur. The croak would be almost identical. The gossips of the Rue de Thoreni busied themselves only with their own concerns. Three of them were portresses, and the fourth was a rag-picker, with a rubeckyne. her basket on her back. All four of them seem to be standing at the four corners of old age,

Starting point is 11:24:07 which are decrepitude, decay, ruin, and sadness. The rag-picker was humble. In this open-air society, it is the rag-picker who salutes, and the portress who patronises. This is caused by the corner of a refuse, which is fat or lean, according to the will of the portresses, and after the fancy of the one who makes the heap. There may be kindness in the broom. This rag-picker was a grateful creature, and she smiled, with what a smile, on the three portresses. Things of this nature were said. Ah, by the way, is your cat still cross? Good gracious! Cats are naturally the enemies of dogs, you know. It's the dogs who complain, and people also. But the fleas from a cat don't go after people. That's not the trouble. Dogs are dangerous. I remember one year when there were so many

Starting point is 11:25:07 dogs that it was necessary to put it in the newspapers. That was at the time when they were at the twilleries, great sheep that drew the little carriage of the King of Rome. Do you remember the King of Rome? I like the Duke de Bordeaux better. I knew Louis the 18th. I prefer Louis the 18th. Meat is awfully dear, isn't it, Mother Patagon? Ah, don't mention it. The butcher's shop is a horror. A horrible horror. One can't afford anything but the poor cuts nowadays.

Starting point is 11:25:40 Here the rag-picker interposed. Ladies, business is dull. The refuse heaps are miserable. No one throws anything away anymore. They eat everything. There are poorer people than you, love for Golem. Ah, that's true, replied the rag-picker with deference. i have a profession a pause succeeded and the rag-picker yielding to that necessity for boasting which lies at the bottom of man added in the morning on my return home i pick over my basket i sought my things this makes heaps in my room

Starting point is 11:26:20 i put the rags in a basket the cores and the stalks in a bucket the linen in my cupboard the woolen stuff in my commode the old papers in the corner of the window and things that are good to eat in my bowl, the bits of glass in my fireplace, the old shoes behind my door, and the bones under my bed. Galfro should stop behind her, and was listening. Old ladies, said he, what do you mean by talking politics? He was assailed by a broadside, composed of a quadruple howl. Here's another rascal. What's he got in his paddle? A pistol? Well, I'd like to know what sort of a beggar-brat this is. That sort of animal is never easy unless he's overturning the authorities. Gavroche disdainfully contented himself, by way of reprisal, with elevating the tip of his nose with his thumb and opening his hands wide.

Starting point is 11:27:17 The rag-picker cried, You malicious, bare-pored little wretch! The one who answered to the name of Patagon clapped her hands together in horror. There's going to be evil doings, that's certain. The errand-boy next door has a little pointed big. I have seen him pass every day with a young person in a pink bonnet on his arm. Today I saw him pass, and he had a gun on his arm. Ma'am Bachel says that last week there was a revolution at... At...

Starting point is 11:27:48 Where's the calf? At Pontoise. And then, there you see him, that horrid scamp with his pistol. It seems that the Celestines are full of pistols. What do you suppose the government can do with good for nothings who don't know how to to do anything but contrive ways of upsetting the world, when we had just begun to get a little quiet after all the misfortunes that have happened, good lord, to that poor queen whom I saw pass in the tambreel, and all this is going to make tobacco, dearer, it's infamous, and I shall

Starting point is 11:28:19 certainly go to see him beheaded on the guillotine, the wretch. You've got the sniffles, old lady, said Gavroche, blow your promontory, and he passed on. When he was in the rue, Pave, the rag-pick, occurred to his mind, and he indulged in this soliloquy. You're in the wrong to insult the revolutionists, mother dust-heap corner. This pistol is in your interests. It's so that you may have more good things to eat in your basket. All at once, he heard a shout behind him.

Starting point is 11:28:53 It was the poor Tress Patagon who had followed him, and who was shaking her fist at him in the distance and crying, You are nothing but a bastard. Oh, come now, say. Gavroche. I don't care a brast-farting for that. Shortly afterwards, he passed the Hotel La Mwang Nion. There, he uttered this appeal. Forward march to the battle, and he was seized with a fit of melancholy. He gazed at his pistol with an air of reproach, which seemed to attempt to appease it. I'm going off, said he, but you won't go off. One dog may distract the attention from another dog.

Starting point is 11:29:34 Gorned Poodle came along at the moment. Gavroche felt compassion for him. My poor doggy, said he, you must have gone and swallowed a cask, for all the hoops are visible. Then he directed his course towards Lorham Saint-Givet. End of Book 11, chapters 1 and 2. Chapter 3 to 6 of Book 11 of Le Miserables, Volume 4 by Victor Hugo. This is a Librebox record. All Libravox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Libravox.org.

Starting point is 11:30:16 Recording by Maylow Le Misadabler Volume 4 by Victor Hugo, translated by Isabel Florence Habgood. Book 11 The Atom Fratenizes with the Hurricane Chapter 3 Just Indignation of a Hairdresser The worthy hairdresser, who had chased from his shop the two little fellows, to whom Gavrosch had opened the paternal interior of the elephant, was at that moment in his shop, engaged in shaving an old soldier of the legion who had served under the empire. They were talking. The hairdresser had, naturally, spoken to the veteran of the riot, then of General Lamarck, and from Lamarck they had passed to the emperor.

Starting point is 11:31:03 Then sprang up a conversation between Baba and Soldier, which Prurom, had he been present, would have enriched with arabesques, and which he would have entitled Dialogue Between the Razor and the Sword. How did the Emperor ride, sir? said the barber. Badly. He did not know how to fall, so he never fell. Did he have fine horses? He must have had fine horses. On the day when he gave me my cross, I noticed his beast. It was a racing mare, perfectly white. Her ears were very wide apart, her saddled deep, a fine head marked with a black star,

Starting point is 11:31:46 a very long neck, strongly articulated knees, prominent ribs, oblique shoulders, and a powerful crupper, a little more than fifteen hands in height. A pretty horse, remarked the hairdresser. it was his majesty's beast the hairdresser felt that after this observation a short silence would be fitting so he conformed himself to it and then went on the emperor was never wounded but once was he sir the old soldier replied with the calm and sovereign tone of a man who had been there in the heel at ratusborn i never saw him so well dressed as on that day he was as neat as a new sou and you mr veteran you must have been often wounded i said the soldier ah not to amount to anything at marengo i received two sabre blows to the back of my name-and-i said the soldier ah not to amount to anything at morengo i received two sabre blows to the back of my name a bullet in the right arm at austerlitz another in the left hip at jenna at friedland a thrust from a bayonet there at the moscowah seven or eight lance-thrust no matter where at lutson a splinter of a shell crushed one of my fingers ah and then at waterloo a ball from a bassian in the thigh that's all

Starting point is 11:33:10 how fine that is exclaimed the hairdresser in pindaric accent to die on the field of battle on my word of honour rather than die in bed of an illness slowly a bit by bit each day with drugs cataplasms syringes medicines i should prefer to receive a cannon-ball in my belly you're not over fastidious said the soldier he had hardly spoken when a fearful crash shook the shop. The show window had suddenly been fractured. The wigmaker turned pale. Ah, good God! he exclaimed! It's one of them! What? A cannonball! Here it is, said the soldier, and he picked up something that was rolling about the floor. It was a pebble. The hairdresser ran to the broken window and beheld Gavroche fleeing at the full speed towards the Marsh Saint-Jean.

Starting point is 11:34:10 as he passed the hairdresser's shop gavroche who had the two brats still in his mind had not been able to resist the impulse to say good day to him and had flung a stone through his pains you see shriek the hairdresser who from white had turned blue that fellow returns and does mischief for the pure pleasure of it what has any one done to that gammon chapter four the child is amazed at the old man in the meantime in the marches saint-jean where the post had already been disarmed gavroche had just effected a junction with a band led by enjolras corferrac confere and frie they were armed after a fashion bhaurelle and jean prouvaire had found them and swelled the group enjolras had a double-barrelled hunting gun comfaire the gun of a national guard bearing the number of his legion, and in his belt two pistols which his unbuttoned coat allowed to be seen. Jean-Proveh, an old cavalry musket, Bahorel, a rifle. Corfadak was brandishing an unsheathed sword cane. Fouill, with a naked sword in his hand, marched at their head, shouting,

Starting point is 11:35:34 Long live Poland! They reached the Caymourlon, cravatless, hatless, breathless, soaked by the rain, lightning in their eyes. Gavroche accosted them calmly. Where are we going? Come along, said Kofiak. Behind Fouillé marched, or rather bounded, Fajorel, who was like a fish in water in a riot.

Starting point is 11:36:02 He wore a scarlet waistcoat, and indulged in the sort of words which break everything. His waistcoat astounded a passer-by, who cried in bewilderment, Here are the Reds! "'The Reds! The Reds!' retorted Barrelle. "'A queer kind of fear, Bourgeois. "'For my part, I don't tremble before a poppy.

Starting point is 11:36:24 "'The little red hat inspires me with no alarm. "'Take my advice, Bourgeois. "'Let's leave fear of the Red to horned cattle.' "'He caught sight of a corner of the wall "'in which was placarded the most peaceable sheet of paper in the world, "'a permission to eat eggs, "'a lenten admonition addressed by the Archbishop bishop of Paris to his flock.

Starting point is 11:36:50 Bahorel exclaimed, "'Flock? A polite way of saying geese.' And he tore the charge from the nail. This conquered Gavroche. From that instant, Gavroche set himself to study Bahorel. "'Bahol,' observed Engelva, "'you are wrong. You should have let that charge alone.

Starting point is 11:37:12 He is not the person with whom we have to deal. You are wasting your wrath to no purpose. take care of your supply one does not fire out of the ranks with the soul any more than with a gun each one in his own fashion enjolva retorted this bishop's prose shocks me i want to eat eggs without being permitted your style is the hot and cold i amusing myself besides i'm not wasting myself i'm getting a start and if i tore down that charge hercler twas only to wet my appetite this word hercler struck gavroche he sought out all occasions for learning and that terror down of posters possessed his distinct He inquired of him, What does Herkler mean? Bahar el answered. It means cursed name of a dog in Latin.

Starting point is 11:38:11 Here Bahadal recognized at a window, a pale young man with a black beard who was watching them as they passed, probably a friend of the ABC. He shouted to him, quick, cartridges, parablem! A fine man, that's true, said Gavroche, who now understood Latin. A tumultuous retinue accompanied them. Students, artists, young men affiliated to the Cougauds of Aux, artisans, longshore men, armed with clubs and bayonets. Some, like Comferre, with pistols thrust into their trousers. An old man, who appeared to be extremely aged, was walking in the band. He had no arms, and he made great haste so that he might be.

Starting point is 11:39:01 not be left behind, although he had a thoughtful air. Gavroche coarsight of him. Hex-ex-a, said he to Corferac. He's an old duffer. It was, Monsieur Mabal. Chapter 5. The Old Man Let us recount what has taken place.

Starting point is 11:39:26 Engel-Ras and his friends had been on the Boulevard Boudon, near the public storehouses, at the moment when the dragoons had made the... their charge. In Jorra, Corfeyrac and Comferre were among those who had taken to the Rue Bassempeer, shouting, To the barricades! In the Rue, Lady Gilles, they had met an old man walking along. What had attracted their attention was that the good man was walking in a zigzag, as though he were intoxicated. Moreover, he had his hat in his hand, although it had been raining all the morning, and was raining pretty briskly at the very time.

Starting point is 11:40:04 Corfodak had recognised Father Mulble. He knew him, through having many times accompanied Mardius as far as his door. As he was acquainted with the peaceful and more than timid habits of the old beetle-book collector, and was amazed at the sight of him in the midst of that uproar a couple of paces from the cavalry chargers, almost in the midst of a fuselard, hatless in the rain, and strolling about among the bullets, he had accosted him. and the following dialogue has been exchanged between the rioter of fire and the octogenarian. Monsieur Mabal, go to your home.

Starting point is 11:40:43 Why? There's going to be a row. That's well. Thrust with the sword and firing, Monsieur Mabal. That is well. Firing from cannon! That is good. Where are the rest of you going?

Starting point is 11:40:58 We are going to fling government to the earth. That is good. and he had set out to follow them. From that moment forth, he had not uttered a word. His step had suddenly become firm. Artisans had offered him their arms. He had refused with a sign of the head. He advanced nearly to the front of the rank of the column,

Starting point is 11:41:20 with the movement of a man who is marching, and the countenance of a man who is sleeping. What a fierce old fellow, muttered the students. The rumours spread through the truth that he was a former number of the convention, an old regicide. The mob had turned in through the Rue de la Verriere. Little Gavroche marched in front with that deafening song, which made of him a sort of trumpet.

Starting point is 11:41:47 He sang, "'Voisie the l'un who paré, "'can diron we down the forest. "'Demondé chalo to chalot, "'tut, too, pochetou, "'je ne' only two, "'cunura, "'cour, gul lia.

Starting point is 11:42:01 and c'n-bought, for a-baud-bord, the rose at the same detain. The moon-o'-noe, ee-dra-t, d'-a-ri-bott? Zizi, for part, I'me,

Starting point is 11:42:17 no, a-due, —cun-dhue, and the poor, Pettilu like two griff and stintzull, a tigre enrae in his grot

Starting point is 11:42:31 don't-dondon for me. They're doing for madame. I'm not an Jew, an Rue, an liar, and an Bote. One Jure and the other sacred.

Starting point is 11:42:43 Can diron us in the forest? Dementay Chalotte to Chalotte. Tintin, Pottin,

Starting point is 11:42:50 I'm just two, an rough, an liard, and a Bote. They directed their course

Starting point is 11:42:57 towards St. Mary. Chapter 6. Recruits The band augmented every moment. Near the Rue de Biliettes, a man of lofty stature, whose hair was turning grey, and whose bold and daring mean was remarked by Cofarach, Enjol and Comferre, but whom none of them knew, joined them.

Starting point is 11:43:21 Gavroche, who was occupied in singing, whistling, humming, running on ahead and pounding on the shatters of the shops with the butt of his triggerless pistol, paid no attention to. to this man. It chanced that in the Rue de la Berriere they passed in front of Corfeyrac's door. This happens just right, said Corferac. I have forgotten my purse and I have lost my hat. He quitted the mob and ran up to his quarters at full speed. He seized an old hat and his purse. He also seized a large square coffer of the dimensions of a large valise, which was concealed under his soiled linen. As he descended again at a run, the Portress hailed him.

Starting point is 11:44:04 Monsieur de Corferac! What's your name, Portrus? The Portress, stood bewildered. Why? You know perfectly well. I'm the concierge. My name is Mother Vivant. Well, if you call me Monsieur de Corferac again, I shall call you Mother de Vervant.

Starting point is 11:44:24 Now speak, what's the matter? What do you want? there is someone who wants to speak with you who is it i don't know where is he in my lodge the devil ejaculated corfadac but the person has been waiting your return for over an hour said the portress at the same time a sort of pale thin small freckled and youthful artisan clad in a tattered blouse and patched trousers of ribbed velvet and who had rather the air of a girl accoutred as a man than of a man, emerged from the lodge and said to Corfeyrac in a voice which was not the least in the world like a woman's voice, Monsieur Marius, if you please.

Starting point is 11:45:13 He is not here. Will he return this evening? I know nothing about it, and Corfadak added. For my part, I shall not return. The young man gazed steadily at him and said, Why not? Because? Where are you going, then?

Starting point is 11:45:33 What business is that of yours? Would you like to have me carry your coffer for you? I am going to the barricades. Would you like to have me go with you? If you like, replied Corfadak, the street is free, the pavements belong to everyone. And he made his escape at a run to join his friends. When he had rejoined them, he gave the coffer to one of them to carry. It was only a quarter of an hour after this that he saw the young man who had actually followed them.

Starting point is 11:46:07 A mob does not go precisely where it intends. We have explained that a gust of wind carries it away. They overshot St. Medi and found themselves without precisely knowing how, in the Rue St. Denis. End of Book 11, Chapter 3 to 6. Chapter 1 of Book 12 of Le Miserab, Volume 4 by Victor Hugo. This is a Libravox recording. All LibraVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Libravox.org.

Starting point is 11:46:45 Le Miserab, Volume 4 by Victor Hugo, translated by Isabel Florence Hepgood. Book 12, Corinth. Chapter 1 History of Cornyrd Corinth from its foundation. The Parisians who, nowadays on entering on the Rue Ramboutotot at the end near the Halle, notice on their right, opposite the Rue Monditur, a basket-maker's shop having for its sign a basket in the form of Napoleon the Great with this inscription, Napoleon is made wholly of willow, have no suspicion of the terrible scenes which this very

Starting point is 11:47:27 spot witnessed hardly thirty years ago. It was there that lay the Rue de L'Hanverri, which ancient deeds spell chanverreri and the celebrated public house called Corinth. The reader will remember all that has been said about the barricade affected at this point, and eclipsed, by the way, by the barricade Saint-Marie. It was on this famous barricade of the Rue de la Chamboree, now fallen into profound obscurity, that we are about to shed a little light. May we be permitted to recur, for the sake of clearness in the recital, to the simple means which we have already employed in the case of Waterloo. Persons who wish to picture to themselves in a tolerably exact manner the constitution of the houses which stood at that

Starting point is 11:48:18 epoch near the Ponce Nustache, at the northeast angle of the Halle of Paris, where today lies the embouchure of the Rue Ramboutotou, have only to imagine an inn touching the Rue Sondini with its summit and the Halle with its base, and whose two vertical bars should form the Rue de la Grand Truandourri, and the Rue de la Chamborei, and whose transverse bars should be formed by the Rue de la Petit Truanderie. The old Rue Monditour cut the three strokes of the inn at the most crooked angles, so that the three-the-leau so that the labyrinth confusion of these four streets suffice to form on a space three-fathom square

Starting point is 11:49:02 between the Halle and the Rue-Sandini on the one hand and between the Rue des Cygni and the Rue designee and the Rue de Presure on the other seven islands of houses, oddly cut up, of varying sizes, placed crosswise and haphazard, and barely separated, like the blocks of stone in a dock, by narrow crannies. We say narrow crannies,

Starting point is 11:49:27 and we can give no more just idea of those dark, contracted, many-angled alleys lined with eight-story buildings. These buildings were so decrepit that, in the Rue de la Chamboree, and the Rue de la Petit Truanderie, the fronts were shored up with beams running from one house to another.

Starting point is 11:49:46 The street was narrow, and the gutter broad, the pedestrian there walked on a pavement that was always wet, skirting little stalls resembling cellars, big posts encircled with iron hoops, excessive heaps of refuse, and gates armed with enormous century-old gratings.

Starting point is 11:50:06 The Rue Rambuto has devastated all that. The name of Mondeur paints marvelously well the sinuosities of that whole set of streets. A little further on, they are found still better expressed by the rue pirouette, which ran into the Rue Mondiour. The passerby who got entangled from the Rue Sondonie in the Rue de la Chamboree, beheld it gradually close in before him, as though he had entered an elongated funnel.

Starting point is 11:50:38 At the end of this street, which was very short, he found further passage barred in the direction of the Halle, by a tall row of houses, and he would have thought himself in a blind alley, had he not perceived on the right and left, two dark cuts through which he could make his escape. This was the Rue Mondouture, which on one side ran into the Rue de Préchur, and on the other into the Rue du Cigny,

Starting point is 11:51:04 and the Petit Truanderie. At the bottom of this sort of cul-de-sac, at the angle of the cutting on the right, there was to be seen a house which was not so tall as the rest, and which formed a sort of cape in the street. It is in this house of two stories only that an illustrious wine shop had been merrily installed 300 years before. This tavern created a joyous noise in the very spot which old theophilus described in the

Starting point is 11:51:33 following couplet. Labranle Les Squale Horrible deum poor amount who se pendee. There swings the horrible skeleton of a poor lover who hung himself. The situation was good, and tavern keepers succeeded each of a bit. there from father to son. In the time of Mathurin Rignet, this cabaret was called the Poto Roseé, and as the rebus was then in fashion, it had for its signboard a post, pot-chot painted rose collar. In the last century, the worthy Natois, one of the fantastic masters nowadays despised by the stiff school, having got drunk many times in this wine shop,

Starting point is 11:52:19 at the very table where Ragné had drunk his fill, had painted, by way of gratitude, a bunch of Corinth grapes on the pink post. The keeper of the cabaret in his joy had changed his device and had caused to be placed in guilt letters beneath the bunch, these words, at the bunch of Corinth grapes,

Starting point is 11:52:41 a raison du Corinth. Hence the name of Corinth. Nothing is more natural to drunken men than ellipses. The ellipsis is the zigzag of the phrase. Corinth gradually dethroned the Poto Rose. The last proprietor of the dynasty, Father Hucheloup, no longer acquainted even with the tradition, had the post-painted blue.

Starting point is 11:53:07 A room on the ground floor, where the bar was situated, one on the first floor containing a billiard table, a wooden spiral staircase piercing the ceiling, wine on the tables, smoke on the walls, candles in broad daylight. This was the style of this cabaret. A staircase with a trap door in the lower room led to the cellar. On the second floor were the lodgings of the Hoosha Loop family.

Starting point is 11:53:34 They were reached by a staircase which was a ladder rather than a staircase, and had for their entrance only a private door in a large room on the first floor. Under the roof, in two Mansard attics were the nests for the servants. The kitchen shared the ground floor with the taproom. Father Husheloup had possibly been born a chemist, but the fact is that he was a cook. People did not confine themselves to drinking alone in his wine shop. They also ate there.

Starting point is 11:54:06 Husheloup had invented a capital thing which could be eaten nowhere but in his house, stuffed carps, which he called carpe-o-gra. These were eaten by the light of the tallow candle or of a lamp of the time of Louis XVI, on tables to which were nailed waxed claws in lieu of tablecloths. People came thither from a distance. Husheloup, one fine morning, had seen fit to notify passers-by of this speciality. He had dipped a brush in a pot of black paint, and as he was an orthodox, on his own account, as well as a cook after his own fashion.

Starting point is 11:54:44 He had improvised on his wall this remarkable inscription. Carpe Ho Graz One winter, the rainstorms and the showers had taken a fancy to obliterate the S, which terminated the first word, and the G which began the third. This is what remained. Carpe Jorat Time and Rain Assisting A humble gastronomical announcement had become a profound piece of advice.

Starting point is 11:55:15 In this way it came about that though he knew no French, Father Husheloup understood Latin, that he had evoked philosophy from his kitchen, and that desirous simply of effacing lent, he had equaled Horace. And the striking thing about it was that that also meant, enter my wine shop. Nothing of all this is in existence now. The Montetur labyrinth was disemboweled and widely opened in 1847, and probably no longer exists at the present moment.

Starting point is 11:55:49 The Rue de la Chamboreenth have disappeared beneath the pavement of the Rue Rambuto. As we have already said, Corinth was the meeting place, if not the rallying point, of Corferac and his friends. It was Grand Terre who had discovered Corinth. He had entered it on account of the Carpe Ohorad and had returned thither on account of the Carpe's Ogre. There they drank, there they ate, there they shouted. They did not pay much, they paid badly, they did not pay at all, but they were always welcome.

Starting point is 11:56:27 Father Husheloup was a jovial host. Husheloup, that amiable man, as was just said, was a wine shopkeeper with a mustache, an amusing variety. He always had an ill-tempered air, seemed to wish to intimidate his customers, grumbled at the people who entered his establishment, and had rather the mean of seeking a quarrel with them

Starting point is 11:56:51 than of serving them with soup. And yet, we insist upon the word, people were always welcome there. This oddity had attracted customers to his shop, and brought him young men, who said to each other, come here, Father Husha Loup growl, and he had been a fencing master.

Starting point is 11:57:11 All of a sudden he would burst out laughing, a big voice, a good fellow. He had a comic foundation under a tragic exterior. He asked nothing better than to frighten you, very much like those snuff boxes, which are in the shape of a pistol. The detonation makes one sneeze. Mother Husheloup, his wife, was a bearded and very homely creature.

Starting point is 11:57:38 About 1830, Father Hushalup died. With him disappeared the secret of stuffed carps. His inconsolable widow continued to keep the wine shop, but the cooking deteriorated and became excreble. The wine, which had always been bad, became fearfully bad. Nevertheless, Khorak and his friends continued to go to Corinth, out of pity, as Bossouet said. The widow Hoosha Loop was breathless and misshapen and given to rustic recollections.

Starting point is 11:58:15 She deprived them of their flatness by her pronunciation. She had a way of her own of saying things, which spiced her reminiscences of the village and of her springtime. It had formerly been her delight, so she affirmed, to hear the Lue de Gorgé, chantere d'ans les Ogre Pini's, to hear the red breasts sing in the hawthorn trees. The hall on the first floor where the restaurant was situated was a large and long apartment,

Starting point is 11:58:48 encumbered with stools, chairs, benches, and tables, and with a crippled lame old billiard table. It was reached by a spiral staircase, which terminated in the corner of the room at a square hole like the hatchway of a ship. This room lighted by a single narrow window and by a lamp that was always burning, had the air of a garret. All the four-footed furniture comported itself as though it had but three legs.

Starting point is 11:59:16 The whitewashed walls had for their only ornament, the following quatrain in honor of Meim Husheloo. He is torned at deep part. He epaunted to. Univoru, abite in a son, and azardu, entremlay at every instant,

Starting point is 11:59:36 that she nevue l'er mouche. Etecuhn borgue, she astounds at ten paces. She frightens at two. A whart inhabits her hazardous nose. You tremble every instant lest she should blow it at you, and lest some fine day her nose should tumble into her mouth. This was scrawled in charcoal on the wall.

Starting point is 12:00:06 Mame Hushalup, a good likeness, went and came from morning till night before this quatrain, with the most perfect tranquility. Two serving maids, named Maitelot and Ghibelot, who had never been known by any other names, helped Mame Husheloup to set on the tables the jugs of poor wine, and the various broths which were served to the hungry patrons in earthenware bowls. Maitelot, large and plump, red-haired and noisy, the favorite, ex-sultana of the defunct hushaloupe was homelier than any mythological monster be it what it may still as it becomes the servant to always keep in the rear of the mistress she was less homely than maim givolute tall delicate white with a lymphatic pallor with circles round her eyes and drooping lids always languid and weary afflicted with what may be called chronic lassitude the first up in the house and the

Starting point is 12:01:06 the last in bed, waited on everyone, even the other maid, silently and gently, smiling through her fatigue with a vague and sleepy smile. Before entering the restaurant room, the visitor read on the door the following line written there in chalk by Corferac. Treat if you can and eat if you dare. End of book 12. Chapter 1. Chapter 2 of Book 12 of Le Miserab, Volume 4 by Victor Hugo. This is a Libravox recording. All Libravox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Libravox.org. Le Miserab, Volume 4 by Victor Hugo, translated by Isabel Florence Hepgood.

Starting point is 12:02:04 Book 12. Corinth. Chapter 2. Preliminary Gaiety Legel de Mule, as the reader knows, lived more with Jolie than elsewhere. He had a lodging as a bird has one in a branch. The two friends lived together, ate together, slept together. They had everything in common, even Musichetta, to some extent. They were what the subordinate monks who accompany monks are called.

Starting point is 12:02:36 Beanie. On the morning of the 5th of June, they went to Corinth to breakfast. Jolie, who was all stuffed up, had a Qatar, which Legel was beginning to share. Legel's coat was threadbare, but Jolie was well-dressed. It was about nine o'clock in the morning when they opened the door of Corinth. They ascended to the first floor. Maitalot and Givulot received them. Oysters, cheese, and ham, said Legel, and they seated themselves at a table.

Starting point is 12:03:10 The wine shop was em. There was no one there but themselves. Gibelot, knowing Jolie and Legel, set a bottle of wine on the table. While they were busy with their first oysters, a head appeared at the hatchway of the staircase, and a voice said, I am passing by. I smell from the street a delicious odor of brie cheese. I enter.

Starting point is 12:03:32 It was Grand Terre. Grand Terre took a stool and drew up to the table. At the site of Grand Terre, Gibelot placed two pieces. bottles of wine on the table. That made three. Are you going to drink those two bottles? Legel inquired of Granterre. Grantaire replied, All are ingenious. Thou alone art ingenious. Two bottles never yet astonished a man. The others had begun by eating. Grantaire began by drinking. Half a bottle was rapidly gulped down. So you have a hole in your stomach, began Legel again.

Starting point is 12:04:11 You have one in your elbow, said Grand Terre. And after having emptied his glass, he added. Ah, by the way, Legel of the funeral oration, Your coat is old. I should hope so, retorted Legel. That's why we get on well together, my coat and I. It has acquired all my folds. It does not bind me anywhere.

Starting point is 12:04:35 It is molded on my deformities. It falls in with all my movements. I am only conscious of it because it keeps me warm. Old coats are just like old friends. That's true ejaculated Jolie, striking into the dialogue. An old goat is an old abie. Especially in the mouth of a man whose head is stuffed up, said Grantaire. Grand Terre, demanded Legale, have you just come from the boulevard?

Starting point is 12:05:04 No. We have just seen the head of the procession pass, Jolie and I. It's a marvelous sight, said Jolie. How quiet this street is, exclaimed Legel. Who would suspect that Paris was turned upside down? How plainly it is to be seen that in former days there were nothing but convents here. In this neighborhood,

Starting point is 12:05:27 Dubruel and Saval gave a list of them, and so does the Abbey Lebooth. They were all around here. They fairly swarmed, booted and barefooted, shaven, bearded, gray, black, white, Franciscans, minims, capuchins, Carmelites, Little Augustines, Great Augustines, Old Augustines, there was no end of them. Don't let's talk of monks, interrupted Grantaire. It makes one want to scratch oneself.

Starting point is 12:05:57 Then he exclaimed, Boo, I've just swallowed a bad oyster. Now hypocondria is taking possession of me again. The oysters are spoiled. The servants are. are ugly. I hate the human race. I just passed through the Rue Rishaloo in front of the big public library. That pile of oyster shells, which is called a library, is disgusting even to think of. What paper, what ink, what scrolling, and all that has been written? What rascal was it, who said that man was a featherless biped? And then, I met a pretty girl of my acquaintance, who is as beautiful as the spring, worthy to be called Floreal, and, and then, and I met a pretty girl of my acquaintance,

Starting point is 12:06:39 and who is delighted and raptured, as happy as the angels, because a wretch yesterday, a frightful banker all spotted with smallpox, deigned to take a fancy to her. Alas, woman keeps on the watch for a protector as much as for a lover. Cats chased mice as well as birds. Two months ago that young woman was virtuous in an attic. She adjusted little brass rings in the islet holes of corsets. What do you call it? She sewed.

Starting point is 12:07:09 She had a camp bed. She dwelt beside a pot of flowers. She was contented. Now here she is, a bankeress. This transformation took place last night. I met the victim this morning in high spirits. The hideous point about it is that the jade is as pretty today as she was yesterday. Her financier did not show in her face.

Starting point is 12:07:32 Roses have this advantage or disadvantage over women, that the traces left upon them by caterpillars are visible. Ah, there is no morality on earth. I call to witness the myrtle, the symbol of love, the laurel, the symbol of air, the olive, that nini, the symbol of peace, the apple tree, which came nearest wrangling Adam with its pips, and the fig tree, the grandfather of petticoats. As for Wright, do you know what Wright is? The Gauls covet Clusium, Rome protects Clusium, and demands what wrong Clusium has done to them. Brennis answers, the wrong that Alba did to you,

Starting point is 12:08:12 the wrong that Fidine did to you, the wrong that the Iquets, the Volski, and the Sabines have done to you. They were your neighbors. The clusions are ours. We understand neighborliness, just as you do. You have stolen Alba. We shall take Clusium.

Starting point is 12:08:32 Rome said, You shall not take Clusium. Brennis took Rome, then he cried, Vé victus, that is what right is. Ah, what beasts of prey there are in this world. What eagles! It makes my flesh creep. He held out his glass to Jolie, who filled it. Then he drank and went on,

Starting point is 12:08:53 having hardly been interrupted by this glass of wine, of which no one, not even himself, had taken any notice. Brennis, who takes Rome is an eagle. The banker who takes the grisette is an eagle. There is no more modesty in the one case than in the other. So we believe in nothing. There is but one reality. Drink.

Starting point is 12:09:16 Whatever your opinion may be in favor of the lean cock, like the canton of Uri, or in favor of the fat cock, like the canton of Glaris, it matters little. Drink. You talk to me of the boulevard, of that procession,

Starting point is 12:09:32 et cetera, et cetera. Come now. Is there going to be another revolution? This poverty of means on the part of the good God astounds me. He has to keep greasing the groove of events every moment. There is a hitch. It won't work. Quick, a revolution. The good God has his hands perpetually black with that cart grease.

Starting point is 12:09:55 If I were in his place, I'd be perfectly simple about it. I would not wind up my mechanism every minute. I'd lead the human race in a straightforward way. I'd weave matters mesh by mesh without breaking the thread. I would have no provisional arrangements. I would have no extraordinary repertory. What the rest of you call progress advances by means of two motors, men and events.

Starting point is 12:10:22 But, sad to say, from time to time, the exceptional becomes necessary. The ordinary troop suffices neither for event nor for men, among men geniuses are required, among events revolutions. Great accidents are the law. The order of things cannot do without them. And, judging from the apparition of comets, one would be tempted to think that heaven itself

Starting point is 12:10:48 finds actors needed for its performance. At the moment when one expects it the least, God placards a meteor on the wall of the firmament. Some queer star turns up, underlined by an enormous tale, and that causes the death of Caesar. Brutus steals him a blow with a knife and God a blow with a comet.

Starting point is 12:11:11 Crock, behold, an Aurora Borealis, behold a revolution. Behold a great man. 93 in big letters. Napoleon on guard. The comet of 1811 at the head of the poster. Ah, what a beautiful blue theater. All studded with unexpected flashes.

Starting point is 12:11:30 Boom, boom. Extraordinary show. Raise your eyes, boobies. Everything is in disorder, the star as well as the drama. Good God, it is too much and not enough. These resources gathered from exception seem magnificence and poverty. My friends, Providence has come down to expedience. What does a revolution prove?

Starting point is 12:11:53 That God is in a quandary. He affects a coup d'etat because He, God, has not been able to make both ends meet. In fact, this confirms me in my conjectures as to Jehovah's fortune. And when I see so much distress in heaven and on earth, from the bird who has not a grain of millet to myself without a hundred thousand livres of income, when I see human destiny, which is very badly worn, and even royal destiny, which is threadbare, witness the prince de Konde Hong,

Starting point is 12:12:27 when I see winter, which is nothing but a rent, in the zenith through which the wind blows. When I see so many rags even in the perfectly new purple of the morning on the crests of the hills, when I see the drops of dew, those mock pearls, when I see the frost, that paste, when I see humanity ripped apart and events patched up, and so many spots on the sun, and so many holes in the moon. When I see so much misery everywhere, I suspect that God is not rich. The appearance exists, it is true, but I feel that he is hard up. He gives a revolution as a tradesman whose money box is empty gives a ball.

Starting point is 12:13:11 God must not be judged from appearances. Beneath the gilding of heaven, I perceive a poverty-stricken universe. Creation is bankrupt. That is why I am discontented. Here it is the 4th of June. It is almost night. Ever since this morning I have been waiting for daylight to come. It has not come, and I bet that it won't come all day.

Starting point is 12:13:35 This is the inexactness of an ill-paid clerk. Yes, everything is badly arranged. Nothing fits anything else. This old world is all warped. I take my stand on the opposition. Everything goes awry. The universe is a tease. It's like children.

Starting point is 12:13:54 Those who want them have none. and those who don't want them have them. Total, I'm vexed. Besides Legel de Mew, that bald head offends my sight. It humiliates me to think that I am of the same age as that baldy. However, I criticize, but I do not insult. The universe is what it is.

Starting point is 12:14:17 I speak here without evil intent, and to ease my conscience. Receive, Eternal Father, the assurance of my distinguished, consideration. Ah, by all the saints of Olympus, and by all the gods of paradise, I was not intended to be a Parisian. That is to say, to rebound forever, like a shuttlecock between two battledores, from the group of the loungers to the group of the roisterers, I was made to be a Turk, watching Oriental Aries all day, executing those exquisite Egyptian dances as sensuous

Starting point is 12:14:55 as the dream of a chaste man, or a Beaucerun peasant, or a Venetian gentleman surrounded by gentlewomen, or a petty German prince, furnishing the half of a foot-soldier to the Germanic Confederation, and occupying his leisure with drying his breeches on his hedge. That is to say, his frontier. Those are the positions for which I was born. Yes, I have said a Turk, and I will not retract. I do not understand how people can habitually take Turks in bad part. Muhammad had his good points. Respect for the inventor of Saraglios,

Starting point is 12:15:33 with oris and paradises with Odelisquez. Let us not insult Mohammedism, the only religion which is ornamented with a hen-roost. Now, I insist on a drink. The earth is a great piece of stupidity, and it appears that they are going to fight all those imbecils, and to break each other's profiles,

Starting point is 12:15:54 and to massacre each other in the heart of summer, in the month of June, when they might go off with a creature on their arm to breathe the immense heaps of new moan hay in the meadows. Really, people do commit altogether too many follies. An old brook, which I have just seen at a brick-of-brac merchants, suggest a reflection to my mind. It is time to enlighten the human race. Yes, behold me sad again.

Starting point is 12:16:23 that's what comes of swallowing an oyster and a revolution the wrong way i am growing melancholy once more oh frightful old world people strive turn each other out prostitute themselves kill each other and get used to it and ground hair after this fit of eloquence had a fit of coughing which was well earned apropos of revolution said joe lee it is decidedly aberrant that Berias is ad-lub. Does anyone know with whom? demanded Legel. Do. No? Do, I tell you.

Starting point is 12:17:05 Marius's love affairs, exclaimed Grand Terre. I can imagine it. Marius is a fog, and he must have found a vapor. Marius is of the race of poets. He who says poet says fool, madman. Timbrius Apollo. Marius and his Marie, or he, his Marion, or his Maria, or his Mariet, they must make a queer pair of lovers. I know just what

Starting point is 12:17:34 it is like, ecstasies in which they forget to kiss. Pure on earth, but joined in heaven, they are souls possessed of senses. They lie among the stars. Grand Terre was attacking his second bottle, and possibly his second harangue, when a new personage emerged from the square aperture of the stairs. It was a boy less than ten years of age, ragged, very small, yellow, with an odd fizz, a vivacious eye, an enormous amount of hair, drenched with rain and wearing a contented air. The child unhesitatingly making his choice among the three, addressed himself to Legel de Mue. Are you Monsieur Boussouet? That is my nickname, replied Legel. What do you want with me? This.

Starting point is 12:18:22 A tall blonde fellow on the boulevard said to me, Do you know Mother Husheloup? I said yes, Rue Chandre Rie. The old man's widow, he said to me. Go there. There you will find Monsieur Bossouet. Tell him from me, A, B, C. It's a joke that they're playing on you, isn't it?

Starting point is 12:18:44 He gave me ten sous. Jolie, lend me ten sous, said Legel, and turning to Grantair. Grand Terre, lend me ten sous. This made twenty sous which Legel handed to the lad. Thank you, sir, said the urchin. What is your name, inquired Legel? Navay, Gavrocious friend. Stay with us, said Legel.

Starting point is 12:19:07 Breakfast with us, said Grand Terre. The child replied, I can't. I belong in the procession. I'm the one to shout, Down with Polinat, and executing a prolonged scrape of his foot behind him, which is the most respectful of all possible salutes, He took his departure.

Starting point is 12:19:26 The child gone, Grand Terre took the word. That is the purebred gammon. There are a great many varieties of the gammon species. The notary's gammon is called skip the gutter. The cook's gammon is called a scullion. The baker's gammon is called a mitron. The lackeys gammon is called a groom. The marine gammon is called the cabin boy.

Starting point is 12:19:51 The soldier's gammon is called the drummer boy. the painter's gammon is called paint-grinder, the tradesman's gammon is called an errand-boy, the courtesan gammon is called the minion, the kingly gammon is called the dolphin, the god-gammon is called the Bambino. In the meantime, Legel was engaged in reflection, he said half aloud,

Starting point is 12:20:15 A, B, C, that is to say, the burial of Lamarck. The tall blonde, remarked Grant Hare, is Enholras, who is sending you a warning. Shall we go? ejaculated Basway. It's raiding, said Jolie. I have swore to go through fire, but not through water. I don't want to get a gold. I shall stay here, said Ground Terror.

Starting point is 12:20:40 I prefer a breakfast to a hearse. Conclusion, we remain, said Legel. Well then, let us drink. Besides, we might miss the funeral without missing the riot. Ah, the riot. I am with you, cried Jolie. Legel rubbed his hands. Now we're going to touch up the Revolution of 1830. As a matter of fact, it doesn't hurt the people along the scenes. I don't think much of your revolution, said Grand Terre. I don't execrate this government. It is the crown tempered by the cotton nightcap. It is a scepter ending in an

Starting point is 12:21:18 umbrella. In fact, I think that today, with the present weather, Louis Philippe might utilize his royalty in two directions. He might extend the tip of the scepter end against the people, and open the umbrella end against heaven. The room was dark, large clouds had just finished the extinction of daylight, there was no one in the wine shop or in the street, everyone having gone off to watch events. Is it midday or midnight? cried Boss Way. you can't see your hand before your face. Give a lot. Fetch a light.

Starting point is 12:21:55 Granterre was drinking in a melancholy way. Enholras disdains me, he muttered. Enhol Ross said, Jolie is ill. Grand Terre is drunk. It was to Basue that he sent Nave. If he had come from me, I would have followed him. So much the worse for Enholras.

Starting point is 12:22:15 I won't go to his funeral. This resolution once arrived at, Bassois, Jolie, and Grantaire did not stir from the wine shop. By 2 o'clock in the afternoon, the table at which they sat was covered with empty bottles. Two candles were burning on it, one in a flat copper candlestick, which was perfectly green, the other in the neck of a cracked carafe. Granterre had seduced Jolie and Bosseuxet to wine. Bassoet and Jolie had conducted Grantaire back towards cheerfulness. As for Grand Terre, he had got beyond wine, that merely moderate inspirer of dreams,

Starting point is 12:22:55 ever since midday. Wine enjoys only a conventional popularity with serious drinkers. There is, in fact, in the matter of inebriety, white magic and black magic. Wine is only white magic. Grand Terre was a daring drinker of dreams. The blackness of a terrible fit of drunkenness, yawning before him, Far from arresting him, attracted him. He had abandoned the bottle and taken to the beer glass.

Starting point is 12:23:23 The beer glass is the abyss. Having neither opium nor hashish on hand, and being desirous of filling his brain with twilight, he had had recourse to that fearful mixture of brandy, stout, absinth, which produces the most terrible of lethargies. It is of these three vapors, beer brandy, and absinth, that the lead of the soul is composed. They are three grooms, the celestial butterfly is drowned in them,

Starting point is 12:23:52 and they are formed there in a membranous smoke vaguely condensed into the wing of the bat, three mute furies, nightmare, night, and death, which hover about the slumbering psyche. Grand Terre had not yet reached that lamentable phase, far from it. He was tremendously gay, and Basue and Jolie reached. retorted. They clenched glasses. Grantare added to the eccentric accentuation of words and ideas, a peculiarity of gesture. He rested his left fist on his knee with dignity, his arm forming a right angle, and with cravat untied, seated astride a stool, his full glass in his right hand.

Starting point is 12:24:37 He hurled solemn words at the big maid servant, Maitelot. Let the doors of the palace be thrown open. Let everyone be a member of the French Academy, and have the right to embrace Madame Husheloup. Let us drink. And turning to Madame Husheloup, he added, Woman, ancient and consecrated by use, Draw near that I may contemplate thee.

Starting point is 12:25:02 And Jolie exclaimed, Maitelot and Gibelot, Don't give grader anything bored to drink. He has already done. devoured since this boarding in wild prodigality, two francs at 95's said thieves. And Grand Terre began again. Who has been unhooking the stars without my permission, and putting them on the table in the guise of candles? Basue, though very drunk, preserved his equanimity. He was seated on the sill of the open window, wetting his back in the falling rain,

Starting point is 12:25:37 and gazing at his two friends. All at once he heard a tumult behind him, hurried footsteps, cries of two arms! He turned round and saw in the Rue Saint-Denie at the end of the Rue de la Chambourri in Holras passing, gun in hand, and Gavroche with his pistol,

Starting point is 12:25:58 Filly with his sword, Kourfer-Ick with his sword, and Jean-Prover with his blunderbuss. Combefer with his gun, Bahorel with his gun, gun, and the whole armed and stormy rabble which was following them. The Rue de la Chambourri was not more than a gunshot long. Basway improvised a speaking trumpet from his two hands placed around his mouth and shouted.

Starting point is 12:26:22 Kurferak! Kurferak! Ho he! Curfirak heard the shout, caught sight of Basuay and advanced a few paces into the Rue de la Chamboree, shouting, What do you want? Which crossed a, where are you going? To make a barricade, replied Corfeyrac.

Starting point is 12:26:42 Well, here, this is a good place. Make it here. That's true, Egel, said Corfeyrac. And at a signal from Corfeyrac, the mob flung themselves into the Rue de la Chamboree. End of Book 12, Chapter 2. Chapter 3 and 4 of Book 12 of Lema Zerab, Volume 4, by Victor Hugo. This is a Libravox recording. All Libervox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Libravox.org. Recording by Martina Hutchins in Berkeley, California.

Starting point is 12:27:29 Lema Zoravre, Volume 4 by Victor Hugo. Translated by Isabel Florence Hapgood. Book 12, Corinth, Chapter 3. night begins to descend upon Grantaire. The spot was, in fact, admirably adapted. The entrance to the street widened out. The other extremity narrowed together into a pocket without exit. Corinth created an obstacle. The Rue Mondeur was easily barricaded on the right and the left. No attack was possible except from the Rue San Denis.

Starting point is 12:28:08 That is to say, in front and in full sight. Basui had the comprehensive glance of a fasting, Hannibal. Terror had seized on the whole street at the eruption of the mob. There was not a passer-by who did not get out of sight. In the space of a flash of lightning, in the rear, to the right and left, shops, stables, area doors, windows, blind, attic skylight, shutters of light, shutters of the of every description were closed, from the ground floor to the roof. A terrified old woman fixed a mattress in front of her window on two clothes-poles for drying

Starting point is 12:28:53 linen in order to deaden the effect of musketry. The wine-shop alone remained open, and that for a very good reason that the mob had rushed into it. "'Ah, my God! Oh my God!' sighed maim, Hachelot. Basui had gone down to me Korferak. Jolie, who had placed himself at the window, exclaimed, Corferak, you ought to have brought an umbrella.

Starting point is 12:29:21 You will gatch gold! In the meantime, in the space of a few minutes, 20 iron bars had been wrenched from the grated front of the wine shop. Ten fathoms of street had been unpaved. Gavroche and Bahorel had seized in its passage, and overturned the dray of a lime dealer named Anko. This dray contained three barrels of lime, which they placed beneath the piles of paving stones. And Holras raised the cellar trap, and all the widow Huchelope's empty casts were used

Starting point is 12:29:59 to flank the barrels of lime. Julie, with his fingers skilled in painting the delicate sticks of fan, had backed up the barrels and the dray with two massive heaps of blocks of rough stone. Blocks which were improvised like the rest and procured no one knows where. The beams which served as props were torn from the neighboring house front and laid on the casks. When Basui and Kofarek turned round, half the street was already barred with a rampart higher than a man. There is nothing like the hand of the populace, or building.

Starting point is 12:30:37 everything that is built by demolishing. Matalot and Gibelot had mingled with the workers. Gibelot went and came loaded with rubbish. Her lassitude helped on the barricade. She served the barricade as she had served wine, with a sleepy air. An omnibus with two white horses past the end of the street. Basuay strode over the paving stones, ran to it, stopped the driver, made the passengers alight, offered his seat. hand to the ladies, dismissed the conductor, and returned, leading the vehicle and the horses by the bridle. Omnibuses, he said, do not pass, Corinth. Non liquehete omnibus adire Corinthum. An instant later, the horses were unharnessed and went off with their will through

Starting point is 12:31:29 the Rue Monde-a-Tour, and the omnibus line on its side completed the bar across the street. Mame Hitchelope, quite upset, had taken refuge in the first story. Her eyes were vague and stared without seeing anything, and she cried in the low tone. Her terrified shrieks did not dare emerge from her throat. The end of the world has come, she muttered. Chilie deposited a kiss on Mame Huchelope's fat red wrinkle's neck and said to Grantaire, My dear fellow, I have always regarded a woman's neck, as an infinitely delicate thing.

Starting point is 12:32:06 But Grand Terre attained the highest regions of Dithraam. Metelot had mounted to the first floor once more. Grand Terre seized her round the waist and gave vent to long bursts of laughter at the window. Metelote is homely, he cried. Metelote is a dream of ugliness. Mitelot is a chimera. This is the secret of her birth. A Gothic pygmalion, who was making gargoyles for

Starting point is 12:32:34 The cathedral fell in love with one of them, the most horrible, one fine morning. He besought love to give it life, and this produced Mezzalote. Look at her citizens. She has chromate of lead-colored hair like Titian's mistress, and she is a good girl. I guarantee she will fight well. Every good girl contains a hero. As for Mother Huchelope, she's an old warrior. Look at her moustaches.

Starting point is 12:33:03 inherited them from her husband. A hussar, indeed, she will fight too. These two alone will strike terror to the heart of the Banlieu. Comrades, we shall overthrow the government as true as there are fifteen intermediary acids between margaric acid and formic acid. However, that is a matter of perfect indifference to me. Gentlemen, my father always detested me because I could not understand mathematics. I understand all. only love and liberty. I am Grantaire, the good fellow. Having never had any money, I never acquired the habit of it, and the result is that I have never lacked it. But if I have been rich, there would have been no more poor people, you would have seen, oh, if the kind hearts only

Starting point is 12:33:51 had fat purses, how much better things would go. I picture myself Jesus Christ with Rothschild's fortune. How much good he would do. Metaute embrace him. me, you are voluptuous and timid. You have cheeks with invite the kiss of a sister and lips which claim the kiss of a lover. "'Hold your tongue, you cask,' said Khorfeyr. Grandier retorted, "'I am the Capitouille and the master of the floral game.' And Holras, who is standing on the crest of the barricade, gun in hand, raised his beautiful

Starting point is 12:34:27 austere face. And Holras, as the reader knows, has something of the Spartan and of the Puritan in his composition. He would have perished at Thermopylae and Leonidas and burned at Drugita and Cromwell. Grand Terre, he shouted, go get rid of the fumes of your wine somewhere else in here. This is the place for enthusiasm, not for drunkenness. Don't disgrace the barricade. This angry speech produced a singular effect on Granterre. One would have said that he had had a glass of cold water flung in his face. He seemed to be rendered suddenly, sober. He sat down, put his elbows on a table near the window, looked at Inholrasse with indescribable gentleness, and said to him, Let me sleep here. Go and sleep somewhere else, cried Enholras.

Starting point is 12:35:20 But Grontier, still keeping his tender and troubled eyes fixed on him, replied, Let me sleep here until I die. And Holrhus regarded him with disdainful eyes. Grantaire, you are incapable of believing, of thinking, of willing, of living, and of dying. Grantaire replied in a grave tone. You will see. He stammered a few more unintelligible words, then his head fell heavily on the table, and, as is the usual effect of the second period of inebriety into which Inholras had roughly and abruptly thrust him.

Starting point is 12:35:56 An instant later, he had fallen asleep. Chapter 4. An attempt to console the widow Huchelope. Baharel, in ecstasies over the barricade, shouted, Here's the street in its low-necked dress. How well it looks! Corfeyrac, as he demolished the wine shop to some extent, sought to console the widowed proprietress. Mother Huchelope, weren't you complaining the other day

Starting point is 12:36:25 because you had a notice served on you for infringing the law, because Gibelot shook a counterpane out of your window? Yes, my good, Monsieur Kofarach. Ah, good heavens! Are you going to put the table of mine in your horror, too? And it was for the counterpane, and also for the pot of flowers, which fell from the attic window into the street, that the government collected a fine of a hundred francs.

Starting point is 12:36:52 If that isn't an abomination, what is? Well, Mother Huchelope, we are avenging you. Mother Huchelope did not appear to understand very clearly the benefit which she was to derive from the reprisals made on her account. She was satisfied after the manner of that Arab woman, who, having received a box on the ear from her husband, went to complain to her father and cried for vengeance, saying, father, you owe my husband a front for a front. The father asked, On which cheek did you receive the blow?

Starting point is 12:37:29 On the left cheek. The father slapped her right cheek and said, Now you're satisfied. Go tell your husband that he boxed my daughter's ears, and I have accordingly boxed his wife's. The rain had ceased. Recruits had arrived. Workmen had brought under their blouses a barrel of powder,

Starting point is 12:37:50 a basket containing bottles of vitriol, two or three carnival torches, and a basket filled with firepots, left over from the King's Festival. This festival was very recent, having taken place on the 1st of May. It was said that these munitions came from a grocer in the Fabour Saint-Antoine named Petan. They smashed the only street lantern in the Rue de la Chambieri, the lantern corresponding to the fable. two one in the rue saint-denice and all the lanterns in the surrounding street de montaure de signes de prieuisseur and de la grande and de la petite tru de terry and horace convaire and courfeyrac directed everything two barricades were now in the process of construction at once both of them resting on the corin palace and forming a right angle the larger shut off the rue to the chan The other closed the Rue Mont d'Houde on the side of the Rue de Signeur.

Starting point is 12:38:56 This last barricade, which was very narrow, was constructed only of casks and paving stones. There were about fifty workers on it. Thirty were armed with guns. Four on their way they had effected a wholesale loan from an armor or a shop. Nothing could be more bizarre, and at the same time more motley than this troop. One had a round jacket, a cavalry saver, and two holster pistols. Another was in his shirt-sleeves with a round hat and a powder-horns sling at his side. A third wore a plastron of nine sheets of gray paper and was armed with a sadler's all.

Starting point is 12:39:36 There was one who was shouting, let us exterminate them to the last man and die at the point of our bayonet. This man had no bayonet. Another spread out his coat, the cross belt and carcels. cartridge box of a National Guardsman, the cover of a cartridge box being ornamented with this inscription in red worsted. Public order. There were a great many guns bearing the numbers of the legions, few hats, no cravots, many bare arms, some pikes. Add to this all ages, all sorts of faces, small, pale young men and bronzed longshoremen, all were in haste, and as they helped each other, they discussed the possible chances. That they would receive succor about three o'clock in the morning. They were sure of one regiment that Paris would rise.

Starting point is 12:40:31 Terrible sayings with which was mingled a sort of cordial jovial jovial. One would have pronounced them brothers, but they did not know each other's names. Great perils have this fine characteristic that they bring to light the fraternity of strangers. A fire had been lighted in the kitchen, and there they were engaged in molding into bullets, pewter mugs, spoons, forks, and all the brass tableware of the establishment. In the midst of it all, they drank. Caps and Bucshot were mixed pell-mell on the tables with glasses of wine. In the billiard hall, maim pachalope, matelot, and givolot,

Starting point is 12:41:13 variously modified by terror, which had stupefied one, rendered another, breathless and rouse the third were tearing up old dishcloths and making lint. Three insurgents were assisting them, three bushy-haired, jolly blades with beards and mustaches, who plucked away at the linen with fingers of seamstresses and who made them tremble. The man of lofty stature whom Corfeyrac comethier and in Holroth had observed at the moment when he joined the mob at the corner of the rue de billiades was at work on the small barricade and was making himself useful there. Gavroche was working on the larger one.

Starting point is 12:41:55 As for the young man who had been waiting for Corphe and his lodgings and who had inquired for Monsieur Marius, he had disappeared at about the time when the omnibus had been overturned. Gavroche completely carried away and radiant had undertaken to get everything in readiness. He went, came, mounted, descended, remounted, whistled and sparkled. He seemed to be there for the encouragement of all. Had he any incentive? Yes, certainly, his poverty. Had he wings? Yes, certainly, his joy. Gavroche was a whirlwind. He was constantly visible. He was incessantly audible. He filled the air as he was everywhere at once. He was a sort of almost irritating ubiquity. No halt was possible with him.

Starting point is 12:42:43 The enormous barricade felt him on its haunches. He troubled the loungers. He excited the idol. He reanimated the weary. He grew impatient over the thoughtful. He inspired gaiety and thumb and breath in others, wrath in others, movement in all. Now pricking a student. Now biting an artisan.

Starting point is 12:43:03 He alighted. Pause. Flew off again. Hovered over the tumult. And the effort sprang from one party to another, murmuring and humming and harassing the whole company, a fly on the immense revolutionary coach. Perpetual motion was in his little arms

Starting point is 12:43:20 and perpetual clamor in his little lungs. Courage! More paving stones, more casts, more machines! Where are you now? A hod of plaster for me to stop this hole with. Your barricade is very small. It must be carried up. Put everything on it. Bling everything there. Stick it all in. Break down the house. A barricade. is Mother Gibot's tea.

Starting point is 12:43:43 Hello, here's a glass door. This elicited an exclamation from the workers. A glass door, what do you expect us to do with a glass door? Hercules yourselves, retorted Gavrosch. The glass door is an excellent thing in a barricade. It does not prevent an attack, but it prevents the enemy taking it,

Starting point is 12:44:02 so you're never prigged apples over a wall when there are broken bottles. A glass door cuts the horns of the National Guard when they try to mount the barrier. Par D. Glass is a treacherous thing. Well, you happen to very wildly lively imagination, comrade. However, he was furious over his triggerless pistol. He went from one to another demanding, a gun. I want a gun. Why don't you give me a gun? Give you a gun! said Combeferre.

Starting point is 12:44:32 Come now, said Gavroche. Why not? I had one in 1830 when we had a dispute with Charles X and Holrush shrugged his shoulders. When there are enough for men, we'll give some to the children. Gavroche wheeled round haughtily, and answered, If you are killed before me, I shall take yours. Gammin, said Unholrus, greenhorn, said Gavroche. A dandy who had lost his way, and who lounged past the end of the street, created a diversion. Gavroche shouted to him,

Starting point is 12:45:06 Come with us, young fellow. Well now, don't we do anything for this old country of all. Fars dandy fled. End of Book 12, Chapter 4. Recording by Martina Hutchins in Berkeley, California. Chapters 5 and 6 of Le Miserab, Volume 4 by Victor Hugo. This is Libravox recording.

Starting point is 12:45:36 All Libravox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibraVox.org. Recording by Martina Hutchins in Berkeley, California. Lema Zerob, Volume 4 by Victor Hugo, translated by Isabel Florence Hapgood. Book 12, Corinth, Chapter 5, Preparations The journals of the day, which said that that nearly impregnable structure of the barricade of the Rue de la Chant-Virri, as they call it, reached to the level of the first floor, were mistaken. The fact is that it did not exceed an average height of six or seven feet.

Starting point is 12:46:31 It was built in such a manner that the combatants could, at their will, either disappear behind it or dominate the barrier and even scale its crest by means of a quadruple row of paving stones placed on top of each other and arranged as steps in the interior. On the outside, the front of the barricade, composed of piles of paving stones and casks bound together by beams and planks, which were entangled in the wheels of Anko's dray and of the overturned omnibus, had a bristling and inextricable aspect. An aperture large enough to allow a man to pass through had been made between the wall of the house and the extremity of the barricade,

Starting point is 12:47:16 which was furthest from the wine shop, so that an exit was possible at this point. The pole of the omnibus was placed upright and held up with ropes, and a red flag fastened to this pole, floated over the barricade. The little Mondeur barricade, hidden behind the wine-shop building, was not visible. The two barricades united formed a veritable redoubt, and Holras and Corfeyrac had not thought fit to barricade the other fragment of the Rue Monditur, which opens through the Rue de Prisure and issue into the hall,

Starting point is 12:47:51 wishing no doubt to preserve a possible communication with the outside, and not entertaining much fear of an attack through the dangerous and difficult street of the Rue de Prousture, of the rue de prussia. With the exception of this issue, which was left free, and which constituted what Follard, in his strategical style, would have termed a branch and taking into account also the narrow cutting arranged on the Rue de la Chambéry, the interior of the barricade where the wine-shop formed a salient angle, presented an irregular shape, closed on all sides. There existed an interval of 20 paces between the grand barrier and the lofty houses which formed the background with the street, so that one might say that the barricade rested on these houses, all inhabited,

Starting point is 12:48:38 but closed from top to bottom. All this work was performed without any hindrance in less than an hour, and without this handful of bold men seen a single bearskin cap or a single bayonet make their appearance. The very bourgeois, who still ventured at this hour of riot, to enter the Rue Saint-Denice, cast a glance at the Rue de la Chambéry, caught sight of the barricade and redoubled their pace. The two barricades being finished and the flag run up. A table was dragged out of the wine shop and Koforak mounted on the table. In Horace brought the square coffer and Khorak opened it.

Starting point is 12:49:17 This coffer was filled with cartridges. When the mob saw the cartridges, a tremor ran through the bravest and a momentary silence ensued. Corfeyrac distributed them with a smile. Each one received 30 cartridges. Many had powder and set about making others with the bullets which they had run. As for the barrel of powder,

Starting point is 12:49:42 it stood on the table on one side near the door and was held in reserve. The alarm beat which ran through all Paris did not cease, but it had finally come to be nothing more than a monotonous noise to which they no longer paid any attention. This noise retreated at times, and again drew near with melancholy undulations. They loaded the guns and carbines altogether without haste, with solemn gravity. In Holrasse went and stationed three sentinels outside the barricades,

Starting point is 12:50:15 on the Rue de la Chambéry, the second in the Rue de Precire, the third at the corner of the Rue de la Petit Chanderie. Then, the barricades, having been built, the posts assigned, the guns loaded, the sentinels stationed, they waited, alone in those redoubtable streets, through which no one passed any longer, surrounded by those dumb houses which seemed dead, and in which no human movement palpitated, enveloped in the deepening shades of twilight, which was drawing on, in the midst of that silence through which something could be felt advancing, and which had about it something tragic and terrifying, isolated, armed, determined, and tranquil.

Starting point is 12:51:01 Chapter 6. Waiting During those hours of waiting, what did they do? We must needs tell, since this is a matter of history. While the men made bullets and the women lint, while a large saucepan of melted brass and lead destined to the bullet mold smoked over a glowing brassiere. While the sentinels watched weapon in hand on the barricade, while in Holras, whom it was impossible to divert,

Starting point is 12:51:33 kept an eye on the sentinels. Combefer, Koffer, Kofferak, Jean Puvier, Fulie, Bosseu, Jolie, Bahorel, and some others, sought each other out and united in the most peaceful days of their conversations in their student life, And, in one corner of this wine shop, which had been converted into a casement, a couple of paces distant from the redoubt which they had built, with their carbines loaded and primed, resting against the backs of their chairs,

Starting point is 12:52:06 these fine young fellows, so close to a supreme hour, began to recite love verses. What verses? These. You, Rappale you Our deuce We

Starting point is 12:52:21 Lource We used We're We're We're We're Dio To be

Starting point is 12:52:31 Bork Dere Mue Lourke When Atut Atutant Your

Starting point is 12:52:37 Age Aton My age We We We We We

Starting point is 12:52:41 We No Forant And and that in our humble and petite menage, all my own nivir, we're atate prontan. "'Beoujure, Manuel et te fure and sage,

Starting point is 12:52:58 "'Paris, sassier, ad descent, banquet. "'Ferlance, the fonder, and your crossage, "'have an epigloo-gely oge my piquar. "'To you contemplate, contemplate, avocates are cause. When I've you mened at Croydo dinn, you're etiolet, but fessian the fact of her returner.

Starting point is 12:53:31 I'd like, and she'll bella, as well as she'll pant, how she'll have flea. On her mantelay, she caches an ale, some bonnet, charming,

Starting point is 12:53:46 and a pin and cleus. Gere with you present on board supple, the persons creaking

Starting point is 12:53:55 that the man charmed. Ave married in another herro couple the two month of April

Starting point is 12:54:02 a beau month of May. We vivian cached when Pottclos,

Starting point is 12:54:10 devourant the my bonfrey defended. My bush had not said one that that

Starting point is 12:54:19 all the court had repondue. The second is the doad bocolic

Starting point is 12:54:27 oj jett adored to the night a matine. It's

Starting point is 12:54:31 an amann amourous appliced the crack of the tund

Starting point is 12:54:37 opal Latin O Plasman Bear in place of the font when in the tondy fray and prontagnie you tirrey you tirade your arm's your jean fine i saw aughty at length of the grenier i've foote the plantain my ryanne me rest mure than the branches and than the money you may demonstrate the bonnest with a fleur that you made done

Starting point is 12:55:14 i tibusse you mitya somersed o'grenier-dorrii t'-laced t'-lac-lacede'-lac-lac-te-lac-tee, allay on vener from the lobe in chemise mirrohn's your young front at your view mirror and who dance pours ponder the memory to set in the earlorn and dear firmament der rubein of the flue of the flowers, the gas, and de moire. Oh, the moor baguier, an aga charmant. No, Jordan, and there were a poe of tulip. You mask the vichar with a jupon. I'd play the bowl of tea of peep, and I'd you don't the tass and jopan.

Starting point is 12:56:10 And it's great malleur that we'd fission wrire. Your manchambulier, your manchamble, your bedou and his cher portrait of divan, Shakespeare, that we're

Starting point is 12:56:23 for super, we have vandue. Jete, Mendiant, and you charitable, I'm passing

Starting point is 12:56:33 over your brass fray and rond. Dante in folio we serve to table, for

Starting point is 12:56:44 Mungia Gaminor and centimeroon The first first that I'm joyous I've

Starting point is 12:56:53 I've I've a bathier at your liver a few When you

Starting point is 12:57:00 Tien to coffee and ruge I rest too pale

Starting point is 12:57:08 and I've grew in Duh Tell rappeleth you, no bonoes in number, and all these fichu changed and chiffon. O coup desupier and new crepe-plen d'ombre,

Starting point is 12:57:27 they're sent envoled in the sur-profonde. Translation Do you remember our sweet life when we were both so young, and when we had no other desire in our hearts than to be well-dressed and in love, when, by adding your age to my age, we could not count forty years between us, and when, in our humble and tiny household, everything was spring to us even in winter. Fair days. Manuel was proud and wise.

Starting point is 12:58:03 Paris sat at sacred banquets. Foy launched thunderbolts. and your corsage had a pin on which I pricked myself. Everything gazed upon you. A briefless lawyer, when I took you to the Prado to dine, you were so beautiful that the roses seemed to me to turn round, and I heard them say, Is she not beautiful? How good she smells?

Starting point is 12:58:28 What billowing hair! Beneath her mantle she hides a wing. Her charming bonnet is hardly unfolded. I wandered with thee, pressing thy supple arm. The passers-by thought that love bewitched had wedded in our happy couple the gentle month of April

Starting point is 12:58:46 to the fair month of May. We lived concealed, content, with closed doors, devouring love that sweet forbidden fruit. My mouth had not uttered a thing when thy heart had already responded. The Sorbonne was the bucolic spot where I adored thee from Eve till morn.

Starting point is 12:59:08 It is thus that an amorous soul applies the chart of the tender to the Latin country. O place Morbert, O place daffon. When in the fresh spring-like hut thou didst draw thy stocking on thy delicate leg, I saw a star in the depths of the garret. I have read a great deal of Plato, but nothing of it remains by me. Better than Malabranch and than the Manet, thou didst demonstrate. to me celestial goodness with a flower which thou gavest me. I obeyed thee. Thou did submit to me, O gilded garret, to lace thee, to behold thee going and coming from dawn in thy chemise,

Starting point is 12:59:53 gazing at the young brow in thine ancient mirror, and who, when, would forego the memory of those days of Aurora, and that firmament of flowers, of gauze, and of more, when love's stammer is a charming slang. Our gardens consisted of a pot of tulips. Thou didst mask the window with thy petticoat. I took the earthenware bowl and gave thee the Japanese cup. And those great misfortunes which made us laugh, thy cuff scorched thy boa lost, and that dear portrait of the divine Shakespeare,

Starting point is 13:00:29 which we sold one evening, that we might sup. I was a beggar, and thou wert charitable. I kissed thy fresh red, arms in haste. A folio Dante served us as a table on which to eat merrily a centeem's worth of chestnuts. The first time that in my joyous den, I snatched a kiss from my fiery lip, when thou wentest forth, dishevelled and blushing, I turned deathly pale and I believed in God. Dost thou recall our innumerable joys, and all those fiches changed to rags. Oh, what sighs from our hearts full of gloom fluttered forth to the heavenly depths.

Starting point is 13:01:16 The hour, the spot, these souvenirs of youth recalled, a few stars which began to twinkle in the sky, the funeral reposed of those deserted streets, the imminence of the inexorable adventure, which was in preparation, gave a pathetic charm to these verses murmured in a low tone in the dust by Jean-Pauvier, who, as we have seen, was a gentleman. poet. In the meantime, a lamp had been lighted in a small barricade, and in the large one, one of those waxed torches such as are to be met with enchrov Tuesday in front of vehicles loaded with masks on their way to La Courteau. These torches, as the reader has seen, came from Faburg Saint-Antoine. The torch had been placed in a sort of cage of paving stones,

Starting point is 13:02:03 closed on three sides to shelter it from the wind and disposed in such a fashion that all the light fell on the flag. The street and the barricade remained sunk in gloom, and nothing was to be seen except the red flag formatively illuminated as by an enormous dark lantern. This light enhanced the scarlet of the flag with an indescribable and terrible purple. End of Book 12, Chapter 6. recording by Martina Hutchins in Berkeley, California Chapter 7 and 8 of Book 12 of Le Miserab Volume 4 by Victor Hugo This is a Libravox recording.

Starting point is 13:02:49 All Libravox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visitlibrovox.org. Recording by Martina Hutchins of Berkeley, California. La Miserab, Volume 4 by Victor Hugo, translated by Isabel Florence Hapgood. Book 12, Corinth, Chapter 7 The man recruited in the Rue de Biayette. Night was fully come, nothing made its appearance. All that they heard was confused noises and at intervals, fuselades.

Starting point is 13:03:33 But these were rare, badly sustained, and distant. This respite, which was thus prolonged, was a sign that the government was taking its time and collecting its forces. These 50 men were waiting for 60,000. And Horace felt attacked by that impatience, which seizes on strong souls on the threshold of redoubtable events. He went in search of Gavroche, who had set to making cartridges in the tap room by the dubious light of two candles placed on the counter by way of

Starting point is 13:04:10 precaution, on account of the powder which was scattered on the tables. These two candles cast no gleam outside. The insurgents had, moreover, taking pains not to have any light in the upper stories. Gavroche was deeply preoccupied at the moment, but not precisely with his cartridges. The man of the Rue de Villiers had just entered the taproom and had seated himself at the table which was the least lighted. A musket of large mordle had fallen into his share and he held it between his legs. Gavroche, who had been up to that moment, distracted by a hundred amusing things, had not even seen this man. When he entered, Gavroche followed him mechanically with his eyes, admiring his gun.

Starting point is 13:04:58 Then, all at once, when the man was seated, the street urchin sprang to his feet. Anyone who had spied upon that man up to that moment would have seen that he was observing everything in the barricade and in the band of insurgents with singular attention. But from the moment when he had entered this room, he had fallen into a sort of Brown's study and no longer seemed to see anything that was going on.

Starting point is 13:05:24 The gamut approached this pensive personage and began to step around him on tiptoe, as one walks in the vicinity of a person whom one is afraid of waking. At the same time, over his childish countenance, which was at once so impudent and so serious, so giddy and so profound, so gay and so heartbreaking, past all those grimaces of an old man which signify, Ah, bah, impossible, my sight is bad, I am dreaming.

Starting point is 13:05:58 Can this be? no, it is not, but yes, why no, etc. Gavroche balanced on his heels, clenched both fists in his pockets, moved his neck around like a bird, expended in a gigantic pout all the sagacity of his lower lip. He was astounded, uncertain, incredulous, convinced, dazzled. He had the mane of the chief of the eunuchs in the slave mart, discovering a venus among the blousy females and the air of an amateur recognizing a Raphael in a heap of dabs. His whole being was at work, the instinct which sense out, and the intelligence which combines. It was evident that a great event had happened in Gavroche's life.

Starting point is 13:06:46 It was at the most intense point of this preoccupation that Enhoras accosted him. You are small, said Enhoras, you will not be seen. go out of the barricades, slip along close to the houses, skirmish about a bit in the streets, and come back and tell me what is going on. Gavroche raised himself on his haunches. So the little chaps are good for something. That's very lucky.

Starting point is 13:07:11 I'll go. In the meanwhile, trust to the little fellows, and distrust the big ones. And Gavroche raising his head and lowering his voice, added, as he indicated the man of the rue des billiate, do you see that big fellow there? Well, he's a police spy. Are you sure of it?

Starting point is 13:07:33 It isn't two weeks since he pulled me off the cornice of the Port Royale, where I was taking the air, by my ear. And Holross hastily quitted the urchin and murmured a few words in a very low tone to a longshoreman from the wine docks who chanced to be at hand. The man left the room and returned almost immediately, accompanied by three others. The four men, four-quarters, with broad shoulders, went and placed themselves without doing anything to attract his attention behind the table on which the man of the Rue de Biyitz was leaning with his elbows.

Starting point is 13:08:08 They were evidently ready to hurl themselves upon him. When Enholras approached the man and demanded of him, Who are you? At this abrupt query the man started. He plunged his gaze deep into Enholas's clear eyes and appeared to grasp the latter's meaning. He smiled with a smile, then which nothing was more disdainful, more energetic, and more resolute to be seen in the world, and replied with haughty gravity, I see what it is. Well, yes, you are a police spy.

Starting point is 13:08:42 I am an agent of the authorities, and your name, Javert. And Holras made a sign to the four men. In the twinkling of an eye, before Javert had time to turn around, he was. was collared, thrown down, pinioned, and searched. They found on him a little round card, pasted between two pieces of glass, and bearing, on one side, the arms of France engraved, and with this motto, supervision and vigilance.

Starting point is 13:09:08 And on the other, this note, Javert, Inspector of Police, aged 52, and the signature of the prefect of police of that day, Monsieur Guisquit. Besides this, he had his watch and his watch, purse, which contained several gold pieces. They left him his purse and his watch. Under the watch, at the bottom of his fob, they felt and seized a paper in an envelope, which in Horace unfolded, and in which he read these five lines, written in the very hand of the prefect of police. As soon as his political mission is accomplished, Inspector Javert will make

Starting point is 13:09:50 sure by special supervision whether it is true that the malefactors have instituted intrigues on the right bank of the Sen near the Gena Bridge. The search ended. They lifted Javert to his feet, found his arms behind his back, and fastened him to that celebrated post in the middle of the room which had formerly given the wine shop its name. Gavroche, who had looked on at the whole of this scene and had approved of everything, was a silent toss of his head, stepped up to Javert and said to him, it's the mouse who has caught the cat. All this was so

Starting point is 13:10:25 rapidly executed that it was all over when those about the wine shop noticed it. Javert had not uttered a single cry. At the sight of Javert Baudet, Barsuilis, Jolie, Combeferre, and the man scattered over the two barricades

Starting point is 13:10:44 came running up. Javert, with his back to the post, and so surrounded with ropes that he could not make a movement, raised his head with the intrepid serenity of the man who has never lied. He is a police spy, said in Horace, and turning to Javert. You will be shot ten minutes before the barricade is taken. Chauver replied in his most imperious tone,

Starting point is 13:11:10 Why not at once? We are saving our powder. Then finish the business with a blow of a knife. spy said the handsomen hold us we are judges and not assassins then he called gavroche here you go about your business do what i told you i'm going cried gavroche and halting as he was on the point of setting out by the way you will give me his gun and he added i leave you the musician but i want the clarinet the gammon made the military salute and passed gaily through the opening in the large barricade. Chapter 8. Many interrogation points with regard to a certain Le Cabuc, whose name may not have been Le Cabuc. The tragic picture, which we have undertaken, would not be complete.

Starting point is 13:12:11 The reader would not see those grand moments of social birth pangs in a revolutionary birth, which contained convulsion mingled with effort, in their exact and real relief, Were we to omit in the sketch here outlined, an incident full of epic and savage horror, which occurred almost immediately after Gavroche's departure. Mobs, as the reader knows, are like a snowball, and collect as they roll along, a throng of tumultuous men. These men do not ask each other whence they come.

Starting point is 13:12:47 Among the passers-by, who had joined the rabble led by Enhoras, Combefer and Corferac, there had been a person wearing the jacket of a street porter, which was very threadbare on the shoulders, who gesticulated and vociferated, and who had the look of a drunken savage. This man, whose name or nickname, was La Cabouc, and who was, moreover, an utter stranger to those who pretended to know him, was very drunk, or assumed the appearance of being so,

Starting point is 13:13:24 and it seated himself with several others at a table which they had dragged outside the wine shop. This kaboop, while making those who vied with him drunk, seemed to be examining with a thoughtful air the large house at the extremity of the barricade, whose five stories commanded the whole street and faced the Rue San Denise. All at once, he exclaimed, "'Do you know, comrades, it is from that house yonder that we must fire. "'When we were at the windows, the deuce is in it if anyone can advance into the street.' "'Yes, but the house is closed,' said one of the drinkers.

Starting point is 13:14:04 "'Let us knock. They will not open. "'Let us break in the door.' "'Licabook runs to the door, which had a very massive knocker and knocks. "'The door opens not. "'He strikes a second blow. No one answers. A third stroke. The same silence.

Starting point is 13:14:23 Is there anyone here? Shouts Kabook. Nothing stirs. Then he seizes a gun and begins to batter the door with the butt end. It was an ancient alley door, low, vaulted, narrow, solid, entirely of oak, lined on the outside with a sheet of iron and iron stays, a genuine prison postern. The blows from the butt end of the gun made the house tremble, but did not shake the door. Nevertheless, it is probable that the inhabitants were disturbed,

Starting point is 13:15:01 for a tiny square window was finally seen to open on the third story, and at this aperture appeared the reverend and terrified face of a gray-haired old man who was the porter and who held a candle. The man who was knocking paused. gentlemen said the porter what do you want open said kabook that cannot be gentlemen open nevertheless impossible gentlemen the kabook took his gun and aimed at the porter but as he was below and as it was very dark the porter did not see him will you open yes or no No, gentlemen. Do you say no?

Starting point is 13:15:52 I say no, my good... The porter did not finish. The shot was fired. The ball entered under his chin and came out at the nape of the neck after transversing the jugular vein. The old man fell back without a sigh. The candle fell and was extinguished

Starting point is 13:16:11 and nothing more was to be seen except a motionless head lying on the sill of the spil of the small window and a little whitish smoke which floated off towards the roof. There, said Le Cabook, dropping the butt end of his gun on the pavement. He had hardly uttered this word when he felt a hand laid on his shoulder with the weight of an eagle's talon, and he heard a voice saying to him, On your knees! The murderer turned round and saw before him and Horace cold, white face.

Starting point is 13:16:46 and Horas held a pistol in his hand. He had hastened up at the sound of the discharge. He had seized, hoaxed, collar, blouse, shirt, and suspender with his left hand. On your knees, he repeated. And, with an imperious motion, the frail young man of twenty years meant the thick-set and sturdy porter like a reed, and brought him to his knees in the mire. Leikabook attempted to resist, but he had to resist, but he had a reed. he seemed to have been seized by a superhuman hand.

Starting point is 13:17:22 Enhoras pale with bare neck and disheveled hair, and his woman's face, had about him at that moment something of the antique Themis. His dilated nostrils, his downcast eyes, gave to his implacable Greek profile, that expression of wrath and that expression of chastity, which, as the ancient world viewed the matter, befit justice. whole barricade hastened up, then all ranged themselves in a circle at a distance, feeling that it was impossible to utter a word in the presence of the thing which they were about to behold. The kibook vanquished, no longer tried to struggle, and trampled in every limb. In Holrasse released him and drew out his watch.

Starting point is 13:18:10 "'Callect yourself,' said he. "'Think or pray. You have one minute.' "'Murcy!' murmur. the murderer, then he dropped his head and stammered a few inarticulate oaths. In Holrasse never took his eyes off him. He allowed a minute to pass. Then he replaced his watch in his fob. That done, he grasped the cabooop by the hair, as the latter coiled himself into a ball at his knees and shrieked, and placed the muzzle of the pistol to his ear. Many of those intrepid men who had so

Starting point is 13:18:46 tranquilly entered upon the most terrible of adventures turned aside their heads. An explosion was heard. The assassin fell to the pavement, faced downwards. And Holros straightened himself up and cast a convinced

Starting point is 13:19:02 and severe glance around him. Then he spurned the corpse with his foot and said, throw that outside. Three men raised the body of the unhappy wretch, which was still agitated by the last mechanical convulsions of the life that had fled and flung it over the little barricade of the rue monteture.

Starting point is 13:19:22 Enholrasse was thoughtful. It was impossible to say what grandiose shadows slowly spread over his redoubtable serenity. All at once, he raised his voice. A silence fell upon them. Citizens! said Enhol Ross, what that man did was frightful. What I have done is horrible. He killed, therefore I killed him.

Starting point is 13:19:48 I had to do it because insurrection must have its discipline. Assassination is even more of a crime here than elsewhere. We are under the eyes of the revolution. We are the priests of the Republic. We are the victims of duty and must not be possible to slander our combat. I have, therefore, tried that man and condemned him to death. as for myself, constrained as I am to do what I have done,

Starting point is 13:20:17 and yet abhorring it, I have judged myself also, and you shall soon see to what I have condemned myself. Those who listen to him shuddered. We will share thy fate, cried Combeferre, so be it replied in Horace. One word more. In executing this man, I have obeyed necessity,

Starting point is 13:20:41 but necessity is a monster of the old world. Necessity's name is fatality. Now the law of progress is that monsters shall disappear before the angels and that fatality shall vanish before fraternity. It is a bad moment to pronounce the word love. No matter I do pronounce it and I glorify it. Love, the future is thine. Death, I make use of thee, but I hate thee. citizens in the future there will be neither darkness nor thunderbolts neither ferocious ignorant nor bloody retaliation

Starting point is 13:21:17 as there will be no more Satan there will be no more Michael in the future no one will kill anyone else the earth will beam with radiance the human race will love the day will come citizens when all will be conquered harmony light joy and life it will come come, and it is in order that it may come that we are about to die. And Holras ceased. His virgin lips closed, and he remained for some time standing on the spot where he had shed blood in marble immobility. His staring eye caused those around him to speak in low tones.

Starting point is 13:22:00 Jean-Pruvierre and Combeferre pressed each other's hands silently, and leaning against each other in an angle of the barricade, they watched with an admiration in which there was some compassion. That grave young man, executioner and priest, composed of light, like crystal, and also of rock. Let us say at once that later on, after the action, when the bodies were taken to the morgue in search, a police agent's card was found on Lake Cabook. The author of this book had in his hands in 1848, the special report on this subject made to the prefect of police in 1832. We will add that if we are to believe a tradition of the police, which is strange but

Starting point is 13:22:49 probably well-founded, Leco-Cubuk was Claccusu. The fact is that dating from the death of Lecubuk, there was no longer any question of Claccusu. Clac-Cut had nowhere left any trace of his disappearance. He would seem to have amalgamated himself, with the invisible. His life had been all shadows. His end was night. The whole insurgent group was still under the influence of the emotion of that tragic case, which had been so quickly tried and so quickly terminated. When Corfeyrac again beheld on the barricade, the small young man

Starting point is 13:23:26 who had inquired of him that morning for Marius. This lad, who had a bold and reckless air, had come by night to join the insurgents. Chapter 8. End of Book 12. Corinth. Recording by Martina Hutchins in Berkeley, California. Chapter 1 of Book 13 of Le Miserables, Volume 4 by Victor Hugo. This is a Libravox recording.

Starting point is 13:24:00 All Libravox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Librabox.org. recording by Patricia Hayes Les Miserables Volume 4 by Victor Hugo Translated by Isabel Florence Hapgood Book 13

Starting point is 13:24:20 Marius enters the shadow Chapter 1 From the Rue Plume to the Courier Saint-Denis The voice which had summoned Marius to the twilight of the barricade of the Rue de la Chonre had produced on him the effect of the voice of destiny

Starting point is 13:24:38 he wished to die. The opportunity presented itself. He knocked at the door of the tomb, a hand in the darkness offered him the key. These melancholy openings which take place in the gloom before despair are tempting. Marius threats to side the bar which had so often allowed him to pass,

Starting point is 13:25:00 emerged from the garden, and said, I will go. Mad with grief, no longer conscious of anything fixed or solid, it in his brain, incapable of accepting anything thenceforth of the fate after those two months passed in the intoxication of youth and love, overwhelmed at once by all the reveries of despair, he had but one desire remaining, to make a speedy end of all. He set out at rapid pace, he found himself most opportunely armed, as he had Javert's pistols with him. The young man of whom he thought,

Starting point is 13:25:38 he thought he had caught a glimpse had vanished from his sight in the street. Marius, who had emerged from the Rue Plumet, by Le Boulevard, traversed the esplanade and the bridge of the Envelide, the Chonseilise, the Place Louis-15th, and reached the Rue de Rivoli. The shops were open there. The gas was burning under the arcades. Women were making their purchases in the stalls. People were eating ices in the cafe latte and nibbling small

Starting point is 13:26:08 cakes at the English pastry-cook shop. Only a few posting chaise were setting out at a gallop from the Hotel de Prance and the Hotel Maurice. Marius entered the Rue Saint-Amerie through the passage of Lorme. There the shops were closed, the merchants were chatting in front of their half-open doors, people were walking about, the street lanterns were lighted, beginning with the first floor, all the windows were lighted as usual. there was calvary on the place du palais royal marius followed the rue saint-a-mourri in proportion as he left the palais royal behind him

Starting point is 13:26:49 there were fewer lighted windows the shops were fast shut no one was chatting on the thresholds the street grew sombre and at the same time the crowd increased in density for the passers-by now amounted to a crowd no one could be seen to speak in this throng and yet there arose from it a dull deep murmur near the fountain of the obrasseq there were assemblages motionless and gloomy groups which were were to those who went and came as stones in the midst of running water. At the entrance of the Rue de Pervere, the crowd no longer walked. It formed a resisting, massive, solid, compact, almost impenetrable block of people who were huddled together and conversing in low tones. There were hardly any black coats or round hats now, but smock-frocks, blouses, caps, and bristling and cadaverous heads.

Starting point is 13:27:48 This multitude undulated confusedly in the nocturnal gloom, its whispers had the hoarse accent of a vibration. Although not one of them was walking, a dull trampling was audible in the mire. Beyond this dense portion of the throng, and the rue de roule, and the rue de Prover and the extension of the Rue Saint-An-Hen-Hie, there were no longer a single window in which a candle was burning. Only the solitary and diminishing rows of lanterns could be seen vanishing into the street in the distance. The lanterns of that date resembled large red stars, hanging to ropes and shed upon the pavement a shadow which at the form of a huge spider. These streets were not deserted. There could be descried piles of guns, moving bayonets and troops vivouacking. No curious observer passed the same.

Starting point is 13:28:44 that limit. Their circulation ceased. There their rabble ended, and the army began. Marius willed with the will of a man who hopes no more. He had been summoned, he must go. He found a means to traverse the throng and pass the bivouac of the troops. He shunned the patrols. He avoided the sentinels. He made a circuit, reached the route of the sea, and directed his course toward the al. At the corner of the Rue de Bordeaux-Dé, there were no longer any lanterns. After having passed the zone of the crowd, he had passed the limits of the troops. He found himself in something startling.

Starting point is 13:29:29 There was no longer a passer-by, no longer a soldier, no longer a light, there was no one. Solitude, silence, night. I know not chill which seized upon one. entering a street was like entering a cellar. He continued to advance. He took a few steps. Someone passed close to him at a run. Was it a man or a woman,

Starting point is 13:29:53 where there are many of them he could not have told? It had passed and vanished. Proceeding from circuit to circuit, he reached a lane which he judged to be the Rue de la Potri. Near the middle of this street, he came in contact with an obstacle. He extended his hands,

Starting point is 13:30:10 hands, it was an overturned wagon. His foot recognized pools of water, gullies, and paving stones scattered and piled up. A barricade had been begun there and had abandoned. He climbed over the stones and found himself on the other side of the barrier. He walked very near the street-posts, and guided himself along the walls of the houses. A little beyond the barricade it seemed to him that he could make out something white in front of him, he approached it, it took on a form. It was two white horses, the horses of the omnibus, harnessed by Basui in the morning, who had been straying at random all day from the street to street, and had finally halted there, with the weary patience of brutes, who no more understand the actions of men,

Starting point is 13:31:00 than man understands the actions of providence. Marius left the horses behind him. As he was approaching a street, which seemed to him to be the Rue du Contro Social, a shot, coming no-one-nose-wents, and traversing the darkness at random, whistled close by him, and the bullet pierced a brass shaving-dish suspended above his head over a hairdresser's shop. This pierced shaving-dish was still to be seen in 1848 in the Rue de Contra-Socale. at the corner of the pillars of the market. This shot still betokened life.

Starting point is 13:31:41 From that instant forth he encountered nothing more. The whole of this itinerary resembled a descent of black steps. Nevertheless, Marius pressed forward. End of Chapter 1. Chapter 2. An Owl's View of Paris. A being who could have hovered over Paris. that night with the wing of the batter of the owl would have had beneath his eyes a gloomy spectacle all that old quarter of the al which is like a city within a city through which run the rue st d'orne and st martin where a thousand lanes cross and of which the insurgents had made their redoubt and their strong-hole would have appeared to him like a dark and enormous cavity hollowed out in the centre of paris

Starting point is 13:32:37 there the glance fell into an abyss thanks to the broken lanterns thanks to the closed windows there all radiance all life all sound all movement ceased the invisible police of the insurrection were on the watch everywhere and maintained order that is to say night the necessary tactics of insurrection are to drown small numbers in a vast obscurity to multiply every every combatant by the possibilities which that obscurity contains. At dusk, every window where a candle was burning received a shot. The light was extinguished. Sometimes the inhabitant was killed. Hence, nothing was stirring. There was nothing but fright, mourning, stupor in the houses, and in the streets a sort of sacred horror. Not even the long rows of windows and stores, the indentations of the chimneys and the roofs, and the vague reflections which are cast back by the wet and muddy pavements were visible. An eye cast upward at that mass of shadows might,

Starting point is 13:33:47 perhaps have caught a glimpse here and there, at intervals of indistinct gleams which brought out broken and eccentric lines and profiles of singular buildings, something like the lights which go and come in ruins. It was at such points that the barricades were situated. the rest was a lake of obscurity, foggy, heavy, and funereal, above which, in motionless and melancholy outlines, rose the tower of Saint-Jacques and the church of Saint-Marie, and two or three more of those grand edifices of which man makes giants, and the night makes phantoms. All around this deserted and disquieting labyrinth, in the quarters where the Parisian circulation had not been annihilated, and were a few street lanterns still burned, the aerial observer

Starting point is 13:34:41 might have distinguished the metallic gleam of swords and bayonets, the dull rumble of artillery, and the swarming of silent battalions whose ranks were swelling from minute to minute, a formidable girdle which was slowly drawing in and around the insurrection. The invested quarter was no longer anything more than a monstrous cavern. everything there appeared to be asleep or motionless, and as we have just seen, any street which one might come to offered nothing but darkness. A wild darkness, full of traps, full of unseen and formidable shocks, into which it was alarming to penetrate, and in which it was terrible to remain, where those who entered shivered before those they awaited, where those who waited

Starting point is 13:35:32 shuddered before those who were coming. Invisible combatants were entrenched at every corner of the street. Snares of the suppulchre were concealed in the density of night. All was over. No more light was to be hoped for. Henceforth, except the lightning of guns. No further encounter except the abrupt and rapid apparition of death. Where, how, when no one knew, but it was certain and inevitable. In this place, which had been marked out for the struggle, the government and the insurrection, the National Guard in popular societies, the bourgeois, and the uprising, groping their way, were about to come into contact. The necessity was the same for both. The only possible issue thenceforth was to emerge thence killed or conquerors.

Starting point is 13:36:25 a situation so extreme and obscurity so powerful that the most timid felt themselves seized with resolution and the most daring with terror moreover on both sides the fury the rage and the determination were equal for the one party to advance meant death and no one dreamed of retreating for the other to remain meant deaf and no one dreamed of flight it was indispensable that all should be ended on the following day that triumph should rest either here or there that the insurrection should prove itself a revolution or a skirmish the government understood this as well as the parties the most insignificant bourgeois felt it hence a thought of anguish which mingled with the impenetrable gloom of this quarter where all was at the point of being decided hence a redoubled anxiety around the silence whence a catastrophe was on the point of emerging here only one sound was audible a sound as heart-rending as the death-rattle as menacing as a malediction the toxin of st nothing could be more blood-curdling than the clamor of the wild and desperate bell wailing amid the shadows as it often happens nature seemed to have fallen into accord with what men were about to do nothing disturbed the harmony of the whole effect the stars had disappeared heavy clouds filled the horizon with their melancholy foals a black sky rested on these dead streets as though an immense winding-sheet were being outspread over this immense tomb.

Starting point is 13:38:16 While a battle that was still wholly political was in preparation in the same locality, which had already witnessed so many revolutionary events, while youth, the secret associations, the schools in the name of principals, and the middle classes in the name of interest, were approaching preparatory to dashing themselves together, clasping and throwing each other, while each one hastened and invited the last and decisive hour of the crisis. Far away, and quite outside of this fatal quarter, in the most profound depths of the unfathomable cavities of that wretched old Paris, which disappears under the splendor of happy and opulent Paris,

Starting point is 13:38:59 the sombre voice of the people could be heard giving utterance to a dull roar. A fearful and sacred voice, which is composed of the roar of the brute and of the word of God, which terrifies the weak and warns the wise, which comes both from below like the voice of a lion, and from on high like the voice of the thunder. End of Book 13, chapters one and two. Chapter 3 of Book 13 of Le Miserables, Volume 4 by Victor Hugo.

Starting point is 13:39:38 This is a Librevox recording. All Libravox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Libravox.org. Recording by Patricia Hayes. Le Mizarab, Volume 4 by Victor Hugo, translated by Isabel Florence Hapgood. Book 13, Marius enters the shadow. Chapter 3, Marius had reached the Allah. There everything was still calmer, more obscure and more obscure,

Starting point is 13:40:12 and more motionless than in the neighboring streets. One would have said that the glacial piece of the sepulchre had sprung forth from the earth and had spread over the heavens. Nevertheless, a red glow brought out against this black-black ground the lofty roofs of the houses which barred the rue de la chanfri on the Santustache side. It was the reflection of the torch which was burning in the Corinth barricade.

Starting point is 13:40:39 Marius directed his steps toward that red light. it had drawn him to the marshal porri and he caught a glimpse of the dark mouth of the rue de prescher he entered it the insurgent sentinel who was guarding the other end did not see him he felt that he was very close to that which he had come in search of and he walked on tiptoe in this manner he reached the elbow of that short section of the rue montourre which was as the reader will remember the only communication which enjolras had preserved with the outside whirl. At the corner of the last house on his left, he thrust his head forward and looked into the fragment of the rue Montour. A little beyond the angle of the lane and the rue de la chanri, which cast a broad curtain of shadow, in which he was himself engulfed, he perceived some light on the pavement, a bit of the wine-shop and beyond, a flickering lamp within a sort of shapeless wall, and men crouching down with guns on their knees.

Starting point is 13:41:42 All this was ten fathoms distant from him. It was the interior of the barricade. The houses which bordered the lane on the right concealed the rest of the wine-shop, the large barricade, and the flag from him. Marius had but a step more to take. Then the unhappy man seated himself on a post, folded his arms, and fell to thinking about his father.

Starting point is 13:42:06 He thought of that heroic Colonel Pontmercy, who had been so proud a soldier, who had guarded the frontier of France under the Republic, and had touched the frontier of Asia under Napoleon, who had beheld Genoa, Alexandra, Milan, Toren, Madrid, Vienna, Dresden, Berlin, Moscow, who had left on all the victorious battlefields of Europe drops of that same blood, which he, Marius had in his veins, who had grown gray before his time and discipline and command, who had lived with his sword-belt buckled, his epaulets falling on his breast, his cockade blackened with powder, his brow furled with his helmet, in barracks, in camp, in the bivouac, in ambulances, and who, at the expiration of twenty

Starting point is 13:42:58 years, had returned from the Great Wars with a scarred cheek, a smiling countenance, tranquil, admirable, pure as a child, having done everything for France, and nothing against her. He said to himself that his day had also come now, that his hour had struck, that following his father he too was about to show himself brave, intrepid, bold, to run to meet the bullets, to offer his breast to bayonets, to shed his blood, to seek the enemy, to seek death, that he was about to wage war in his turn and descend to the field of battle, and that the field of battle upon which he was to descend was the street, and that the war in which he was about to engage was civil war.

Starting point is 13:43:46 He beheld civil war, laid open like a gulf before him, and into this he was about to fall. Then he shuddered. He thought of his father's sword, which his grandfather had sold to a second-hand dealer, and which he had so mournfully regretted. He said to himself that that chase and valiant sword had done well to escape from him

Starting point is 13:44:11 and to depart in wrath into the gloom, that if it had thus fled, it was because it was intelligent, and because it had foreseen the future, that it had had a presentiment of this rebellion, the war of the gutters, the war of pavements, fuselots through cellar windows, blows given and received in the rear.

Starting point is 13:44:33 It was because, coming from Marengo and Friedland, it did not wish to go to the Rue de la Chamboree. It was because, after what it had done with the father, it did not wish to do this for the son. He told himself that if that sword were there, if after taking possession of it at his father's pillow, he had dared to take it and carry it off for this combat of darkness between Frenchmen and the streets,

Starting point is 13:44:59 it would assuredly have scorched his hands and burst out of flame before his eyes, like the sword of the angel. He told himself that it was fortunate that it was not there, that it had disappeared, that that was well, that that was just, that his grandfather had been the true guardian of his father's glory, and that it was far better that the colonel's sword should be sold at auction, sold to the old clothesman, thrown among the old junk, than it should today wound the side of his country. And then he fell to weeping bitterly. This was horrible. But what was he to do? Live without Cosette he could not. Since she was gone, he must needs die. Had he not given her

Starting point is 13:45:45 his word of honor that he would die? She had gone knowing that. This meant that it pleased her that Maria should die. And then it was clear that she no longer loved him, since she had departed thus without warning, without a word, without a letter, although she knew his address? What was the good of living, and why should he live now? Then what? Should he retreat after going so far? Should he flee from danger after having approached it? Should he slip away after having come and peeped into the barricade? Slip away, all in a tremble, saying, after all, I have had enough of it as it is. I have seen it. That suffices. This is civil war, and I shall take my leave. should he abandon his friends who were expecting, who were in need of him possibly, who were a mere

Starting point is 13:46:33 handful against an army? Should he be untrue at once to his love, to country, to his word? Should he give to his cowardice the pretext of patriotism? But this was impossible. And if the phantom of his father was there in the gloom and beheld him retreating, he would beat him on the loins with the fight of his sword and shout to him, march on, you Poultrune? Thus a prey to the conflicting movements of his thoughts, he dropped his head. All at once he raised it. A sort of splendid rectification had just been affected in his mind. There is a widening of the spear of thought which is peculiar to the vicinity of the grave. It makes one see clearly to be near death. The vision of the action into which he felt that he was,

Starting point is 13:47:24 perhaps on the point of entering, appeared to him. no more is lamentable, but as superb. The war of the street was suddenly transfigured by some unfathomable inward working of his soul. Before the eye of his thought, all the tumultuous interrogation

Starting point is 13:47:41 points of reverie recurred to him in throngs, but without troubling him, he left none of them unanswered. Let us see. Why should his father be indignant? Are there not cases where insurrection rises to the dignity of

Starting point is 13:47:57 duty? What was there that was degrading for the son of Colonel Pontmercy and the combat which was about to begin? It is no longer Montmirral nor Champaubère. It is something quite different. The question is no longer one of sacred territory, but of a holy idea. The country wails that may be, but humanity applauds. But is it true that the country does wail? France bleeds, but liberty smiles, and in the presence of Liberty's smile, France forgets her wound. And then if we look at things from a still more lofty point of view, why do we speak of civil war? Civil war, what does that mean? Is there a foreign war? Is not all war between men, war between brothers? War is qualified only by its object. There is no such thing as foreign or civil war. There is only just an unjust war.

Starting point is 13:48:55 until that day when the grand human agreement is concluded, war, that at least which is the effort of the future, which is hastening on against the past, which is lagging in the rear, may be necessary. What have we to reproach that war with? War does not become a disgrace. The sword does not become a disgrace, except when it is used for assassinating the right, progress, reason, civilization, truth. Then war, whether foreign or civil. is iniquitous it is called crime outside the pale of that holy thing justice by what right does one form of man despise another by what right should the sword of washington desone the pike of camille de molet leonidas against the stranger timoleon against the tyrant which is greater the one is the defender the other the liberator shall we brand every appeal to arms within a city limit without taking the object into a consideration?

Starting point is 13:49:58 Then note the infamy of Brutus, Marcel, Arnold von Blankenheim, calling the Hedgerow War, War of the Streets, Why not? That was the war of Ambriory, of Art Veld, of Marnie, of Pelagius, but Ambio Ré fought against Rome, Art Veld against France, Marni against Spain, Pelagius against the Moors,

Starting point is 13:50:22 all against the foreigner. Well, the Marquis monarchy is a foreigner oppression is a stranger the right divine is a stranger despotism violates the moral frontier and invasion violates geographical frontier driving out the tyrant or driving out the english in both cases regaining possession of one's own territory there comes an hour when protestation no longer suffices after philosophy action is required live force finishes what the idea has sketched out Prometheus chained begins. Arostotigen begins. The encyclopedia enlightened souls, the 10th of August electrifies them. After Escalis, Theriscibulus. After Diderot, Dantan. Multitudes have a tendency to accept the master. Their mass bears witness to apathy. A crowd is easily led as a whole to obedience. Men must be stirred up, pushed on,

Starting point is 13:51:23 treated roughly by the very benefit of their deliverance. Their eyes must be wounded by the true. Light must be hurled at them in terrible handfuls. They must be a little at thunderstruck themselves at their own well-being. This dazzling awakens them, hence the necessity of toxins and wars. Great combatants must rise, must enlighten nations with audacity, and shake up that sad humanity which is covered with gloom by the right divine, cesarean glory, for. fanaticism, irresponsible power, and absolute majesty. A rabble stupidly occupied in the contemplation in their twilight splendor of these sombre triumphs of the night. Down with the tyrant! Of whom are you speaking? Do you call Louis Philippe the tyrant? No, no more than Louis XVI. Both of them

Starting point is 13:52:16 are what history is in the habit of calling good kings. But principles are not to be parceled out. is rectilinear. The peculiarity of truth is that it lacks complacence. No concessions. Then, all encroachments on man should be repressed. There is a divine right in Louis XVI. There is because a bourbon in Louis-Philippe. Both represent in a certain measure the confiscation of right. And in order to clear away universal insurrection, they must be combated. It must be done. France being always the one to begin. When the master falls in France, he falls everywhere. In short, what cause is more just, and consequently what war is greater than that which reestablishes social truth,

Starting point is 13:53:07 restores throne to liberty, restores the people to the people, restores sovereignty to man, replaces the purple on the head of France, restores equity and reason in their plenitude, suppresses every germ of antagonism by restoring each one to himself, annihilates the obstacle which royalty presents to the whole immense universal concord, and places the human race once more on a level with the right. These wars build up peace, an enormous fortress of prejudices, privileges, superstitions, lies, exactions, abuses, violences, iniquities, and darkness still stand erect in this world with its towers of hatred.

Starting point is 13:53:51 It must be cast down. this monstrous mass must be made to crumble to conquer at australitz is grand to take the bestil is immense there is no one who has not noticed it in his own case the soul and therein lies the marvel of its unity complicated with ubiquity has a strange aptitude for reasoning almost coldly in the most violent extremities and it often happens that heart-broken passion and profound despair in the very agony of their black as monologues, treat subjects, and discuss theses. Logic is mingled with convulsion, and the thread of syllogism floats, without breaking, in the mournful storm of thought. This was the situation of Marius's mind. As he meditated thus, dejected but resolute, hesitating in every direction, and in short, shuddering at what he was about to do, his glance strayed to the interior of the barricade.

Starting point is 13:54:55 The insurgents were there conversing in a low voice, without moving, and there was perceptible that quasi-silance which marks the last stage of expectation. Overhead at the small window in the third story, Marius descried a sort of spectator who appeared to him to be singularly attentive. This was the porter, who had been killed by Lurkabuk. Below by the lights of the torch which was thrust between the paving-stones, this head, could be vaguely distinguished. Nothing could be stranger in that somber and uncertain gleam than that vivid, motionless, astonished face with its bristling hair, its eyes fixed and staring, and its yawning mouth, bent over the street in an attitude of curiosity. One would have said that the man who was dead was surveying those who were about to die. A long trail of blood which had flowed

Starting point is 13:55:54 from that head, descended in reddish threads from the window to the height of the first floor where it stopped. End of Book 13, Chapter 3. Chapter 1 of Book 14 of Le Miserab, Volume 4, by Victor Hugo. This is a Librevox recording. All Libravox recordings are in the public domain. For more information, or to volunteer, please visit Librevox.org. Recording by Jersey City, Frankie.

Starting point is 13:56:25 Miserab, Volume 4 by Victor Hugo, translated by Isabella Florence Hapgood. Book 14, The Grandures of Despair. Chapter 1 The Flag, Act First. As yet nothing had come. Ten o'clock had sounded from St. Mary. Angiolair and Combeferra had gone and seated themselves, carbines in hand, near the outlet of the Grand Barricade. They had no longer addressed each other.

Starting point is 13:56:50 They listened, seeking to catch even the faintest and most distant sound of marching. suddenly in the midst of the dismal calm a clear gay young voice which seemed to come from the Rue Saint-Denace rose and began to sing distinctly to the old popular air of by the light of the moon. This bit of poetry terminated by a cry like the crow of a cock. Monez is le maire, mon ami baguade, Priap mortes his grand arms, pour l'ier de'n Mott. In capote bleu lepul o'shiko, Vichi la Benliul, co-corricori.

Starting point is 13:57:23 They pressed each other's hands. That is Grvotche, said Enjolet. He is warning us, said Kumpaphaer. A hasty rush troubled the deserted street. They beheld a being more agile than a clown, climb over the omnibus. And Gavroche bounded into the barricade, all breathless, saying, My gun! here they are! An electric quiver shot through the whole barricade, and the sound of hands seeking their

Starting point is 13:57:49 guns became audible. Would you like my carbine? Angolair to the lad? I want a big gun, replied Gavroche, and he seized Gervaer's gun. Two sentinels had fallen back and had come in almost at the same moment as Gavroche. They were the sentinels from the end of the street, and the videé of the Rue de Petit Trondier. The viday of the Lane de Preciuse had remained at his post, which indicated that

Starting point is 13:58:15 nothing was approaching from the direction of the bridges and halls. the Rue de la Chenevrerie, of which a few paving stones alone were dimly visible in the reflection of the light projected on a flag, offered to the insurgents the aspect of a vast black door vaguely opened into a smoke. Each man had taken up his position for the conflict. 43 insurgents, among who were Angolair, Combefer, Courfeyrock, Basse, Jolie, Barol, and Gavroche were kneeling inside the large barricade, with their heads on a level with the crest of the barrier, the barrels of their guns and carbines aimed on the stones as though at loopholes,

Starting point is 13:58:56 attentive, mute, ready to fire. Six, commanded by Fulei, had installed themselves with their guns leveled at their shoulders at the windows of the two stories of Corinth. Several minutes passed thus, then a sound of footsteps, measured, heavy, and numerous, became distinctly audible in the direction of St. Liu. This sound fainted first, then precise, then heavy, and sonorous approached slowly, without halt, without intermission, with a tranquil and terrible continuity.

Starting point is 13:59:27 Nothing was to be heard but this. It was that combined silence and sound of the statue of the commander, but this stony step had something indescribably enormous and multiple about it, which awakened the idea of a throng, and at the same time the idea of a spectre. One thought one heard the terrible state legion marching onward. This tread drew near, it drew still nearer and stopped. It seemed as though the breathing of many men could be heard at the end of the street. Nothing was to be seen, however, but at the bottom of that dense obscurity, there could be distinguished a multitude of metallic threads,

Starting point is 14:00:03 as fine as needles and almost imperceptible, which moved about like those indescribable phosphoric networks, which one sees beneath one's closed eyelids, in the first mists of slumber at the moment when one is dropping off to sleep. These were bayonets and gun barrels, confusedly illuminated by the distant reflection of the torch. A pause ensued as though both sides were waiting, all at once, from the depths of the darkness of voice, which was all the more sinister since no one was visible, and which appeared to be the gloom itself speaking, shouted, Who goes there? At the same time, the click of guns, as they were.

Starting point is 14:00:39 they were lowered into position was heard. Engel Ra replied in a haughty and vibrating tone, The French Revolution! Fire! shouted the voice. A flash empurpled all the facades in the street as though the door of a furnace had been flung open and hastily closed again. A fearful detonation burst forth on the barricade.

Starting point is 14:01:00 The red flag fell. The discharge had been so violent and so dense that had cut the staff, that is to say, the very tip of the omnibus pole. Bullets which had rebounded from the cornices of the houses penetrated the barricade and wounded several men. The impression produced by this first discharge was freezing. The attack had been rough and of a nature to inspire reflection in the boldest. It was evident that they had to deal with an entire regiment at the very least.

Starting point is 14:01:26 Comrades! shouted Corfey Rock! Let us not waste our powder! Let us wait until they are in the street before replying. And above all, said Endor-Laura, let us raise the flag again. He picked up the flag. which had fallen precisely at his feet. Outside, the clatter of the ramrods and the guns could be heard. The troops were reloading their arms.

Starting point is 14:01:46 Endurlis went on, Who is there here with a bold heart? Who will plant the flag on the barricade again? Not a man responded. To mount on the barricade at the very moment when, without any doubt, it was again the object of their aim, was simply death. The bravest hesitated to pronounce his own condemnation.

Starting point is 14:02:04 And Jolras himself felt a thrill. He repeated, does no one volunteer? Chapter 2 The flag Act 2 Since they had arrived at Corinth and had begun the construction of the barricade No attention had been paid to Father Mabouf.

Starting point is 14:02:21 M'Hsher Mabouf had not quitted the mob, however. He had under the ground floor of the wine shop and had seated himself behind the counter. There he had, so to speak, retreated into himself. He no longer seemed to look or to think. Coyfri Rock and the others had accosted him two or three times, warning him of his peril, besieging him to withdraw, but he did not hear them. When they were not speaking to him, his mouth moved as though he were replying to

Starting point is 14:02:46 someone, and as soon as he was addressed, his lips became motionless, and his eyes no longer had the appearance of being alive. Several hours before the barricade was attacked, he had assumed an attitude which he did not afterwards abandon, with both fists planted on his knees, and his head thrust forward as though he were gazing over a precipice. Nothing had been able to move him from this attitude. It did not seem as though his mind were in the barricade. When each had gone to take up his position for the combat, there remained in the taproom where Javert was bound to the post only a single insurgent with a naked sword watching over Javert and himself, Mabouf. At the moment of the attack, at the detonation, the physical shock

Starting point is 14:03:26 had reached him and had, as it were, awakened him. He started up abruptly, crossed the room, and at the instant when Enjolet repeated his appeal, does no one volunteer? The old man was seen to make his appearance on the threshold of the wine shop. His presence produced a sort of commotion in the different groups. A shout went up. It is the voter. It is the member of the convention. It is the representative of the people. It is probable that he did not hear them. He strode straight up to Endroler, the insurgents withdrawing before him with a religious fear. He tore the flag from Enjolair, who recoiled in amazement. And then, since no one dared to stop or to assist him, this old man of 80, who's shaking head, but firm foot began slowly to ascend the staircase of paving

Starting point is 14:04:11 stones arranged in the barricade. This was so melancholy and so grand that all around him cried, Off with your hats! At every step that he mounted, it was a frightful spectacle. His white locks, his decrepit face, his lofty, bald and wrinkled brow, his amazed and open mouth, his aged arm upholding the red banner, rose through the gloom and were enlarged in the bloody light of the torch, and the bystanders thought that they beheld the spectre of 93, emerging from earth, with a flag of terror in his hand. When he reached the last step, when this trembling and terrible phantom erect on that pile of rubbish in the presence of twelve hundred invisible guns, drew himself up in the face of death,

Starting point is 14:04:54 as though he were more powerful than it, the whole barricade assumed amid the darkness a supernatural and colossal form. There ensued one of those silences which occur only in the presence of prodigies. In the midst of this silence, the old man waved the red flag and shouted, Long live the revolution! Long live the republic! Fraternity, equality, and death! Those in the barricade heard a low and rapid whisper, like the murmur of a priest who is dispatching a prayer in haste. It was probably the commissary of police who was making the legal summons at the other end of the street.

Starting point is 14:05:32 Then the same piercing voice which had shouted, Who Goes There? shouted, Retire! Monsieur Mabouf, pale, haggard, his eyes lighted up with the mournful flame of aberration, raised the flag above his head, and repeated, Long live the Republic! Fire! said the voice.

Starting point is 14:05:51 A second discharge, similar to the first, rained down upon the barricade. The old man fell on his knees, and then rose again, dropped the flag, and fell backward on the park. pavement, like a log at full length with outstretched arms. Rivulets of blood flowed beneath him, his aged head, pale and sad, seemed to be gazing at the sky.

Starting point is 14:06:13 One of those emotions which are superior to man, which make him forget even to defend himself, seized upon the insurgents, and they approached the body with a respectful awe. What men these regicides were, said Angelair. Corfeyrac bent down to Enderlazir. This is for yourself alone. I do not wish to dampen the enthusiasm, but this man was anything rather than a regicide. I knew him.

Starting point is 14:06:39 His name was Father Mabouf. I do not know what was the matter with him today. But he was a brave blockhead. Just look at his head. The head of a blockhead and the heart of a brutus, replied Androla. Then he raised his voice. Citizens, this is the example which the old gave to the young. We hesitate he came.

Starting point is 14:06:58 We were drawing back. He advanced. This is what those who are trembling with age teach to those who tremble with fear. This aged man is august in the eyes of his country. He has had a long life and a magnificent death. Now let us place the body under cover that each one of us may defend this old man, dead as he would his father living, and may his presence in our midst render the barricade impregnable.

Starting point is 14:07:21 A murmur of gloomy and energetic assent followed these words. Angerler, bent down, raised the old man's head, and fierce as he was, he could. kissed him on the brow, then throwing wide his arms and handling this dead man with tender precaution, as though he feared to hurt it. He removed his coat, showed the bloody holes in it to all, and said, This is our flag now. End of Book 14, chapters one and two. Chapter 3 of Book 14 of Le Miserables, Volume 4 by Victor Hugo. This is a Libravox recording. All Libravox recordings are in the public domain. For

Starting point is 14:08:04 or to volunteer, please visit Librevox.org. Recording by Jersey City Frankie. Les Miserables, Volume 4 by Victor Hugo, translated by Isabella Florence Hapgood. Book 14, The Grandures of Despair, Chapter 3. Gravosh would have done better to accept Angolier's carbine. They threw a long black shawl of widow Hush-Loop's over Father Mabouf. Six men made a litter of their guns.

Starting point is 14:08:33 On this, they laid the body, and, it with bared heads, with solemn slowness to the large table in the taproom. These men, wholly absorbed in the grave and sacred task in which they were engaged, thought no more of the perilous situation in which they stood. When the corpse passed near Gervere, who was still impassive, Engel Ra said to the spy, It will be your turn presently. During all this time little Gavroche, who alone had not quitted his post,

Starting point is 14:09:01 but had remained on guard, though he thought he espied some men stealthily. approaching the barricade, all at once he shouted, Look out! Corfey Rock, Engorrer, Jean Prover, Combefer, Jolie, Beryol, Beirol, Boussut, and all the rest ran tumultuously from the wine shop. It was almost too late. They saw a glistening density of bayonets undulating above the barricade. Municipal guards of lofty stature were making their way in, some striding over the omnibus,

Starting point is 14:09:28 others through the cut thrusting before them the urchin who were treated but did not flee. The moment was critical. It was that first redoubtable moment of inundation, when the stream rises to the level of the levee, and when the water begins to filter through the fissures of a dyke, a second more on the barricade would have been taken. Bahorel dashed upon the first municipal guard who was entering and killed him on the spot with a blow from his gun. The second killed Baharel with a blow from his bayonet, and another had already overtaken Corfei Rock, who is shouting, Follow me! The largest of all, a sort of colossus, marched on Gavro.

Starting point is 14:10:04 with his bayonet fixed. The urchin took in his arm, Javier's immense gun, leveled it resolutely at the giant, and fired. No discharge, wow, Javier's gun was not loaded. The municipal guard burst into a laugh and raised his bayonet at the child. Before the bayonet had touched Gavroche, the gun slipped from the soldier's grasp. A bullet had struck the municipal guardsman in the center of the forehead, and he fell over on his back.

Starting point is 14:10:30 A second bullet struck the other guard who had assaulted Corfey Rock. in the breast and laid him low on the pavement. This was the work of Marius who had just entered the barricade. Chapter 4. The Barrel of Powder. Marius, still concealed in the turn of the Rue Montetor, had witnessed, shuddering in irresolute the first phase of the combat, but he had not long been able to resist that mysterious and sovereign vertigo, which may be designated as the call of the abyss, in the presence of the imminence of the peril, in the presence of the death of Monsieur Mubuf, that melancholy enigma, in the presence of Beryl killed, and Corfeyrac shouting,

Starting point is 14:11:13 Follow me! Of that child threatened, of his friends to succor or to avenge, all hesitation had vanished, and he flung himself into the conflict, his two pistols in hand. With his first shot he had saved Gavroche, and with the second, delivered Corfeyrac. Amid the sound of the shots, amid the cries of the assault, assaulted guards, the assailants had climbed the entrenchment on whose summit municipal guards,

Starting point is 14:11:38 soldiers of the line, and national guards from the suburbs could now be seen, gun and hand, rearing themselves to more than half the height of their bodies. They already covered more than two-thirds of the barrier, but they did not leap into the enclosure, as though wavering in the fear of some trap. They gazed into the dark barricade as one would gaze into a lion's den. The light of the torch illuminated only their bayonets, their bearskin caps, and the upper part of their uneasy and angry faces. Marius had no longer any weapons. He had flung away his discharged pistols after firing them, but he had caught sight of the barrel of powder in the taproom near the door. As he turned half round, gazing in that direction, a soldier took aim at him. At the moment when

Starting point is 14:12:22 the soldier was sighting Marius, a hand was laid on the muzzle of the gun and obstructed it. This was done by someone who had darted forward. The young worked. and velvet trousers. The shot sped, traversed the hand, and possibly also the workman, since he fell, but the ball did not strike Marius. All this which was rather to be apprehended than seen through the smoke, Marius, who was entering the taproom, hardly noticed. Still he had, in a confused way, perceived that gun-barrel aimed at him, and the hand which

Starting point is 14:12:53 had blocked it, and he had heard the discharge. But in moments like this, the things which one sees vacillate and are precipitated, and one pauses for nothing. One feels obscurely impelled towards more darkness still, and all is cloud. The insurgents, surprised but not terrified, had rallied. Angel Ra had shouted, Wait, don't fire at random!

Starting point is 14:13:16 In the first confusion they might, in fact, wound each other. The majority of them had ascended to the window on the first story into the attic windows, whence they commanded the assailants. The most determined, with Angolet, Coffey Rock, and Jean-Provier and Combré, affair, had proudly placed themselves with their backs against the houses at the rear,

Starting point is 14:13:36 unsheltered and facing the ranks of soldiers and guards who crowned the barricade. All this was accomplished without haste, with that strange and threatening gravity which precedes engagements. They took aim, point-blank, on both sides. They were so close that they could talk together without raising their voices. When they had reached this point, where the spark is on the brink of darting forth, An officer and a Gorgay extended his sword and said, Lay down your arms!

Starting point is 14:14:05 Fire, replied Angel Ra. The two discharges took place at the same moment, and all disappeared in smoke. An acrid and stifling smoke in which dying and wounded lay with weak, dull groans. When the smoke cleared away, the combatants on both sides could be seen to be thinned out, but still in the same positions reloading in silence. All at once a thundering voice was heard, shouting,

Starting point is 14:14:28 "'Be off with you, or I'll blow up the barricade!' All turned in the direction once the voice proceeded. Marius had entered the tap-room, and had seized the barrel of powder. Then he had taken advantage of the smoke, and the sort of obscure mist which filled the entrenched enclosure, to glide along the barricade as far as that cage of paving stones with a torch was fixed. To tear it from the torch, to replace it by the barrel of powder, to thrust the pile of stones under the barrel,

Starting point is 14:14:56 which was instantly staved in, with a sort of horrible obedience. All this had caused Marius but the time necessary to stoop and rise again, and now all, National Guards, municipal guards, officers, soldiers, huddled at the other extremity of the barricade, gazed stupidly at him as he stood with his foot on the stones, his torch in his hand, his haughty face illuminated by a fatal resolution, drooping the flame of the torch towards the redoubtable pile, where they could make out the broken barrel of powder,

Starting point is 14:15:25 and giving vent to that startling crue. cry. Be off with you, or I'll blow up the barricade. Marius on that barricade after the octogenarian was the vision of the young revolution after the apparition of the old. Blow up the barricade, said a sergeant, and yourself with it! Marius retorted, and myself also! And he dropped the torch towards the barrel of powder. But there was no longer anyone on the barrier. The assailants abandoning their dead and wounded flowed back pell-mell and in disorder towards the extremity of the street, and there were again lost in the night. It was a headlong flight. The barricade was free.

Starting point is 14:16:04 Chapter 5. End of the verses of Jean Provere. All flocked around Marius. Corfey Rock flung himself on his neck. Here you are! What luck, said Combeferre. You came in opportunely, ejaculated Basut. If it had not been for you, I should have been dead, began Coffre Rock again. If it had not been for you, I should have been gobbled up, added Gavroche. Marius asked, Where is the chief? You are he, said Angel Ra. Marius had a furnace in his brain all day long. Now it was a whirlwind, this whirlwind which was within him, produced on him the effect of being outside of him and of bearing him away. It seemed to him that he was already at an immense distance from life, his two luminous months of joy and love, ending abruptly at that frightful

Starting point is 14:16:52 precipice. Cosette lost to him, that barricade, Monsieur Mabouf, getting himself killed for the Republic, himself the leader of the insurgents. All these things appeared to him like a tremendous nightmare. He was obliged to make a mental effort to recall the fact that all that surrounded him was real. Marius had already seen too much of life not to know that nothing is more imminent than the impossible, and that what is already necessary to foresee is the unforeseen. He had looked on at his own drama as a piece which one does not understand. In the mists which enveloped his thoughts, he did not recognize Javert, who, bound to his post, had not so much as moved his head during the whole of the attack on the barricade, and who had gazed on the revolt seething around him

Starting point is 14:17:38 with the resignation of a martyr and the majesty of a judge. Marius had not even seen him. In the meanwhile, the assailants did not stir. They could be heard marching and swarming through at the end of the street, but they did not venture into it. either because they were awaiting orders or because they were awaiting reinforcements before hurling themselves afresh on this impregnable redoubt. The insurgents had posted sentinels, and some of them, who were medical students, set about caring for the wounded. They had thrown the tables out of the wine shop, with the exception of the two tables reserved for lint and cartridges, and of the one in which lay Father Mabouf. They had added them to the barricade, and had replaced them in the taproom with mattresses from the bed of the widow Hush-loop,

Starting point is 14:18:21 and her servants. On these mattresses they had laid the wounded. As for the three poor creatures who inhabited Corinth, no one knew what had become of them. They were finally found, however, hidden in the cellar. A poignant emotion clouded the joy of the disencumbered barricade. The roll was called. One of the assurgences was missing. And who was it? One of the dearest, one of the most valiant. Jean Provier. He was sought among the wounded. He was not not there. He was sought among the dead. He was not there. He was evidently a prisoner. Combeferre said to Engelorre, they have our friend. We have their agent. Are you set on the death of that spy? Yes, replied Angelrier, but less so than on the life of Jean Proviere. This took

Starting point is 14:19:11 place in the taproom near Javert's post. Well, resumed Combeferre, I'm going to fasten my handkerchief to this cane and go as a flag of truths to offer. to exchange our man for theirs. Listen, said Enderlard, lying his hand on Combefer's arm. At the end of the street, there was a significant clash of arms. They heard a manly voice shout, Vive la France! Long live France! Long live the future! They recognized the voice of Provier, a flash passed, a report rang out.

Starting point is 14:19:45 Silence fell again. They've killed him, exclaimed Combeferre. Angelier glanced at Givert and said to him, Your friends have just shot you. End of book 14, chapters 3, 4, and 5. Recording by Jersey City Frankie. Chapter 6 and 7 of Book 14 of Le Miserables, Volume 4 by Victor Hugo. This is a Libravox recording.

Starting point is 14:20:21 All Libravox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Libravox.org. Recording by Peter Eastman Le Miserab, Volume 4 by Victor Hugo, translated by Isabel Florence Hapgood. Book 14, The Granger's of Despair Chapter 6 The Agony of Death, After the Agony of Life.

Starting point is 14:20:52 A peculiarity of this species of war is that the attack of the barricades is almost always made from the front, and that the assailants generally abstain from turning the position, either because they fear ambushes, or because they are afraid of getting entangled in the tortuous streets. The assailant's whole attention had been directed, therefore, to the Grand Barricade, which was evidently the spot always menaced,

Starting point is 14:21:19 and there the struggle would infallibly recommence. But Marius thought of the little barricade, and went thither. It was deserted, and guarded only by the firepot, which trembled between the paving stones. Moreover, the Mondador Alley, and the branches of the Rue de la Petitroanderie, and the rue de Sagna were profoundly calm. As Marius was withdrawing after concluding his inspection, he heard his name pronounced feebly in the darkness.

Starting point is 14:21:53 Monsieur Armarius. He started, for he recognized the voice, which had called to him two hours before, through the gate in the Rue Plume. Only, the voice now seemed to be nothing more than a breath. He looked about him, but saw no one. Marius thought he had been mistaken, that it was an illusion, added by his mind to the extraordinary realities

Starting point is 14:22:19 which were clashing around him. He advanced a step in order to quit the distant recess where the barricade lay. "'Monsieur Marius,' repeated the voice. This time he could not doubt that he had heard it distinctly. He looked and saw nothing. "'At your feet,' said the voice. He bent down, and saw in the darkness a form which was dragging itself towards him. It was crawling along the pavement.

Starting point is 14:22:53 It was this that had spoken to him. The firepot allowed him to distinguish a blouse, torn trousers of coarse velvet, bare feet, and something which resembled a pool of blood. Marius indistinctly made out a pale head, which was lifted towards him, and which was saying to him, You do not recognize me? No. Eponine. Marius bent hastily down.

Starting point is 14:23:24 It was, in fact, that unhappy child. She was dressed in men's clothes. How came you here? What are you doing here? I am dying, said she. There are words and incidents which arouse dejected beings. Marius cried out with a start. You are wounded. Wait, I will carry you into the room. They will attend to you there. Is it serious? How must I hold you in order not to hurt you? Where do you suffer? Help! My God! But why did you come hither?

Starting point is 14:24:02 And he tried to pass his arm under her in order to raise her. She uttered a feeble cry. Have I hurt you? asked Marius. A little. But I only touched your hand. She raised her hand to Marius, and in the middle of that hand Marius saw a black hole. What is the matter with your hand, said he?

Starting point is 14:24:29 It is pierced. Pierced? Yes. What with? A bullet. How? Did you see a gun aimed at you? Yes, and a hand stopping it.

Starting point is 14:24:44 It was mine. Marius was seized with a shudder. What madness! Poor child! But so much the better, if that is all, it is nothing. Let me carry you to a bed. They will treat you to a bed. your wound. One does not die of a pierced hand. She murmured. The bullet traversed my hand,

Starting point is 14:25:09 but it came out through my back. It is useless to remove me from the spot. I will tell you how you can care for me better than any surgeon. Sit down near me on the stone. He obeyed. She laid her head on Marius's knees, and without looking at him, she said, Oh, how good this is, how comfortable this is. There, I no longer suffer. She remained silent for a moment. Then she turned her face with an effort and looked at Marius. Do you know what, Monsieur Marius?

Starting point is 14:25:46 It puzzled me because you entered that garden. It was stupid, because it was I who showed you that house. And then I ought to have said to myself that a young man like you. She paused. and overstepping the somber transitions that undoubtedly existed in her mind, she resumed with a heartrending smile. You thought me ugly, didn't you? She continued.

Starting point is 14:26:15 You see, you are lost. Now no one can get out of the barricade. It was I who led you here, by the way. You are going to die. I count upon that. And yet, when I saw them taking aim at you, I put my hand on the muzzle of the gun. How queer it is.

Starting point is 14:26:35 But it was because I wanted to die before you. When I received that bullet, I dragged myself here. No one saw me. No one picked me up. I was waiting for you. I said, so he is not coming. Oh, if only you knew. I bit my blouse.

Starting point is 14:26:53 I suffered so. Now I am well. Do you remember the day I entered your chamber, and when I looked at myself in your mirror, And the day when I came to you on the boulevard near the washerwomen, how the birds sang. That was a long time ago. You gave me a hundred sous, and I said to you, I don't want your money. I hope you picked up your coin.

Starting point is 14:27:19 You are not rich. I did not think to tell you to pick it up. The sun was shining bright, and it was not cold. Do you remember, Monsieur Marius? Oh, how happy I am. Everyone is going to die. She had a mad, grave, and heartbreaking air. Her torn blouse disclosed her bare throat.

Starting point is 14:27:46 As she talked, she pressed her pierced hand to her breast, where there was another hole, and whence there spurted from moment to moment a stream of blood, like a jet of wine from an open bunghole. Marius gazed at this unfortunate creature with profound compassion. Oh! she resumed, It is coming again. I am stifling. She caught up her blouse and bit it, and her limbs stiffened on the pavement.

Starting point is 14:28:15 At that moment, the young coxcrow executed by little gavroche resounded through the barricade. The child had mounted a table to load his gun, and was singing gaily, the song then so popular. On beholding Lafayette, the gendarme repeats, Let us flee, let us flee, let us flee. Epinine raised herself and listened. Then she murmured, It is he. And turning to Marius.

Starting point is 14:28:45 My brother is here. He must not see me. He would scold me. Your brother? inquired Marius. He was meditating in the most bitter and sorrowful depths of his heart on the duties to the Tenardiers which his father had bequeathed to him. Who is your brother?

Starting point is 14:29:03 That little fellow. The one who was saying, Yes. Marius made a movement. Oh, don't go away, said she. It will not be long now. She was sitting almost upright, but her voice was very low and broken by hiccough's. At intervals the death rattle interrupted her.

Starting point is 14:29:28 She put her face as near that of Marius as possible. She added with a strange expression. Listen, I do not wish to play you a trick. I have a letter in my pocket for you. I was told to put it in the post. I kept it. I did not want to have it reach you. But perhaps you will be angry with me for it when we meet again presently.

Starting point is 14:29:53 Take your letter. She grasped Marius's hand convulsively with her pierced hand, but she no longer seemed to feel her sufferings. She put Marius's hand in the pocket of her blouse. There, in fact, Marius felt a paper. Take it, said she. Marius took the letter. She made a sign of satisfaction and contentment.

Starting point is 14:30:23 Now, for my trouble, promise me. And she stopped. What, asked Marius. Promise me! I promise. Promise to give me. me a kiss on my brow when I am dead. I shall feel it. She dropped her head again on Marius's knees, and her eyelids closed. He thought the poor soul had departed. Epinine remained motionless.

Starting point is 14:30:56 All at once, at the very moment when Marius fancied her asleep forever, she slowly opened her eyes, in which appeared the sombre profundity of death, and said to him in a tone whose sweetness seemed already to proceed from another world. And, by the way, Mr. Marius, I believe that I was a little bit in love with you. She tried to smile once more, and expired. Chapter 7. Gavroche, as a profound calculator of distances. Marius kept his promise.

Starting point is 14:31:42 He dropped a kiss on that livid brow, where the icy perspiration stood in beads. This was no infidelity to Cosette. It was a gentle and pensive farewell to an unhappy soul. It was not without a tremor that he had taken the letter which Epinine had given him. He had immediately felt that it was an event of weight. He was impatient to read it. The heart of man is so constituted that the unhappy child had hardly closed her eyes when Marius began to think of unfolding this paper.

Starting point is 14:32:19 He laid her gently on the ground and went away. Something told him that he could not peruse that letter in the presence of that body. He drew near to a candle in the taproom. It was a small note, folded and sealed with a woman's elegant care. The address was in a woman's hand and ran to Monsieur, Monsieur Marius Pomercy, at Monsieur Corferrox, Rue de la Verreux, number 16. He broke the seal and read, My dearest, alas, my father insists on her setting out immediately.

Starting point is 14:32:59 We shall be this evening in the Rue de la Omar May, number seven. In a week we shall be in England. Cosette, June 4th. Such was the innocence of their love, that Marius was not even acquainted with Cosette's handwriting. What had taken place may be related in a few words. Epinine had been the cause of everything. After the evening of the 3rd of June, she had cherished a double idea,

Starting point is 14:33:30 to defeat the projects of her father and the ruffians on the house of the Rue Clumet, and to separate Marius and Cosette. She had exchanged rags with the first young scamp she came across who had thought it amusing to dress like a woman, while Epinine disguised herself like a man. It was she who had conveyed to Jean Valjean, in the Sean de Mars the expressive warning, leave your house.

Starting point is 14:33:56 Sean Valjean had, in fact, returned home, and had said to Cosette, we set out this evening, and we go to the route de la Omar May with Toussaint. Next week we shall be in London. Cosette, utterly overwhelmed by this unexpected blow, had hastily penned a couple of lines to Marius. But how was she to get the letter to the post?

Starting point is 14:34:19 She never went out alone. and Toussaint, surprised at such a commission, would certainly show the letter to Monsieur Fusufant. In this dilemma, Cosette had caught sight through the fence of Epinine in men's clothes, who now prowled incessantly around the garden. Cosette had called to this young workman, and had handed him five francs in the letter, saying, carry this letter immediately to its address. Epinine had put the letter in her pocket. The next day, on the first day, on the letter, the 5th of June, she went to Corfrock's quarters to inquire for Marius, not for the purpose of delivering the letter, but a thing which every jealous and loving soul will comprehend, to see.

Starting point is 14:35:06 There she had waited for Marius, or at least for Corfarak, still for the purpose of seeing. When Korferok had told her, we are going to the barricades, an idea flashed through her mind. To fling herself into that death, as she would have. have done into any other, and to thrust Marius into it also. She had followed Corforac, had made sure of the locality where the barricade was in the process of construction, and quite certain, since Marius had received no warning, and since she had intercepted the letter, that he would go at dusk to his tristing place for every evening, she had be taken herself to the rue Plumé, and there awaited Marius, and had sent him, in the name of his friend,

Starting point is 14:35:52 the appeal which would, she thought, lead him to the barricade. She reckoned Amarius's despair when he should fail to find Cosette. She was not mistaken. She had returned to the Rue de Lichanvreri herself. What she did there, the reader has just seen. She died with the tragic joy of jealous hearts, who dragged the beloved being into their own death, and who say, no one shall have him.

Starting point is 14:36:24 Marius covered Cosette's letter with kisses. So she loved him. For one moment, the idea occurred to him that he ought not to die now. Then he said to himself, She is going away. Her father is taking her to England, and my grandfather refuses his consent to the marriage. Nothing has changed in our fates. Dreamers like Marius are subject to supreme attacks of dejection, and desperate resolves are the result. The fatigue of living is insupportable. Death is sooner over with. Then he reflected that he had still two duties to fulfill, to inform Cosette of his death and send her a final farewell, and to say from the impending catastrophe which was in preparation,

Starting point is 14:37:14 that poor child, Epinine's brother and Tenardier's son. He had a pocketbook about him, the same one which had contained the notebook in which he had inscribed so many thoughts of love for Cosette. He tore out a leaf, and wrote on it a few lines in pencil. Our marriage was impossible. I asked my grandfather, he refused. I have no fortune, neither haste thou. I hastened to thee, thou wert no longer there. Thou knowest the promise that I gave thee, I shall keep it. I die. I love thee. when thou readest this my soul will be near thee and thou wilt smile having nothing wherewith to seal this letter he contended himself with folding the paper in four and added the address to mademoiselle cosette fauchelevent and monsieur fauchelevent's rue de le omar me number seven having folded the letter he stood in thought for a moment drew out his pocket-book again opened it and wrote with the same pencil these four lines on the first page

Starting point is 14:38:25 My name is Marius Pomercy. Carry my body to my grandfather, Monsieur Gilles Normand, Rue de Fille du Caverre, number six, in the mare. He put his pocketbook back in his pocket, then he called Gavroche. The gamin, at the sound of Marius's voice, ran up to him with his merry and devoted air. Will you do something for me? Anything, said Gavroche. Good God, if it had not been for you. I should have been done for.

Starting point is 14:38:59 Do you see this letter? Yes? Take it. Leave the barricade instantly. Gavroche began to scratch his ear uneasily. And tomorrow morning, you will deliver it at its address to Mademoiselle Cosette at Monsieur Fauchelevent's route Le Omar May number seven. The heroic child replied,

Starting point is 14:39:20 Well, but, in the meanwhile, the barricade will be taken, and I shall not be there. The barricade will not be attacked until daybreak, according to all appearances, and will not be taken before tomorrow noon. The fresh respite which the assailants were granted to the barricade had in fact been prolonged. It was one of those intermissions which frequently occur in nocturnal combats, which are always followed by an increase of rage. Well, said Gavroche, what if I were to go and carry your letter tomorrow? It will be too late. The barricade will be put. probably be blockaded. All the streets will be guarded, and you will not be able to get out. Go at once. Gavroche could think of no reply to this, and stood there in indecision, scratching his

Starting point is 14:40:08 ear sadly. All at once, he took the letter, with one of those bird-like movements which were so common with him. All right, said he, and he started off at a run through Mondeur Lane. An idea had occurred to Gavroche, which had brought him to a decision, but he had not mentioned it, for fear that Marius might offer some objection to it. This was the idea. It is barely midnight, the route to Omar May is not far off. I will go and deliver the letter at once, and I shall get back in time. End of Book 14, Chapter 7

Starting point is 14:40:47 Chapter 1 of Book 15 of Le Miserab, Volume 4 by Victor Hugo This is a Libravox recording. All Libravox recordings are in the public domain. For more information, or to volunteer, please visit Libravox.org. Recording by Peter Eastman. Le Miserab, Volume 4 by Victor Hugo, translated by Isabel Florence Hapgood. Book 15, The Rue de la Omar Meret. Chapter 1

Starting point is 14:41:23 A drinker is a babbler What are the convulsions of a city in comparison with the insurrections of the soul? Man is a depth still greater than the people. Jean Valjean, at that very moment, was the prey of a terrible upheaval. Every sort of gulf had opened again within him. He also was trembling, like Paris,

Starting point is 14:41:50 on the brink of an obscure and formidable revolution. A few hours had sufficed to bring this about. His destiny and his conscience had suddenly been covered with gloom. Of him also, as well as of Paris, it might have been said, Two principles are face to face. The white angel and the black angel are about to seize each other on the bridge of the abyss. Which of the two will hurl the other over? Who will carry the day?

Starting point is 14:42:22 On the evening preceding the same 5th of June, Jean Valjean, accompanied by Cosette and Toussaint, had installed himself in the rue de le Omerme. A change awaited him there. Cosette had not quitted the Rue Plume without making an effort at resistance. For the first time since they had lived side by side, Cosette's will and the will of Jean Valjean had proved to be distinct, and had been in opposition at least if they had not clashed. There had been objections on one side, and in flexixton. on the other. The abrupt advice, leave your house, hurled at Jean Valjean by a stranger, had alarmed him to the extent of

Starting point is 14:43:05 rendering him peremptory. He thought that he had been traced and followed. Cosette had been obliged to give way. Both had arrived in the Rue de Le Omameix without opening their lips and without uttering a word, each being absorbed in his own personal preoccupation. Jean Valjean so uneasy that he did not notice. Cosette's sadness. Cosette so sad that she did not notice Jean Valjean's uneasiness. Jean Valjean had taken Toussaint with him, a thing which she had never done in his previous absences. He perceived the possibility of not returning to the Rue Plume, and he could neither leave Toussaint behind nor confide his secret to her. Besides, he felt that she was

Starting point is 14:43:53 devoted and trustworthy. Tretary between master and servant begins in curiosity. Now Toussaint, as though she had been destined to be Jean Valjean's servant, was not curious. She stammered in her peasant dialect of Barnaville, I am made so, I do my work, the rest is no affair of mine. In this departure from the Rue Plume, which had been almost a flight, Jean Valjean had carried away nothing but the little embalmed Valise, baptized by Cosette, the inseparable. Full trunks would have required porters, and porters are witnesses. A fiacre had been summoned to the door on the Rue de Babylon, and they had taken their departure. It was with difficulty that Toussaint had obtained permission

Starting point is 14:44:43 to pack up a little linen and clothes and a few toilet articles. Cosette had taken only her portfolio and her blotting book. Jean Valjean, with a view to augmenting the solitude and the mystery of this departure, had arranged to quit the pavilion of the Rue Plume only at dusk, which had allowed Cosette time to write her note to Marius. They had arrived in the Rue de Le Omarmey after night had fully fallen. They had gone to bed in silence. The lodgings in the Rue de Le Omarmé were situated on a back court on the second floor and were composed of two sleeping rooms, a dining room and a kitchen adjoining the dining room, with a garret where there was a folding bed, and which fell to Toussaint's chair. The dining-room was a dining-room. The dining-room,

Starting point is 14:45:33 room was an antechamber as well and separated the two bedrooms. The apartment was provided with all necessary utensils. People reacquire confidence as foolishly as they lose it. Human nature is so constituted. Hardly had Jean Valjean reached the Rue de Le Omarmé when his anxiety was lightened and by degrees dissipated. There are soothing spots which act in some sort mechanically on the mind. An obscure street, peaceable inhabitants. Jean Valjean experienced an indescribable contagion of tranquility in that alley of ancient Paris, which is so narrow that it is barred against carriages by a transverse beam placed on two posts, which is deaf and dumb in the midst of the clamorous city, dimly lighted at midday,

Starting point is 14:46:25 and is, so to speak, incapable of emotions between two rows of lofty houses centuries old, which hold their peace like ancients as they are. There was a touch of stagnant oblivion in that street. Jean Valjean drew his breath once more there. How could he be found there? His first care was to place the inseparable beside him. He slept well. Night brings wisdom.

Starting point is 14:46:55 We may add, night soothes. On the following morning, he awoke in a mood that was almost gay. He thought the dining room charming, though it was hideous, furnished with an old round table, a long sideboard surmounted by a slandig mirror, a dilapidated armchair, and several plain chairs, which were encumbered with Toussaint's packages. In one of these packages, Jean Valjean's uniform of a National Guard was visible through a rent. As for Cosette, she had had Toussaint take some broth to her room, and did not make her appearance until evening. About five o'clock, Toussaint, who was going and coming and busying herself with

Starting point is 14:47:39 a tiny establishment, set on the table a cold chicken, which Cosette, out of deference to her father, consented to glance at. That done, Cosette, under the pretext of an obstinate sick headache, had bad Jean Valjean good-night, and had shut herself up in her chamber. Jean Valjean had eaten a wing of the chicken with a good appetite, and with his elbows on the table, having gradually recovered his serenity, had regained possession of his sense of security. While he was discussing this modest dinner, he had, twice or thrice, noticed in a confused way, Toussand's stammering words as she said to him, Monsieur, there is something going on, they are fighting in Paris. But absorbed in a throng of inward calculations, he had paid no heed to it.

Starting point is 14:48:30 To tell the truth, he had not heard her. He rose and began to pace from the door to the window and from the window to the door, growing ever more serene. With this calm, Cosette, his sole anxiety, recurred to his thoughts. Not that he was troubled by this headache, a little nervous crisis, a young girl's fit of sulks, the cloud of a moment, there would be nothing left of it in a day or two. But he meditated on the future, and as was his habit, he thought of it, with pleasure. After all, he saw no obstacle to their happy life, resuming its course.

Starting point is 14:49:10 At certain hours, everything seems impossible. At others, everything appears easy. Jean Valjean was in the midst of one of these good hours. They generally succeed the bad ones, as day follows night, by virtue of that law of succession and of contrast, which lies at the very foundation of nature, and which superficial minds call antithesis. In this peaceful street where he had taken refuge, Jean Valjean got rid of all that had been troubling him for some time past. This very fact, that he had seen many shadows, made him begin to perceive a little azure. To have quitted the Rue Plume without complications or incidents was one good step already

Starting point is 14:49:53 accomplished. Perhaps it would be wise to go abroad, if only for a few months. and to set out for London. Well, they would go. What difference did it make to him, whether he was in France or in England, provided he had Cosette beside him? Cosette was his nation. Cosette sufficed for his happiness. The idea that he, perhaps, did not suffice for Cosette's happiness, that idea which had formerly been the cause of his fever and sleeplessness, did not even present itself to his mind. He was in a state of collapse from all his past sufferings, and he was fully entered on optimism. Cosette was by his side. She seemed to be his, an optical illusion which everyone has

Starting point is 14:50:42 experienced. He arranged in his own mind with all sorts of felicitous devices his departure for England with Cosette, and he beheld his felicity reconstituted wherever he pleased in the perspective of his reverie. As he paced to and fro with long strides, his glance suddenly encountered something strange. In the inclined mirror facing him which surmounted the sideboard, he saw the four lines which follow. My dearest, alas, my father insists on our setting out immediately. We shall be this evening in the Rue de Lomarmey, number seven. In a week we shall be in England. Cosette, June 4th. Jean Valjean halted, perfectly haggard. Cosette, on her arrival, had placed her blotting-book on the sideboard in front of the mirror,

Starting point is 14:51:38 and utterly absorbed in her agony of grief, had forgotten it and left it there, without even observing that she had left it wide open, and open at precisely the page on which she had laid to dry the four lines which she had penned, and which she had given in charge of the young workman in the rue plumet. The writing had been printed off on the blotter. The mirror reflected the writing. The result was, what is called in geometry, the symmetrical image. So that the writing, reversed on the blotter, was righted in the mirror and presented its natural appearance.

Starting point is 14:52:15 And Jean Valjean had beneath his eyes the letter written by Cosette to Marius on the preceding evening. It was simple and withering. Jean Valjean stepped up to the mirror. He read the four lines again, but he did not believe them. They produced on him the effect of appearing in a flash of lightning. It was a hallucination. It was impossible. It was not so. Little by little, his perceptions became more precise.

Starting point is 14:52:48 He looked at Cosette's blotting book, and the consciousness of the reality returned to him. He caught up the blotter and said, it comes from there. He feverishly examined the four lines imprinted on the blotter, the reversal of the letters converted into an odd scrawl, and he saw no sense in it. Then he said to himself, But this signifies nothing, there is nothing written here.

Starting point is 14:53:14 And he drew a long breath with inexpressible relief. Who has not experienced those foolish joys in horrible instance? The soul does not surrender. or two despair until it has exhausted all illusions. He held the blotter in his hand, and contemplated it in stupid delight, almost ready to laugh at the hallucination of which he had been the dupe. All at once his eyes fell upon the mirror again, and again he beheld the vision. There were the four lines outlined with inexorable clearness. This time it was no mirage.

Starting point is 14:53:54 The recurrence of a vision is a reality. It was palpable. It was the writing restored in the mirror. He understood. Jean Valjean tottered, dropped the blotter, and fell into the old armchair beside the buffet, with drooping head and glassy eyes in utter bewilderment. He told himself that it was plain,

Starting point is 14:54:19 that the light of the world had been eclipsed forever, and that Cosette had written that to someone. then he heard his soul which had become terrible once more give vent to a dull roar in the gloom try then the effect of taking from the lion the dog which he has in his cage strange and sad to say at that very moment marius had not yet received cosette's letter chance had treacherously carried it to jean valjean before delivering it to marius up to that day jean valjean valjean John Valjean had not been vanquished by trial. He had been subjected to fearful proofs. No violence of bad fortune had been spared him. The ferocity of fate, armed with all vindictiveness and all social scorn, had taken him for

Starting point is 14:55:13 her prey and had raged against him. He had accepted every extremity when it had been necessary. He had sacrificed his inviolability as a reformed man, had yielded up his liberty, risked his and lost everything, suffered everything, and he had remained disinterested and stoical, to such a point that he might have been thought to be absent from himself like a martyr. His conscience endured to every assault of destiny

Starting point is 14:55:42 might have appeared to be forever impregnable. Well, anyone who had beheld his spiritual self would have been obliged to concede that it weakened at that moment. It was because of all the tortures which he had undergone in the course of this long inquisition to which destiny had doomed him, this was the most terrible. Never had such pinchers seized him hitherto.

Starting point is 14:56:11 He felt the mysterious stirring of all his latent sensibilities. He felt the plucking at the strange cord. Alas, the supreme trial, let us say rather the only trial, is the loss of the beloved being. poor old Jean Valjean certainly did not love Cosette otherwise than as a father. But we have already remarked above that into this paternity, the widowhood of his life had introduced all the shades of love. He loved Cosette as his daughter, and he loved her as his mother,

Starting point is 14:56:48 and he loved her as his sister, and as he had never had either a woman to love or a wife, as nature is a creditor who accepts no protest. That sentiment also. the most impossible to lose, was mingled with the rest. Vague, ignorant, pure with the purity of blindness. Unconscious, celestial, angelic, divine. Less like a sentiment than like an instinct. Less like an instinct than like an imperceptible and invisible but real attraction.

Starting point is 14:57:20 And love, properly speaking, was in his immense tenderness for Cosette, like the thread of gold in the mountain, concealed in verse. Let the reader recall the situation of heart which we have already indicated. No marriage was possible between them, not even that of souls. And yet, it is certain that their destinies were wedded. With the exception of Cosette, that is to say, with the exception of a childhood, Jean Valjean had never, in the whole of his long life, known anything of that which may be loved. the passions and loves which succeed each other had not produced in him those successive green growths tender green or dark green which can be seen in foliage which passes through the winter and in men who pass fifty

Starting point is 14:58:11 in short and we have insisted on it more than once all this interior fusion all this whole of which the sum total was a lofty virtue ended in rendering jean valjean a father to cosette a strange father forged from the grandfather the son the brother and the husband that existed in jean valjean a father in whom there was included even a mother a father who loved cosette and adored her and who held that child as his light his home his family his country his paradise thus when he saw that the end had absolutely come that she was escaping from him that she was slipping from his hands that she was gliding from him like a cloud, like water. When he had before his eyes this crushing proof, another is the goal of her heart, another is the wish of her life. There is a dearest one. I am no longer anything but her father. I no longer exist. When he could no longer doubt, when he said to himself, she is going away from me. The grief which he felt surpassed the bounds of possibility. to have done all that he had done for the purpose of ending like this,

Starting point is 14:59:32 and the very idea of being nothing. Then, as we have just said, a quiver of revolt ran through him from head to foot. He felt, even in the very roots of his hair, the immense reawakening of egotism, and the eye in this man's abyss howled. There is such a thing as the sudden-giving way of the inward sun. subsoil. A despairing certainty does not make its way into a man without first thrusting aside and breaking certain profound elements, which in some cases are the very man himself. Grief, when it attains this shape, is a headlong flight of all the forces of the conscience. These are fatal crises.

Starting point is 15:00:21 Few among us emerge from them still like ourselves and firm in duty. When the limit of endurance is overstepped, the most imperturbable virtue is disconcerted. Jean Valjean took the blotter again, and convinced himself afresh. He remained bowed, and as though petrified and with staring eyes, over those four unobjectionable lines. And there arose within him such a cloud that one might have thought that everything in this soul was crumbling away. He examined this revelation, athwart the exaggerations of reverie,

Starting point is 15:00:59 with an apparent and terrifying calmness, for it is a fearful thing, when a man's calmness reaches the coldness of the statue. He measured the terrible step which his destiny had taken without his having a suspicion of the fact. He recalled his fears of the preceding summer, so foolishly dissipated. He recognized the precipice. It was still the same. Only, Jean Valjean was no longer on the brink, he was at the bottom of it. The unprecedented and heart-rending thing about it was that he had fallen without perceiving it. All the light of his life had departed, while he still fancied that he beheld the sun. His instinct did not hesitate. He put together certain circumstances, certain dates, certain blushes,

Starting point is 15:01:53 and certain pallors on Cosette's part, and he said to himself, It is he. The divination of despair is a sort of mysterious bow which never misses its aim. He struck Marius with his first conjecture. He did not know the name, but he found the man instantly. He distinctly perceived, in the background of the implacable conjuration of his memories, the unknown prowler of the Luxembourg, that wretched seeker of love adventures, that idler of romance, that idiot, that coward!

Starting point is 15:02:28 for it is cowardly to come and make eyes at young girls who have beside them a father who loves them. After he had thoroughly verified the fact that this man was at the bottom of this situation, and that everything proceeded from that quarter, he, Jean Valjean, the regenerated man, the man who had so labored over his soul, the man who had made so many efforts to resolve all life, all misery, and all unhappiness into love. looked into his own breast and there beheld a spectre hate great griefs contain something of dejection they discourage one with existence the man into whom they enter feels something within him withdraw from him in his youth their visits are lugubrious later on they are sinister alas if despair is a fearful thing when the blood is hot when the hair is black, when the head is erect on the body like the flame on the torch, when the roll of destiny

Starting point is 15:03:36 still retains its full thickness, when the heart, full of desirable love, still possesses beats which can be returned to it, when one has time for redress, when all women and all smiles, and all the future and all the horizon are before one, when the force of life is complete, What is it in old age, when the years hasten on, growing ever paler, to that twilight hour, when one begins to behold the stars of the tomb? While he was meditating, Toussaint entered. Jean Valjean rose and asked her, In what quarter is it? Do you know?

Starting point is 15:04:22 Toussaint was struck dumb, and could only answer him, What is it, sir? Jean Valjean began again. Did you not tell me that just now, that there is fighting going on? Ah, yes, sir, replied Toussaint. It is in the direction of Saint-Marie. There is a mechanical movement which comes to us, unconsciously, from the most profound depths of our thought. It was, no doubt, under the impulse of a movement of this sort, and of which he was hardly conscious, that Jean Valjean, five minutes later, found himself in the street.

Starting point is 15:04:57 Bareheaded, he sat upon the stone post at the door of his house. He seemed to be listening. Night had come. End of Book 15, Chapter 1. Chapters 2 and 3 of Book 15 of Le Miserables, Volume 4 by Victor Hugo. This is a Libravox recording. All Libravox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Libravox.

Starting point is 15:05:35 Vox.org. Recording by Peter Eastman. Le Miserab, Volume 4 by Victor Hugo, translated by Isabel Florence Hapgood. Book 15, The Rue de Lomarmei. Chapter 2. The Streeterchin, an Enemy of Light. How long did he remain thus?

Starting point is 15:06:00 What was the ebb and flow of this tragic meditation? Did he straighten up? Did he remain bowed? Had he been bent to breaking? Could he still rise and regain his footing in his conscience upon something solid? He probably would not have been able to tell himself. The street was deserted. A few uneasy bourgeois, who were rapidly returning home, hardly saw him.

Starting point is 15:06:27 Each one for himself in times of peril. The lamplighter came as usual to light the lantern, which was situated precisely opposite the door of number seven, and then went away. Jean Valjean would not have appeared like a living man to anyone who had examined him in that shadow. He sat there on the post of his door, motionless as a form of ice.

Starting point is 15:06:52 There is congealment in despair. The alarm bells and a vague and stormy uproar were audible. In the midst of all these convulsions of the bell mingled with the revolt, the clock of Saint Paul struck eleven, gravely and without haste. For the toxin is man, the hour is God. The passage of the hour produced no effect on Jean Valjean.

Starting point is 15:07:18 Jean Valjean did not stir. Still, at about that moment, a brusque report burst forth in the direction of the Al. A second yet more violent followed. It was probably that attack on the barricade in the Rue de la Chandvary, which we have just seen repulsed by Marius. At this double discharge, whose fury seemed augmented by the stupor of the night, Jean Valjean started. He rose, turning towards the quarter whence the noise proceeded. Then he fell back upon the post again, folded his arms, and his head slowly sank on his bosom again. He resumed his gloomy dialogue with himself. All at once he raised his eyes.

Starting point is 15:08:05 someone was walking in the street he heard steps near him he looked and by the light of the lanterns in the direction of the street which ran into the rue au arqueath he perceived a young livid and beaming face gavroche had just arrived in the rue le omarmeix gavroche was staring into the air apparently in search of something he saw jean valjean perfectly well but he took no notice of him Gavroche, after staring into the air, stared below. He raised himself on tiptoe and felt of the doors and windows of the ground floor. They were all shut, bolted, and padlocked. After having authenticated the fronts of five or six barricaded houses in this manner, the urchin shrugged his shoulders and took himself to task in these terms. Party!

Starting point is 15:09:02 Then he began to stare into the air again. Jean Valjean, who an instant previously, in his then state of mind, would not have spoken to or even answered anyone, felt irresistibly impelled to accost that child. What is the matter with you, my little fellow, he said. The matter with me is that I am hungry, replied Gavroche frankly, and he added, Little fellow yourself! Shahn Valjean thumbled in his fob, and pulled out a five-franc piece. But Gavroche, who was of the wag-tail species, and who skipped vivaciously from one gesture to another, and just picked up a stone. He had caught sight of the lantern.

Starting point is 15:09:50 See here, said he, you still have your lanterns here. You are disobeying the regulations, my friend. This is disorderly. Smash that for me. And he flung the stone at the lantern, whose broken glass fell with such a clatter that the bourgeois in hiding behind their curtains in the opposite house cried, There is 93! Come again! The lantern oscillated violently and went out. The street had suddenly become black. That's right, old street, ejaculated Gavroche. Put on your nightcap. And turning to Jean Valjean.

Starting point is 15:10:29 what do you call that gigantic monument that you have there at the end of the street is the archive isn't it i must crumble up those big stupids of pillars a bit and make a nice barricade out of them jean valjean stepped up to gavroche poor creature he said in a low tone and speaking to himself he is hungry and he laid the hundred sous piece in his hand Gavroche raised his face, astonished at the size of this Sioux. He stared at it in the darkness, and the whiteness of the big Sioux dazzled him. He knew five-franc pieces by hearsay. Their reputation was agreeable to him. He was delighted to see one close to. He said,

Starting point is 15:11:18 Let us contemplate the tiger. He gazed at it for several minutes in ecstasy. Then, turning to Jean Valjean, He held out the coin to him, and said majestically to him. Bouchois, I prefer to smash landers. Take back your ferocious beast. You can't bribe me. That has got five claws, but it doesn't scratch me.

Starting point is 15:11:43 Have you a mother? asked Jean Valjean. Gavroche replied, more than you have, perhaps. Well, returned Jean Valjean. Keep the money for your mother. Gavroche was touched. Moreover, he had just noticed that the man who was addressing him had no hat, and this inspired him with confidence. Truly, said he, so it wasn't to keep me from breaking the lanterns? Break whatever you please.

Starting point is 15:12:13 You're a fine man, said Gavroche. And he put the five-franc piece into one of his pockets. His confidence having increased, he added, do you belong in this street? Yes, why? Can you tell me where number seven is? What you want with number seven? Here the child paused.

Starting point is 15:12:37 He feared that he had said too much. He thrust his nails energetically into his hair and contented himself with replying. Ah, here it is. An idea flashed through Jean Valjean's mind. Anguish does have these gleams. He said to the lad, are you the person who is bringing a letter that i am expecting you said gavroche you are not a woman the letters for mademoiselle cosette is it not

Starting point is 15:13:06 cosette muttered gavroche yes i believe that is the queer name well resumed jean valjean i am the person to whom you are to deliver the letter give it here in that case you must know that i was sent from the barricade Of course, said Jean Valjean. Gavroche engulfed his hand in another of his pockets, and drew out a paper folded in four. Then he made the military salute. Respect for dispatches, said he. It comes from the provisional government. Give it to me, said Jean Valjean. Gavroche held the paper elevated above his head.

Starting point is 15:13:50 Don't go and fancy it's a love-letter. It is for a woman, but it's for the people. We men fight and we respect the fair sex. We are not as they are in fine society, where there are lions who send chickens to camels. Give it to me. After all, continued Gavroche, you have the air of an honest man. Give it to me quick.

Starting point is 15:14:14 Catch hold of it. And he handed the paper to Jean Valjean. And make haste, Monsieur What's Your Name for Mazzal Cousin? is waiting. Gavrash was satisfied with himself for having produced this remark. Jean Valjean began again. Is it to Saint-Marie that the answer is to be sent? There you are making some of those bits of pastry vulgarly called briotches. This letter comes from the barricade of the Rue de Lichanvary, and I'm going back there. Good evening, citizen. That said, Gavroche took himself off,

Starting point is 15:14:53 or, to describe it more exactly, fluttered away in the direction whence he had come, with a flight like that of an escaped bird. He plunged back into the gloom, as though he made a hole in it, with the rigid rapidity of a projectile. The alley of Le Om-Armeil became silent and solitary once more. In a twinkling, that strange child,

Starting point is 15:15:16 who had about him something of the shadow and of the dream, had buried himself in the mists of the rows of bull, black houses, and was lost there, like smoke in the dark. And one might have thought that he had dissipated and vanished, had there not taken place a few minutes after his disappearance, a startling shiver of glass, and had not the magnificent crash of a lantern rattling down on the pavement, once more abruptly awakened the indignant bourgeois. It was Gavroche upon his way through the Rue de Chame.

Starting point is 15:15:52 Chapter 3. while Cosette and Toussaint are asleep. Jean Valjean went into the house with Marius's letter. He groped his way up the stairs, as pleased with the dark as an owl who grips his prey, opened and shut his door softly, listened to see whether he could hear any noise. Made sure that, to all appearances,

Starting point is 15:16:17 Cosette and Toussaint were asleep, and plunged three or four matches into the bottle of the Fumad lighter before he could evoke a spark, so greatly did his hand tremble. What he had just done smacked of theft. At last the candle was lighted. He leaned his elbows on the table, unfolded the paper, and read,

Starting point is 15:16:40 In violent emotions, one does not read, one flings to the earth, so to speak, the paper which one holds. One clutches it like a victim. One crushes it, one digs into it the nails of one's wrath or of one's joy. One hastens to the end, one leaps to the beginning. Attention is at fever heat.

Starting point is 15:17:02 It takes up in the gross, as it were, the essential points. It seizes on one point, and the rest disappears. In Marius's note to Cosette, Jean Valjean saw only these words. I die. When thou readest this, my soul will be near thee. In the presence of these two lines, he was horribly dazzled.

Starting point is 15:17:27 He remained for a moment, crushed, as it were, by the change of emotions which was taking place within him. He stared at Marius's note with a sort of intoxicated amazement. He had before his eyes that splendor, the death of a hated individual.

Starting point is 15:17:46 He uttered a frightful cry of inward joy. So it was all over. The catastrophe had arrived sooner than he had dared to hope. the being who obstructed his destiny was disappearing. That man had taken himself off of his own accord, freely, willingly. This man was going to his death, and he, Jean Valjean, had had no handed the matter, and it was through no fault of his.

Starting point is 15:18:14 Perhaps even he is already dead. Here his fever entered into calculations. No, he is not dead yet. The letter had evidently been intended for Cosette to, read on the following morning. After the two discharges that were heard between 11 o'clock and midnight, nothing more has taken place. The barricade will not be attacked seriously until daybreak. But that makes no difference. From the moment when that man is concerned in this war, he is lost. He is caught in the gearing. Jean Valjean felt himself delivered. So he was about to find himself alone with Cosette once more.

Starting point is 15:18:56 rivalry would cease. The future was beginning again. He had but to keep this note in his pocket. Cosette would never know what had become of that man. All that there requires to be done is to let things take their own course. This man cannot escape. If he is not already dead, it is certain that he is about to die. What good fortune! Having said all this to himself, he began. He became Then he went downstairs and woke up the porter. About an hour later, Jean Valjean went out in the complete costume of a National Guard and with his arms. The porter had easily found in the neighborhood the wherewithal to complete his equipment. He had a loaded gun and a cartridge box filled with cartridges.

Starting point is 15:19:53 He strode off in the direction of the markets. End of Chapter 3. 4 of Book 15 of Les Miserables Volume 4 by Victor Hugo. This is a Librivox recording. All Librivox recordings are in a public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Librivox.org. Recording by Algae Pug. The Miserable Volume 4 by Victor Hugo.

Starting point is 15:20:33 Translated by Isabel Florence Hepgood. Book 15. the Rue de Lomarme. Chapter 4. Kavroche's excess of zeal. In the meantime, Kavroche had had an adventure. Kvroche, after having conscientiously stoned the lantern

Starting point is 15:20:52 in the Rue de Chorme, entered the Rue de Ville-Haudriettes, and not seeing even a cat there, he thought the opportunity a good one to strike up all the song of which he was capable. His march, far from being retarded, by his singing was accelerated by it.

Starting point is 15:21:10 He began to sew along the sleeping or terrified houses these incendiary couplets. O'Azo medit in the chemi, And pretenque hie atella, With one ruse, and la la, Where are the bele filon la, My ami, Piero, Tupibier, Pass here the other jubilela,

Starting point is 15:21:38 Scogne's a vitre, and me pala, Where are the belea, The bellele filon la, the dronlees are fort jontie the air poison quill ma'solah chriselie my fiela i've been the bele filon la I'm the Mour and the Bissbeye, I'm a niece, I'm Pamela, Lise, l'emps, it's bruline, where do the bea filon la. Jardis, when I've seen, vi, the minty, de soot, de zesette, de zeal. My name, the pleases, emma, who are the bella,

Starting point is 15:22:27 the belle filon la. A moor, when in the ombres, you'd you brie, you covesterose, oh, I'm dame, down for that, oh, where the belle, filon, la.

Starting point is 15:22:45 Come to your mirror, all your t'bill, my que, a beaujure, sun vola, and croquis here where vo'n bele filon la'er's w'was on sotron de quodry i montres de'r eau etrole stella and i'll dee dee rle dee dee learie lae le bea filon lae lew'n learque as he sang was lavish of his pantomime gesture is the strong point of the refrain his face an inexhaustible repertory of masks produced grimaces more convulsing and more fantastic than the rents of a cloth torn in a high gale unfortunately as he was alone and as it was night this was neither seen nor even visible such was was wastes of riches do occur all at once he stopped short let us interrupt the romance said he his feline

Starting point is 15:23:54 had just described in the recess of a carriage door what is called in painting an ensemble that is to say a person and a thing the thing was a handcart the person was a man from auverne who was sleeping therein the shafts of the cart rested on the pavement and the auvergnat's head was supported against the front of the cart his body was coiled up on this inclined plane and his feet touched the ground gavroche with his experience of the things of this world recognized a drunken man he was some corner errand man who were drunk too much and was sleeping too much there now thought gavroche that's what the summer nights are good for we'll take the cart for the republic and leave the auvergnat for the monarchy his mind had just been illuminated by this flash of light how bully that cart would look on our barricade the auvergnat was snoring gavroche gently tugged at the cart from behind and at the ovignat from the front those to say by the feet and at the expiration of another minute the imperturbable oveniat was reposing flat on the pavement the cart was free gavroche habituated to facing the unexpected in all quarters had everything about him he fumbled in one of his pockets and pulled from it a scrap of paper and a bit of red pencil filched from some carpenter he wrote it to the unexpected from some carpenter he wrote wrote, French Republic, received thy cart. And he signed it, Gavroche. That done, he put the paper in the pocket of the still snoring Avignonet's velvet vest,

Starting point is 15:25:35 seized the cart shafts in both hands, and set off in the direction of the hull, pushing the cart before him at a hard gallop with a glorious and triumphant uproar. This was perilous. There was a post at the Royal Printing Establishment. Gavroche did not. think of this this post was occupied by the National Guards of the suburbs the squad began to wake up and heads were raised from camp beds two street lanterns broken in succession that ditty sung at the top of the lungs this was a great deal for

Starting point is 15:26:08 those cowardly streets which desire to go to sleep at sunset and which put the extinguisher on their candles at such an early hour for the last hour that boy had been creating an uproar in that peaceable Aeron simon the uproar of a fly in a bottle the sergeant of the banlier lentineer he waited he was a prudent man the mad rattle of the cart filled to overflowing the possible measure of waiting and decided the sergeant to make a reconnaissance there's a whole band of them there said he let us proceed gently it was clear that the hydra of anarchy had emerged from its box and that it was stalking abroad through the quixie quarter and the sergeant ventured out of the post with cautious tread all at once gavroche pushing his cart in front of him and at the very moment when he was about to turn into the rue de viers houdriettes found himself face to face with a uniform a shako a plume and a gun for the second time he stopped short hello said he it's him good day public order gavroche's amazement was always brief and speedily thawed where are you going you rascal shouted the sergeant citizen retorted gavroche i haven't called you bourgeois yet why do you insult me where are you going you rogue monsieur retorted gavroche perhaps you were a man of wit yesterday but you have degenerated this morning i ask you where are you going you villain gavroche replied you speak prettily no really no one would suppose you as old as you are you ought to sell all your hair at a hundred francs apiece that would yield you five hundred francs

Starting point is 15:28:02 where are you going where are you going where are you going bandit gavroche retorted again what villainous words you must wipe your mouth better the first time that they give you suck the sergeant lowered his bayonet will you tell me where you are going you wretch general said gavroche i'm on my way to look for a doctor for my wife who is in labour to arms shouted the sergeant the master stroke of strong men consists in saving themselves by the very means that have ruined them gavroche took in the whole situation at a glance it was the cart which had told against him it was the cart's place to protect him at the moment when the sergeant was on the point of making his descent on gavroche the cart converted into a projectile and launched with all the latter's might rolled down upon him furiously and the sergeant struck full in the stomach tumbled over backwards into the gutter while his gun went off in the air the men of the post had rushed out pell-mell at the sergeant's shout the shot brought on a general random discharge after which they reloaded their weapons and began again this blind man's buff musketry lasted for a quarter of an hour and killed several panes of glass in the meanwhile gavroche who had retraced his steps at full speed halted five or six streets distant and seated himself panting on the stone post which forms the corner of the enfons he listened after panting for a few minutes he turned in the direction where the fusillard was raging lifted his left hand to a level with his nose and thrust it forward three times as he slapped the back of his head with his right hand an imperious gesture in which parisian street urchindom has condensed french irony and which is evidently efficacious since it has already lasted half a century this gaiety was troubled by one bitter reflection yes said he i'm splitting with laughter i'm twisting with delight i abound in joy but i'm losing my way i shall have to take a roundabout way if i only reach the barricade in season

Starting point is 15:30:14 thereupon he set out again on a run and as he ran ah by the way where was i said he and he resumed his ditty as he plunged rapidly through the streets and this is what died away in the gloom But there rest on core of fasti, and I've ever metre the hola, In their republics, Here are, Ovene bea fill in line, Kelt could beaille, Jue, Obecky, To the simon's seigneurl, With a gross burula, Ovole, Ovole be the filon la. Viet bon people, Coo de pecky, Thee-sons, it's luffer who's it there, the monarchy one falabal where woe'w'n the belle filon lae.

Starting point is 15:31:18 We on'n'ra'n' force of the grie, the rash'erdy's jule, t'nay mal and s'-de-de-de-de-cola, who v'n the belele filon la. The post's recourse to arms was not without result. The cart was conquered, the drunkard, the drunkard, the drunk man was taken prisoner the first was put in the pound the second was later on somewhat harassed before the councils of war as an accomplice the public ministry

Starting point is 15:31:51 of the day proved this indefatigable zeal in the defense of society in this instance garosha's adventure which is lingered as a tradition in the quarters of the temple is one of the most terrible souvenirs of that elderly bourgeois of the moray and is entitled in their memories the nocturnal attack by the post of the royal printing establishment end of book 15 chapter 4 recording by Algae pug Perth western Australia end of Les Miserables volume 4 of 5 by Victor Hugo translated by isabel Florence hapgood

Classic Audiobook Collection - Les Miserables Volume 4 by Victor Hugo ~ Full Audiobook [drama]

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