Free study guide · no paywall
Les MisérablesStudy Guide
by Victor Hugo (1862)
A yellow passport, stolen silver, and a barricade in Paris, mapped across 365 chapters and six Lessons.
Start here
Plot, characters & chapter jump
365 chapter summaries · 8 key figures · discussion questions · quotes · free
Plot summary
Jean Valjean leaves the galleys after nineteen years for bread. A yellow passport shuts every inn until Bishop Myriel claims the stolen silver and adds the candlesticks. As Madeleine he walks into court rather than let Champmathieu hang in his place, then buys Cosette from the Thénardiers while Javert hunts the record. Cosette loves Marius, who follows the Friends of the ABC onto a doomed barricade; Valjean spares Javert, carries Marius through the sewers, and names himself only after she marries.
Key characters
Jump to chapter
What readers search for
Common questions about Les Misérables
Why does Bishop Myriel lie to protect Jean Valjean in Les Misérables?
Gendarmes drag Valjean back with the bishop's stolen silver. Myriel tells them the silver was a gift, then adds the candlesticks Valjean did not even take, saying he forgot them. It is the first time in nineteen years anyone has treated Valjean as worth trusting rather than punishing. The lie is not charity as performance. It is a covenant: Myriel tells Valjean he has bought his soul back and must use it to become an honest man.
The Power of Compassion and MercyWhy does Jean Valjean confess to being Champmathieu's real identity?
An innocent man named Champmathieu is about to be condemned to the galleys for life, mistaken for Jean Valjean by witnesses who never actually knew him well. Valjean, now the respected Monsieur Madeleine, spends a night in agony calculating whether silence is survival or theft. He walks into the courtroom and tells the court who he really is rather than let a stranger serve his sentence. Staying free was never going to be worth becoming Javert.
Recognizing Redemption and TransformationWhy does Javert kill himself in Les Misérables?
Valjean has him captured at the barricade with every right to execute him, and instead lets him go. Later Javert corners Valjean again and, for the first time in his life, lets a convict walk free instead of arresting him. A code built on the idea that a criminal record is a permanent verdict cannot survive the fact of a convict who is better than the law. Javert walks to the Seine because he cannot live in a world his own rules cannot explain.
Standing Up for Social JusticeHow does Fantine end up selling her hair and her teeth in Les Misérables?
Fired from Madeleine's factory once a foreman learns she has an illegitimate child, Fantine cannot find other work in a town that now treats her as a scandal rather than a mother. She sells her hair for the Thénardiers' rising demands, then her front teeth, then herself, because a factory town has already decided her body is the only asset left that no reference letter can take away.
Navigating Poverty and Social ClassWhy does Valjean buy Cosette from the Thénardiers?
He finds her on Christmas Eve carrying a bucket almost as big as she is, worked like an unpaid servant while the Thénardiers' own daughters are dressed and doted on. He pays far more than the innkeepers ask, less because they bargain hard and more because he has decided this is the debt Fantine's death leaves him to pay. Rebuilding a life the passport had already closed starts with someone else's child, not his own freedom.
Building a Life After Being Written OffFast track
Short on time? Start here
Eight hinge chapters hold the plot: the candlesticks in Digne, the tempest in a skull, Cosette's Christmas, the Friends of the ABC, the Jondrette trap, the spared inspector, Javert on the quay, and the name spoken the morning after the wedding. Read these first if you need the spine before all 365 chapters.
Full coverage
Everything in this study guide
The same surfaces readers expect from a traditional study guide — plot, characters, themes, quotes, and homework help — grouped across 5 parts, with audio and the source text on every chapter. Free, no paywall.
Plot overview
Summary, context, and why the book still matters
365 chapter summaries
Every chapter with audio narration
8 key figures
Who drives the plot and what each one does
6 lessons
Themes traced to scenes, not generic labels
15+ important quotes
Verified lines with chapter links and analysis
Discussion questions
Five per chapter, with suggested answers for class and essays
Original text
Author's words beside every summary
If you need a clear path through Les Misérables before class or an essay, this guide is built for that. It is not a plot list alone: every section links to chapter summaries, quotes, and six Lessons traced to scenes in Hugo's text, from the kitchen in Digne to the unmarked stone.
For plot and theme questions about Les Misérables, see Common Questions on the book page.
How to use this guide
How to Read This Book with Wide Reads
Start with the passport and the kitchen
Read Volume I, chapters 1 through 70, for the yellow passport that shuts Digne, the kitchen where Bishop Myriel claims the stolen silver and adds the candlesticks, and Fantine's fall once gossip closes the factory. You need the night Valjean spends as a tempest in a skull before he walks into Arras. Madeleine could stay mayor. He names himself instead, rather than let Champmathieu hang in his place.
Follow the five volumes
Hugo built five rooms, not one plot line. Volume II carries Waterloo, Cosette's Christmas, and the convent garden. Volume III holds the Friends of the ABC and the Jondrette trap. Volume IV is Rue Plumet and the rising of 5 June 1832. Volume V is the barricade, the sewers, Javert on the quay, and the name spoken the morning after the wedding. Keep those hinges. The essays are rooms you walk through, not detours.
Use the lessons as a compass
When a chapter raises a question, open the matching lesson. The Power of Compassion and Mercy is the candlesticks and the spared inspector. Recognizing Redemption and Transformation is the tempest in a skull and the morning confession. Understanding Systemic Injustice is the yellow passport. Navigating Poverty and Social Class is Fantine's hair and Cosette's bucket. Standing Up for Social Justice is the barricade. Building a Life After Being Written Off is the hidden name. Then return to the chapter list.
Plot & context
Book Overview
A bag of church silver sits on a kitchen table in Digne, and the police have already caught the man who took it. Bishop Myriel looks at Jean Valjean and tells the gendarmes the silver was a gift. Then he crosses the room and puts two candlesticks into the convict's hands, the only pieces Valjean had left behind. Nineteen years in the galleys for a loaf of bread have not prepared him for a lie that sets him free. He weeps. Hugo sent Les Misérables into the world in 1862 from exile on Guernsey, after seventeen years of work, and he does not treat that kitchen as a finished hymn. Mercy here spends what the church was supposed to keep. A yellow passport still names the man. The hunt that follows is worse than the one that put him in irons. The popular summary remembers the candlesticks and stops. The novel will not. It stays with the paper, the factory, the child, and the years a gift can cost.
Jean Valjean leaves Toulon huge, branded, and so unused to kindness that a bed and a plate look like traps. He will become Madeleine, hide a child, and still answer to a number when a courtroom needs one. Inspector Javert was born in a prison and cannot bend: a man is his record, and a record does not change. Fantine is dismissed from the factory on gossip, then sells her hair, her teeth, and herself to keep a daughter she is not allowed to see. Cosette is that daughter, worked like a servant by the Thénardiers until a stranger buys her at Christmas. Marius Pontmercy will love her later, fight on a barricade he does not expect to leave, and learn the stranger's name only when it is almost too late. Gavroche sleeps in the street and treats a paving-stone as a country. Myriel gives his income away as if it were never his, and that single night in Digne sets Valjean against Javert for decades. The pressure among them is not saint against sinner. It is a paper that treats poverty as proof of guilt, and a code that cannot admit a convict might become good.
The yellow passport shuts every inn on the night Valjean is released, so the first free hours teach him that freedom is still a file. Digne's kitchen answers that file with a lie: Myriel claims the stolen silver, adds the candlesticks, and hands Valjean a debt that cannot be paid back in metal. Years later the same man is Madeleine, a mayor whose town has begun to eat, until factory gossip ruins Fantine and a trial in Arras puts the old name back on the table. Champmathieu is about to be condemned in Valjean's place. Valjean could stay Madeleine. He walks into the courtroom instead, rather than let an innocent man hang for him. The cost of that walk is flight, and a child who is still being charged as rent. He lifts Cosette from the Thénardiers on Christmas Eve, a doll in her arms, then hides with her in a convent garden while Javert hunts the streets. Marius finds her later on a Luxembourg bench, then follows her to a house whose windows go dark. The Friends of the ABC take a back room and then a street. Gavroche dies on the stones. Valjean carries the wounded Marius through the sewers. Javert cannot live after the convict he hunted spares him. Marius learns the real name only when Valjean is already dying.
Hugo wrote the novel after opposing Napoleon III, and he never treats the loaf as a small beginning. Nineteen years for bread is the argument: the poor are not a moral problem. The law that marks them is. Javert is not a cartoon villain. He is what a system looks like when it has a human face and no room left for change. The popular summary remembers a hymn and a barricade. The novel stays with a passport, a factory rumour, a child's bucket, and a sewer that still has to be crawled. Revolution fails on the stones in 1832. Mercy holds in a kitchen, then costs decades of hiding, giving, and being hunted for the good it produced. Waterloo is not a lecture on empire. It is a field a traveller still has to walk, and a sergeant who will return as a landlord. The convent is not a pause. It is a house that can hide a name while a child grows. The ending is earned at a bedside, in a blessing over a rebuilt name, not in a chorus that makes suffering look finished. What remains is the price of becoming someone the passport says he is not, and the cost to the inspector who cannot survive that fact.
Read the full summary on the book page →
Why this book now
People still meet this novel when a record outlives the person who earned it: a file that closes a job before an interview starts, a system that treats poverty as proof of guilt, and a rare mercy that has to be defended for years. Hugo never treats Valjean's change as one night in Digne. This guide keeps that pressure tied to the yellow passport, the walk into Arras, and the quay Javert cannot leave alive.
About Victor Hugo
Victor Hugo (1802-1885) was born in Besançon to a Napoleonic officer and a royalist mother, and he grew up watching France change governments the way other children watch weather. He became the leading poet of French Romanticism, then a peer, then a deputy, then a man who had to leave. He opposed Louis-Napoleon's 1851 coup and spent nearly twenty years in exile, mostly on Guernsey. Les Misérables appeared in 1862 after seventeen years of work. The book made him more famous than the office he had lost. He wrote it as argument: the poor are not a moral problem. The law that marks them is. His gift is refusing to let a system hide behind procedure. He names the loaf, the passport, the factory rumour, and the sewer. He returned to France in 1870. When he died in 1885, two million people walked his funeral, one of the largest crowds Paris has ever gathered for a writer.
Themes with proof
Lessons from Les Misérables
Themes with chapter proof: mercy when stolen silver becomes a covenant and when a convict spares the hunter; redemption as a walk into Arras and a morning confession; a yellow passport that outlives its sentence; poverty that prices a mother out of honest work; a barricade almost no one survives; and a hidden name that still has to raise a child. Each spoke ties named chapters to the pattern.
Deep dives
Chapter-by-chapter breakdowns
Understanding Systemic Injustice
The yellow passport shuts inns; Fantine is sold out of work; Javert hunts order through fear.
A system does not wait for a new crime. It uses the last one as a permanent costume. If the first civic…
Navigating Poverty and Social Class
Fantine's 1817 hope ends in factory gossip, hair, teeth, and a class that treats need as guilt.
She was one of those women who spring up, so to speak, from the dregs of the people.
Character guide
Key Figures
Who drives the plot, what each one wants, and why they matter to the argument of the book.
Jean Valjean
A convict released after nineteen years for stealing bread, whose change into an honest man never stops being hunted by his own record.
Inspector Javert
The inspector who treats a criminal record as a finished person, and cannot live after a convict proves better than the law.
Fantine
A factory worker fired for having a daughter, who sells her hair, her teeth, and finally herself to keep Cosette alive.
Cosette
Fantine's daughter, worked as an unpaid servant by the Thénardiers until Valjean buys her freedom on Christmas Eve.
Marius Pontmercy
A student who loves Cosette and follows the Friends of the ABC onto the barricade, surviving only because Valjean carries him through the sewers.
Bishop Myriel
The bishop who shelters Valjean, claims the stolen silver, and hands him the candlesticks as a covenant to become an honest man.
The Thénardiers
Innkeepers who work Cosette like a servant while overcharging Fantine, and who turn every kindness into a bill.
Gavroche
A street child who shelters younger children on nothing and dies collecting cartridges at the barricade while singing.
Memorable lines
Key Quotes
Verified passages with chapter links — the lines teachers and essays keep returning to.
“True or false, that which is said of men often occupies as important a place in their lives, and above all in their destinies, as that which they do.”
“you are looking at a good man, and I at a great man. Each of us can profit by it.”
“There is evidently a mistake here. There are thirty-six of you, in five or six small rooms. There are three of us here, and we have room for sixty.”
“Give me back my house; you are at home here.”
“The Bishop did not omit his pastoral visits because he had converted his carriage into alms.”
“You think it very arrogant in a poor priest to ride an animal which was used by Jesus Christ. I have done so from necessity, I assure you, and not from vanity.”
“There is M. Géborand purchasing paradise for a sou.”
“I have poor people of my own, Monseigneur.”
“He had but one word for both these kinds of toil; he called them gardening. The mind is a garden, said he.”
“He visited the poor so long as he had any money; when he no longer had any, he visited the rich.”
“No matter what the quantity of milk they gave, he invariably sent half of it every morning to the sick people in the hospital.”
“The most beautiful of altars," he said, "is the soul of an unhappy creature consoled and thanking God.”
“I intend to go without escort.”
“is that really all? I am not in the world to guard my own life, but to guard souls.”
“As one makes one's philosophy, so one lies on it. You are on the bed of purple, senator.”
Class & essay prep
Discussion Questions
Sample prompts drawn from the chapter guides — each with suggested answers for seminars and written work.
Why does Hugo spend the first pages on rumours that may be false?
From Chapter 1What does the anteroom exchange with Napoleon actually win, and what does it not explain?
From Chapter 1What does Myriel treat as a mistake, and why does that word matter more than charity?
From Chapter 2How does the household note of fifteen thousand francs argue without a sermon?
From Chapter 2Why does Hugo open on the visits rather than on the donkey?
From Chapter 3What does the Senez speech do to the laughter at the gate?
From Chapter 3What does the Géborand joke catch that a sermon on hell did not?
From Chapter 4Why does Myriel ask where the advocate of the crown will be tried?
From Chapter 4What does calling both digging and writing gardening refuse to rank?
From Chapter 5Why does he visit the rich only when the money is gone?
From Chapter 5Why does half the milk go to the hospital whatever the cows give?
From Chapter 6What happens to money raised for a new altar, and what furniture stays in the oratory?
From Chapter 6What would the shepherds say, according to the Bishop, if he did not go?
From Chapter 7How does naming the brigands as a flock of wolves change the mayor's argument?
From Chapter 7What does the Bishop mean by saying the senator is on the bed of purple?
From Chapter 8Chapter by chapter
All Chapters
Grouped by 5 sections — the same structure as the book hub.
Volume I: Fantine
Chapters 1–70 · The candlesticks, the factory, and the Champmathieu affair
Ch. 1 · M. Myriel
In 1815, Charles-François-Bienvenu Myriel is Bishop of D, about seventy-five, and has held the see since 1806. Hugo says the talk that met him on arri...
Ch. 2 · M. Myriel Becomes M. Welcome
The episcopal palace of D is a seignorial stone house from 1712, with Florentine arcades, magnificent trees, and a dining gallery where, on 29 July 17...
Ch. 3 · A Hard Bishopric for a Good Bishop
The Bishop does not drop his pastoral visits because the carriage has become alms. The diocese of D is fatiguing: few plains, many mountains, hardly a...
Ch. 4 · Works Corresponding to Words
At home the Bishop's talk is gay. Madame Magloire likes to call him Your Grace. He is short, cannot reach a high shelf, and sends her for a chair: his...
Ch. 5 · Monseigneur Bienvenu Made His Cassocks Last Too Long
The Bishop's private life is filled with the same thoughts as his public one. He sleeps little. In the morning he meditates for an hour, says mass at ...
Ch. 6 · Who Guarded His House for Him
The house is a ground floor and one story: three rooms below, three chambers above, an attic, and a garden of a quarter acre. The women live upstairs....
Ch. 7 · Cravatte
After the band of Gaspard Bes is destroyed, his lieutenant Cravatte hides in Nice, then Piedmont, then the ravines of the Ubaye, and one night strips ...
Ch. 8 · Philosophy After Drinking
The senator is a clever old attorney who made his way by treating conscience, sworn faith, justice, and duty as obstacles. Success has softened him. H...
Ch. 9 · The Brother as Depicted by the Sister
Hugo will not describe the two women's obedience in his own voice. He transcribes a letter Baptistine writes on 16 December to Madame the Vicomtess de...
Ch. 10 · The Bishop in the Presence of an Unknown Light
The town speaks of G, a former member of the Convention, with a sort of horror: a quasi-regicide, an atheist, a vulture in a valley three-quarters of ...
Ch. 11 · A Restriction
Do not conclude from the deathbed that Monseigneur Welcome became a philosophical bishop or a patriotic curé. The meeting with G left a sort of astoni...
Ch. 12 · The Solitude of Monseigneur Welcome
A bishop is almost always surrounded by a squadron of little abbés, as a general is by young officers. Saint Francis de Sales called them callow pries...
Ch. 13 · What He Believed
Hugo will not sound the Bishop of D on orthodoxy. In the presence of such a soul the mood is respect. The conscience of the just man should be accepte...
Ch. 14 · What He Thought
One last word. Night and stars might give the Bishop a pantheistical look, as if a personal philosophy had grown until it usurped religion. Hugo insis...
Ch. 15 · The Evening of a Day of Walking
Early in October 1815, about an hour before sunset, a man travelling on foot enters D. The few people at windows stare with uneasiness. He is thickset...
Ch. 16 · Prudence Counselled to Wisdom
That evening the Bishop of D stays late over a great work on Duties that will never be finished. He is compiling the Fathers on little squares of pape...
Ch. 17 · The Heroism of Passive Obedience
The door opens wide, as if someone had given it a resolute push. The wayfarer from the street steps in and leaves it open. Knapsack, cudgel, a rough a...
Ch. 18 · Details Concerning the Cheese-Dairies of Pontarlier
What passed at that table is given in Mademoiselle Baptistine's letter to Madame Boischevron. The man pays no attention to anyone and eats like a star...
Ch. 19 · Tranquillity
After bidding his sister good night, Monseigneur Bienvenu takes one of the two silver candlesticks from the table, hands the other to his guest, and w...
Ch. 20 · Jean Valjean
Toward the middle of the night Jean Valjean woke. Hugo leaves the alcove and goes back to Brie. A poor peasant family. He did not learn to read as a c...
Ch. 21 · The Interior of Despair
Let us try to say it, Hugo writes, because society creates these things and should look at them. Valjean is ignorant, not a fool. Unhappiness has its ...
Ch. 22 · Billows and Shadows
A man overboard. What matters it? The vessel does not halt. The wind blows. That sombre ship has a path it is forced to pursue. It passes on. He disap...
Ch. 23 · New Troubles
When the hour comes to leave the galleys, Jean Valjean hears in his ear the strange words, Thou art free. The moment seems improbable. A ray of the tr...
Ch. 24 · The Man Aroused
As the cathedral clock strikes two, Jean Valjean awakes. What wakes him is that his bed is too good. It is nearly twenty years since he slept in one, ...
Ch. 25 · What He Does
Jean Valjean listens. Not a sound. He pushes the door with the tip of a finger, the furtive gentleness of a cat that wants to enter. The opening enlar...
Ch. 26 · The Bishop WorksThe silver candlesticks
At sunrise Monseigneur Bienvenu is strolling in the garden when Madame Magloire runs up in consternation. Does his Grace know where the basket of silv...
Ch. 27 · Little Gervais
Jean Valjean leaves the town as though fleeing it. He takes whatever paths present themselves and retraces his steps all morning, eating nothing, not ...
Ch. 28 · The Year
1817 is the year Louis XVIII, with a royal assurance not wanting in pride, entitles the twenty-second of his reign. Hairdressers daub their shops azur...
Ch. 29 · A Double Quartette
These Parisians come from Toulouse, Limoges, Cahors, and Montauban, but they are students, and a student in Paris is a Parisian. They are insignifican...
Ch. 30 · Four and Four
It is hard now to picture a students' country party of forty-five years ago. Where the cuckoo was, there is the railway car. Favourite, the only one w...
Ch. 31 · Tholomyès Is So Merry That He Sings a Spanish Ditty
That day is dawn from one end to the other. The flower-beds of Saint-Cloud perfume the air. Bees pillage the jasmines. A pack of vagabond birds occupi...
Ch. 32 · At Bombarda’s
The Russian mountains having been exhausted, the eight become stranded in Bombarda's public house in the Champs-Élysées, a branch of the famous house ...
Ch. 33 · A Chapter in Which They Adore Each Other
Chat at table, the chat of love: it is as impossible to reproduce one as the other. Love-talk is a cloud; table-talk is smoke. Fameuil and Dahlia hum....
Ch. 34 · The Wisdom of Tholomyès
While some sing, the rest talk all at once; it is no longer anything but noise. Tholomyès intervenes. Let them not talk at random. Too much improvisat...
Ch. 35 · The Death of a Horse
Zéphine prefers the dinners at Édon's. Blachevelle prefers Bombarda's: more luxury, more Asiatic, mirrors on the walls. Favourite would rather have ic...
Ch. 36 · A Merry End to Mirth
Left alone, the young girls lean two by two on the window-sills, chatting, craning out their heads. They see the young men emerge from Café Bombarda a...
Ch. 37 · One Mother Meets Another Mother
There is, at Montfermeil, a cook-shop that no longer exists, kept by people named Thénardier. Over the door a board shows a man carrying a general on ...
Ch. 38 · First Sketch of Two Unprepossessing Figures
The mouse which has been caught is a pitiful specimen; the cat rejoices even over a lean mouse. Who were these Thénardiers? They belong to that bastar...
Ch. 39 · The Lark
It is not enough to be wicked in order to prosper. The cook-shop is in a bad way. The traveller's fifty-seven francs let Thénardier honour his signatu...
Ch. 40 · The History of a Progress in Black Glass Trinkets
And in the meantime, what has become of that mother who, according to the people at Montfermeil, seemed to have abandoned her child? After leaving Cos...
Ch. 41 · Madeleine
He is a man about fifty, preoccupied, and good. That is all that can be said about him. Spain buys the jet. At the end of the second year he erects a ...
Ch. 42 · Sums Deposited with Laffitte
On the other hand he remains as simple as on the first day. Gray hair, a serious eye, the sunburned complexion of a labourer, the thoughtful visage of...
Ch. 43 · M. Madeleine in Mourning
At the beginning of 1820 the newspapers announce the death of Myriel, Bishop of D, surnamed Monseigneur Bienvenu, who has died in the odour of sanctit...
Ch. 44 · Vague Flashes on the Horizon
Little by little the opposition subsides. Blackening becomes ill-nature, then malicious remarks, then nothing. Respect becomes complete, unanimous, co...
Ch. 45 · Father Fauchelevent
One morning Madeleine is passing through an unpaved alley and hears a noise. An old man named Father Fauchelevent has just fallen beneath his cart, hi...
Ch. 46 · Fauchelevent Becomes a Gardener in Paris
Fauchelevent has dislocated his kneepan. Madeleine has him carried to the factory infirmary, served by two sisters of charity. The next morning a thou...
Ch. 47 · Madame Victurnien Expends Thirty Francs on Morality
When Fantine sees that she is making her living, she feels joyful for a moment. To live honestly by her own labour: what mercy from heaven. The taste ...
Ch. 48 · Madame Victurnien’s Success
So the monk's widow was good for something. But Madeleine has heard nothing of all this. He almost never enters the women's workroom. At its head he h...
Ch. 49 · Result of the Success
She has been dismissed toward the end of winter. Summer passes. Winter comes again. Short days, less work. Winter: no warmth, no light, no noonday, th...
Ch. 50 · Christus Nos Liberavit
What is this history of Fantine? It is society purchasing a slave. From whom? From misery. From hunger, cold, isolation, destitution. A dolorous barga...
Ch. 51 · M. Bamatabois’s Inactivity
In every small town there is a class of young men who nibble away an income of fifteen hundred francs with the same air their prototypes devour two hu...
Ch. 52 · The Solution of Some Questions Connected with the Municipal Police
Javert breaks the circle and drags Fantine to the police station, a low room warmed by a stove, with a glazed and grated door. The spectators crane at...
Ch. 53 · The Beginning of Repose
Madeleine has Fantine carried to the infirmary in his own house and confides her to the sisters. A burning fever comes on. She passes part of the nigh...
Ch. 54 · How Jean May Become Champ
One morning Madeleine is in his study arranging the mayor's business, in case he should take the trip to Montfermeil, when Javert desires to speak wit...
Ch. 55 · Sister Simplice
The incidents about to be told were not all known in the town. The small portion that became known left such a memory that a serious gap would exist i...
Ch. 56 · The Perspicacity of Master Scaufflaire
From the town-hall he takes the short street past the parsonage. One passer-by sees the mayor halt, turn back, lift the iron knocker, then set it down...
Ch. 57 · A Tempest in a SkullA tempest in a skull
The reader has already divined that Madeleine is Jean Valjean. The moment has come to look again into this conscience. After Little Gervais he was a t...
Ch. 58 · Forms Assumed by Suffering during Sleep
Three o'clock in the morning has just struck. He has been walking for five hours, almost without a stop, when he lets himself drop into his chair. He ...
Ch. 59 · Hindrances
The posting service still runs the old Empire mail-wagons: yellow cabriolets, black coffers on their backs like termites, long axles that keep other v...
Ch. 60 · Sister Simplice Put to the Proof
But at that moment Fantine was joyous. She has passed a frightful night. Her cough, her fever, her dreams. In the morning she is delirious, and the do...
Ch. 61 · The Traveller on His Arrival Takes Precautions for Departure
It is nearly eight when the cart enters the Hotel de la Poste in Arras. He sends back the extra horse, leads the white one to the stable with his own ...
Ch. 62 · An Entrance by Favor
He does not suspect it, but the mayor's name has filled a whole district for seven years, then two or three neighbouring ones: black jet revived, a hu...
Ch. 63 · A Place Where Convictions Are in Process of Formation
He advances a pace, closes the door, and stands. A vast, badly lighted hall: threadbare judges gnawing their nails, a ragged crowd, yellow serge, smok...
Ch. 64 · The System of Denials
The President asks if he has anything to add. The man twists a terrible cap, as if he did not understand. The question is repeated. Then it is like an...
Ch. 65 · Champmathieu More and More Astonished
It is he. The clerk's lamp lights his face. His coat is carefully buttoned; he is very pale; he trembles slightly. The hair that was still gray on his...
Ch. 66 · In What Mirror M. Madeleine Contemplates His Hair
Day has begun to dawn. Fantine has passed a sleepless feverish night of happy visions, and at daybreak she has fallen asleep. Sister Simplice uses the...
Ch. 67 · Fantine Happy
She makes no movement of surprise or of joy. She is joy itself. And Cosette is put with such faith, such absence of doubt, that he finds not a word of...
Ch. 68 · Javert Satisfied
This is what had taken place. The half-hour after midnight had just struck when he quit the Hall of Assizes in Arras. He regained his inn just in time...
Ch. 69 · Authority Reasserts Its Rights
Fantine has not seen Javert since the day the mayor tore her from the man. Her ailing brain comprehends nothing, but she does not doubt he has come to...
Ch. 70 · A Suitable Tomb
Javert deposits Jean Valjean in the city prison. The arrest occasions an extraordinary commotion. At the single word convict, nearly everyone deserts ...
Volume II: Cosette
Chapters 71–146 · Waterloo, the Thénardiers, and the convent garden
Ch. 71 · What Is Met with on the Way from Nivelles
Last year, on a beautiful May morning, a traveller, the person who is telling this story, is coming from Nivelles toward La Hulpe. He is on foot. A br...
Ch. 72 · Hougomont
Hougomont was a funereal spot, the first knot under the axe of that wood-cutter of Europe called Napoleon. It was a château; it is no longer anything ...
Ch. 73 · The Eighteenth of June,
Let us turn back, that is one of the story-teller's rights, and put ourselves once more in the year 1815, even a little earlier than the first part of...
Ch. 74 · A
Those persons who wish to gain a clear idea of the battle of Waterloo have only to place, mentally, on the ground, a capital A. The left limb is the r...
Ch. 75 · The Quid Obscurum of Battles
Everyone is acquainted with the first phase of this battle: troubled, uncertain, hesitating, menacing to both armies, still more so for the English th...
Ch. 76 · Four O’Clock in the Afternoon
Towards four o'clock the condition of the English army was serious. The Prince of Orange held the centre and shouted to the Hollando-Belgians never to...
Ch. 77 · Napoleon in a Good Humor
The Emperor, though ill and discommoded on horseback, has never been in a better humour than on that day. His impenetrability has been smiling since m...
Ch. 78 · The Emperor Puts a Question to the Guide Lacoste
So, on the morning of Waterloo, Napoleon was content. He was right. The plan of battle conceived by him was, as we have seen, really admirable. Then t...
Ch. 79 · The Unexpected
There were three thousand five hundred of them. They formed a front a quarter of a league in extent. They were giant men, on colossal horses. There we...
Ch. 80 · The Plateau of Mont-Saint-Jean
The battery was unmasked at the same moment with the ravine. Sixty cannons and the thirteen squares darted lightning point-blank on the cuirassiers. T...
Ch. 81 · A Bad Guide to Napoleon; a Good Guide to Bülow
The painful surprise of Napoleon is well known. Grouchy hoped for, Blucher arriving. Death instead of life. Fate has these turns. The throne of the wo...
Ch. 82 · The Guard
Every one knows the rest. A third army irrupts. The battle is broken to pieces. Eighty-six mouths of fire thunder at once. Pirch comes up with Bulow. ...
Ch. 83 · The Catastrophe
The rout behind the Guard was melancholy. The army yielded suddenly on all sides at once: Hougomont, La Haie-Sainte, Papelotte, Plancenoit. The cry Tr...
Ch. 84 · The Last Square
Several squares of the Guard, motionless amid this stream of the defeat, as rocks in running water, held their own until night. Night came, death also...
Ch. 85 · Cambronne
If any French reader object to having his susceptibilities offended, one would have to refrain from repeating in his presence what is perhaps the fine...
Ch. 86 · Quot Libras in Duce?
The battle of Waterloo is an enigma. It is as obscure to those who won it as to those who lost it. For Napoleon it was a panic. Blucher sees nothing i...
Ch. 87 · Is Waterloo to Be Considered Good?
There exists a very respectable liberal school which does not hate Waterloo. We do not belong to it. To us, Waterloo is but the stupefied date of libe...
Ch. 88 · A Recrudescence of Divine Right
End of the dictatorship. A whole European system crumbled away. The Empire sank into a gloom which resembled that of the Roman world as it expired. Th...
Ch. 89 · The Battle-Field at Night
Let us return to that fatal battle-field. On the 18th of June the moon was full. Its light favoured Blucher's ferocious pursuit, betrayed the traces o...
Ch. 90 · Number 24,601 Becomes Number 9,430
Jean Valjean had been recaptured. The journals of that day, a few months after the surprising events in her native town, print two short paragraphs. T...
Ch. 91 · In Which the Reader Will Peruse Two Verses, Which Are of the Devil’s Composition, Possibly
Before going further, a singular occurrence takes place at about the same epoch in Montfermeil, and it is not lacking in coincidence with certain conj...
Ch. 92 · The Ankle-Chain Must Have Undergone a Certain Preparatory Manipulation to Be Thus Broken with a Blow from a Hammer
Towards the end of October, 1823, the inhabitants of Toulon behold the entry into their port, after heavy weather, of the ship Orion. It flies colours...
Ch. 93 · The Water Question at Montfermeil
Montfermeil is situated between Livry and Chelles, on the southern edge of that lofty table-land which separates the Ourcq from the Marne. At the pres...
Ch. 94 · Two Complete Portraits
So far in this book the Thenardiers have been viewed only in profile. The moment has arrived for making the circuit of this couple. Thenardier has jus...
Ch. 95 · Men Must Have Wine, and Horses Must Have Water
Four new travellers have arrived. Cosette is meditating sadly. Although she is only eight years old, she has already suffered so much that she reflect...
Ch. 96 · Entrance on the Scene of a Doll
The line of open-air booths starting at the church extends as far as the Thenardiers' hostelry. The booths are all lit, because the citizens will soon...
Ch. 97 · The Little One All Alone
As the Thenardier hostelry is in that part of the village near the church, it is to the spring in the forest in the direction of Chelles that Cosette ...
Ch. 98 · Which Possibly Proves Boulatruelle’s Intelligence
On the afternoon of that same Christmas Day, 1823, a man has walked for rather a long time in the most deserted part of the Boulevard de l'Hopital in ...
Ch. 99 · Cosette Side by Side with the Stranger in the Dark
Cosette, as we have said, is not frightened. The man accosts her. He speaks in a voice that is grave and almost bass. My child, what you are carrying ...
Ch. 100 · The Unpleasantness of Receiving into One’s House a Poor Man Who May Be a Rich Man
Cosette cannot refrain from a sidelong glance at the big doll, still displayed at the toy-merchant's. Then she knocks. The Thenardier appears with a c...
Ch. 101 · Thénardier and His Manœuvres
On the following morning, two hours at least before daybreak, Thenardier sits beside a candle in the public room, pen in hand, making out the bill for...
Ch. 102 · He Who Seeks to Better Himself May Render His Situation Worse
Madame Thenardier has allowed her husband to have his own way, as was her wont. She has expected great results. When the man and Cosette have taken th...
Ch. 103 · Number 9,430 Reappears, and Cosette Wins It in the LotteryCosette wins the lottery
Jean Valjean was not dead. When he fell into the sea, or rather, when he threw himself into it, he was not ironed, as we have seen. He swam under wate...
Ch. 104 · Master Gorbeau
Forty years ago, a rambler who has ventured into that unknown country of the Salpetriere, and who has mounted to the Barriere d'Italie by way of the b...
Ch. 105 · A Nest for Owl and a Warbler
It is in front of this Gorbeau house that Jean Valjean halts. Like wild birds, he has chosen this desert place to construct his nest. He fumbles in hi...
Ch. 106 · Two Misfortunes Make One Piece of Good Fortune
On the following morning, at daybreak, Jean Valjean is still by Cosette's bedside. He watches there motionless, waiting for her to wake. Some new thin...
Ch. 107 · The Remarks of the Principal Tenant
Jean Valjean is prudent enough never to go out by day. Every evening, at twilight, he walks for an hour or two, sometimes alone, often with Cosette, s...
Ch. 108 · A Five-Franc Piece Falls on the Ground and Produces a Tumult
Near Saint-Medard church there is a poor man who is in the habit of crouching on the brink of a public well which has been condemned, and on whom Jean...
Ch. 109 · The Zigzags of Strategy
The man who writes this has been absent from Paris for many years. A new city has arisen that is, after a fashion, unknown to him. The Paris of his yo...
Ch. 110 · It Is Lucky That the Pont D’Austerlitz Bears Carriages
Uncertainty is at an end for Jean Valjean. Fortunately it still lasts for the men. He takes advantage of their hesitation. It is time lost for them, b...
Ch. 111 · To Wit, the Plan of Paris In
Three hundred paces further on, the street forks. It separates into two streets, which run in a slanting line, one to the right and the other to the l...
Ch. 112 · The Gropings of Flight
In order to understand what follows, it is requisite to form an exact idea of the Droit-Mur lane, and in particular of the angle which one leaves on t...
Ch. 113 · Which Would Be Impossible with Gas Lanterns
At that moment a heavy and measured sound begins to be audible at some distance. Jean Valjean risks a glance round the corner of the street. Seven or ...
Ch. 114 · The Beginning of an Enigma
Jean Valjean finds himself in a sort of garden which is very vast and of singular aspect: one of those melancholy gardens which seem made to be looked...
Ch. 115 · Continuation of the Enigma
The night wind has risen, which indicates that it must be between one and two o'clock in the morning. Poor Cosette says nothing. As she has seated her...
Ch. 116 · The Enigma Becomes Doubly Mysterious
The child has laid her head on a stone and fallen asleep. He sits down beside her and begins to think. Little by little, as he gazes at her, he grows ...
Ch. 117 · The Man with the Bell
He walks straight up to the man whom he sees in the garden. He has taken in his hand the roll of silver which was in the pocket of his waistcoat. The ...
Ch. 118 · Which Explains How Javert Got on the Scent
The events of which we have just beheld the reverse side had come about in the simplest possible manner. When Jean Valjean escaped the town jail, on t...
Ch. 119 · Number 62 Rue Petit-Picpus
Nothing, half a century ago, more resembled every other carriage gate than the carriage gate of Number 62 Rue Petit-Picpus. This entrance, which usual...
Ch. 120 · The Obedience of Martin Verga
This convent, which in 1824 had already existed for many a long year in the Rue Petit-Picpus, was a community of Bernardines of the obedience of Marti...
Ch. 121 · Austerities
One is a postulant for two years at least, often for four, a novice for four. It is rare that the definitive vows can be pronounced earlier than the a...
Ch. 122 · Gayeties
Nonetheless, these young girls fill this grave house with charming souvenirs. At certain hours childhood sparkled in that cloister. The recreation hou...
Ch. 123 · Distractions
Above the door of the refectory this prayer, which was called the white Paternoster, and which possessed the property of bearing people straight to pa...
Ch. 124 · The Little Convent
In this enclosure of the Petit-Picpus there were three perfectly distinct buildings: the Great Convent, inhabited by the nuns, the Boarding-school, wh...
Ch. 125 · Some Silhouettes of This Darkness
During the six years which separate 1819 from 1825, the prioress of the Petit-Picpus was Mademoiselle de Blemeur, whose name, in religion, was Mother ...
Ch. 126 · Post Corda Lapides
After having sketched its moral face, it will not prove unprofitable to point out, in a few words, its material configuration. The reader already has ...
Ch. 127 · A Century under a Guimpe
Since we are engaged in giving details as to what the convent of the Petit-Picpus was in former times, and since we have ventured to open a window on ...
Ch. 128 · Origin of the Perpetual Adoration
However, this almost sepulchral parlor, of which we have sought to convey an idea, is a purely local trait which is not reproduced with the same sever...
Ch. 129 · End of the Petit-Picpus
At the beginning of the Restoration, the convent of the Petit-Picpus was in its decay. This forms a part of the general death of the order, which, aft...
Ch. 130 · The Convent as an Abstract Idea
This book is a drama, whose leading personage is the Infinite. Man is the second. That order does not change because a house of women has appeared bes...
Ch. 131 · The Convent as an Historical Fact
From the point of view of history, of reason, and of truth, monasticism is condemned. Monasteries, when they abound in a nation, are clogs in its circ...
Ch. 132 · On What Conditions One Can Respect the Past
Monasticism, such as it existed in Spain, and such as it still exists in Thibet, is a sort of phthisis for civilization. It stops life short. It simpl...
Ch. 133 · The Convent from the Point of View of Principles
Men unite themselves and dwell in communities. By virtue of what right? By virtue of the right of association. They shut themselves up at home. By vir...
Ch. 134 · Prayer
They pray. To whom? To God. To pray to God, what is the meaning of these words? Is there an infinite beyond us? Is that infinite there, inherent, perm...
Ch. 135 · The Absolute Goodness of Prayer
With regard to the modes of prayer, all are good, provided that they are sincere. Turn your book upside down and be in the infinite. There is, as we k...
Ch. 136 · Precautions to Be Observed in Blame
History and philosophy have eternal duties, which are at the same time simple duties: to combat Caiphas the High-priest, Draco the Lawgiver, Trimalcio...
Ch. 137 · Faith, Law
A few words more. We blame the church when she is saturated with intrigues, we despise the spiritual which is harsh toward the temporal, but we everyw...
Ch. 138 · Which Treats of the Manner of Entering a Convent
It was into this house that Jean Valjean had, as Fauchelevent expressed it, fallen from the sky. He had scaled the wall of the garden which formed the...
Ch. 139 · Fauchelevent in the Presence of a Difficulty
It is the peculiarity of certain persons and certain professions, notably priests and nuns, to wear a grave and agitated air on critical occasions. At...
Ch. 140 · Mother Innocente
About a quarter of an hour elapsed. The prioress returned and seated herself once more on her chair. The two interlocutors seemed preoccupied. There i...
Ch. 141 · In Which Jean Valjean Has Quite the Air of Having Read Austin Castillejo
The strides of a lame man are like the ogling glances of a one-eyed man: they do not reach their goal very promptly. Fauchelevent was in a dilemma. He...
Ch. 142 · It Is Not Necessary to Be Drunk in Order to Be Immortal
On the following day, as the sun was declining, the very rare passers-by on the Boulevard du Maine pulled off their hats to an old-fashioned hearse, o...
Ch. 143 · Between Four Planks
Who was in the coffin? The reader knows. Jean Valjean. Jean Valjean had arranged things so that he could exist there, and he could almost breathe. It ...
Ch. 144 · In Which Will Be Found the Origin of the Saying: Don’T Lose the Card
This is what had taken place above the coffin in which lay Jean Valjean. When the hearse had driven off, when the priest and the choir boy had taken t...
Ch. 145 · A Successful Interrogatory
An hour later, in the darkness of night, two men and a child presented themselves at No. 62 Rue Petit-Picpus. The elder of the men lifted the knocker ...
Ch. 146 · Cloistered
Cosette continued to hold her tongue in the convent. It was quite natural that she should think herself Jean Valjean's daughter. As she knew nothing, ...
Volume III: Marius
Chapters 147–222 · The ABC Society and the Jondrette trap
Ch. 147 · Parvulus
Paris has a child, and the forest has a bird. The bird is called the sparrow. The child is called the gamin. Couple these two ideas which contain, the...
Ch. 148 · Some of His Particular Characteristics
The gamin of Paris is the dwarf of the giant. Let us not exaggerate. This cherub of the gutter sometimes has a shirt, but in that case he owns but one...
Ch. 149 · He Is Agreeable
In the evening, thanks to a few sous which he always finds means to procure, the homuncio enters a theatre. On crossing that magic threshold, he becom...
Ch. 150 · He May Be of Use
Paris begins with the lounger and ends with the street Arab, two beings of which no other city is capable. The passive acceptance, which contents itse...
Ch. 151 · His Frontiers
The gamin loves the city, he also loves solitude, since he has something of the sage in him. To roam thoughtfully about, that is to say, to lounge, is...
Ch. 152 · A Bit of History
At the epoch when the action of this book takes place, there was not a policeman at the corner of every street. Stray children abounded in Paris. The ...
Ch. 153 · The Gamin Should Have His Place in the Classifications of India
The body of street Arabs in Paris almost constitutes a caste. One might almost say: Not every one who wishes to belong to it can do so. This word gami...
Ch. 154 · In Which the Reader Will Find a Charming Saying of the Last King
In summer, he metamorphoses himself into a frog. In the evening, from the tops of coal wagons and the washerwomen's boats in front of the bridges of A...
Ch. 155 · The Old Soul of Gaul
There was something of that boy in Poquelin, the son of the fish-market. Beaumarchais had something of it. Gaminerie is a shade of the Gallic spirit. ...
Ch. 156 · Ecce Paris, Ecce Homo
The Paris gamin of today, like the street child of old Rome, is the infant populace with the wrinkle of the old world on his brow. He is a grace to th...
Ch. 157 · To Scoff, to Reign
There is no limit to Paris. No city has had that domination which sometimes derides those whom it subjugates. It makes more than the law: it makes the...
Ch. 158 · The Future Latent in the People
As for the Parisian populace, even when a man grown, it is always the street Arab. To paint the child is to paint the city. That is why this eagle has...
Ch. 159 · Little Gavroche
Eight or nine years after the convent years, people noticed on the Boulevard du Temple a little boy of eleven or twelve. He would have been the gamin ...
Ch. 160 · Ninety Years and Thirty-Two Teeth
In the streets near the Temple, a few ancient inhabitants still mention a worthy man named Gillenormand. He was old when they were young. In 1831 he w...
Ch. 161 · Like Master, Like House
He lived in the Marais, Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire, number 6. He owned the house. The house has since been demolished and rebuilt, and the number has ...
Ch. 162 · Luc-Esprit
At the age of sixteen, one evening at the opera, he had the honour to be stared at through opera-glasses by two beauties at the same time, ripe and ce...
Ch. 163 · A Centenarian Aspirant
He had taken prizes in his boyhood at the College of Moulins, where he was born, and he had been crowned by the hand of the Duc de Nivernais, whom he ...
Ch. 164 · Basque and Nicolette
He had theories. Here is one of them. When a man is passionately fond of women, and has a wife for whom he cares but little, homely, cross, legitimate...
Ch. 165 · In Which Magnon and Her Two Children Are Seen
With Gillenormand, sorrow was converted into wrath. He was furious at being in despair. He had all sorts of prejudices and took all sorts of liberties...
Ch. 166 · Rule: Receive No One Except in the Evening
Such was Luc-Esprit Gillenormand, who had not lost his hair, which was grey rather than white, and which was always dressed in dog's ears. To sum up, ...
Ch. 167 · Two Do Not Make a Pair
They had come into the world ten years apart. In their youth they had borne very little resemblance to each other, either in character or countenance,...
Ch. 168 · An Ancient Salon
When Gillenormand lived in the Rue Servandoni he had frequented many very good and very aristocratic salons. Although a bourgeois, he was received in ...
Ch. 169 · One of the Red Spectres of That Epoch
Anyone who had walked across the monumental bridge at Vernon about 1817 and dropped his eyes over the parapet might have seen a man of about fifty, le...
Ch. 170 · Requiescant
Madame de T's salon was all that Marius Pontmercy knew of the world. It was the only opening through which he could get a glimpse of life. This openin...
Ch. 171 · End of the Brigand
The conclusion of Marius's classical studies coincided with Gillenormand's departure from society. The old man bade farewell to the Faubourg Saint-Ger...
Ch. 172 · The Utility of Going to Mass, in Order to Become a Revolutionist
Marius had preserved the religious habits of his childhood. One Sunday, when he went to hear mass at Saint-Sulpice, at that same chapel of the Virgin ...
Ch. 173 · The Consequences of Having Met a Warden
Marius was absent for three days, then he returned to Paris, went straight to the library of the law-school, and asked for the files of the Moniteur. ...
Ch. 174 · Some Petticoat
We have mentioned a lancer. Lieutenant Théodule Gillenormand was a great-grand-nephew who led a garrison life far from the hearth. He fulfilled the co...
Ch. 175 · Marble against Granite
It was hither that Marius had come every time the old man had said he is sleeping out. Lieutenant Théodule, put out of countenance by a sepulchre, ret...
Ch. 176 · A Group Which Barely Missed Becoming HistoricThe Friends of the ABC
At that epoch, which was to all appearances indifferent, a certain revolutionary quiver was vaguely current. Breaths from eighty-nine and ninety-three...
Ch. 177 · Blondeau’s Funeral Oration by Bossuet
On a certain afternoon Laigle de Meaux was leaning against the doorpost of the Café Musain, a caryatid on a vacation, staring at the Place Saint-Miche...
Ch. 178 · Marius’ Astonishments
In a few days Marius had become Courfeyrac's friend. Youth is the season for prompt welding and the rapid healing of scars. Marius breathed freely in ...
Ch. 179 · The Back Room of the Café Musain
One of the conversations among the young men, at which Marius was present and in which he sometimes joined, was a veritable shock to his mind. This to...
Ch. 180 · Enlargement of Horizon
The shocks of youthful minds among themselves have this admirable property, that one can never foresee the spark. At the moment of jest, the serious m...
Ch. 181 · Res Angusta
That evening left Marius profoundly shaken, with a melancholy shadow in his soul. He felt what the earth may feel when it is torn open for grain: only...
Ch. 182 · Marius Indigent
Life became hard for Marius. It was nothing to eat his clothes and his watch. He ate of that terrible, inexpressible thing that is called de la vache ...
Ch. 183 · Marius Poor
It is the same with wretchedness as with everything else. It ends by becoming bearable. It finally assumes a form and adjusts itself. One vegetates, t...
Ch. 184 · Marius Grown Up
At this epoch Marius was twenty. It was three years since he had left his grandfather. Both parties had remained on the same terms, without attempting...
Ch. 185 · M. Mabeuf
On the day when Mabeuf said to Marius that he approved of political opinions, he expressed the real state of his mind. All political opinions were mat...
Ch. 186 · Poverty a Good Neighbor for Misery
Marius liked this candid old man who saw himself falling into indigence and came to feel astonishment without being made melancholy by it. He met Cour...
Ch. 187 · The Substitute
It chanced that the regiment to which Lieutenant Théodule belonged came to perform garrison duty in Paris. This inspired Aunt Gillenormand with a seco...
Ch. 188 · The Sobriquet: Mode of Formation of Family Names
Marius was, at this epoch, a handsome young man of medium stature, with thick and intensely black hair, a lofty and intelligent brow, well-opened and ...
Ch. 189 · Lux Facta Est
During the second year, precisely at the point in this history which the reader has now reached, it chanced that this habit of the Luxembourg was inte...
Ch. 190 · Effect of the Spring
One day the air was warm, the Luxembourg was inundated with light and shade, the sky was as pure as though the angels had washed it that morning, and ...
Ch. 191 · Beginning of a Great Malady
On the following day, at the accustomed hour, Marius drew from his wardrobe his new coat, his new trousers, his new hat, and his new boots. He clothed...
Ch. 192 · Divers Claps of Thunder Fall on Ma’Am Bougon
On the following day, Ma'am Bougon, as Courfeyrac styled the old portress-principal-tenant and housekeeper of the Gorbeau hovel, whose name was in rea...
Ch. 193 · Taken Prisoner
On one of the last days of the second week, Marius was seated on his bench as usual, holding in his hand an open book of which he had not turned a pag...
Ch. 194 · Adventures of the Letter U Delivered over to Conjectures
Isolation, detachment from everything, pride, independence, the taste of nature, the absence of daily and material activity, the life within himself, ...
Ch. 195 · The Veterans Themselves Can Be Happy
Since we have pronounced the word modesty, and since we conceal nothing, we ought to say that once, nevertheless, in spite of his ecstasies, his Ursul...
Ch. 196 · Eclipse
The reader has just seen how Marius discovered, or thought that he had discovered, that She was named Ursule. Appetite grows with loving. To know that...
Ch. 197 · Mines and Miners
Human societies all have what is called in theatrical parlance a third lower floor. The social soil is everywhere undermined, sometimes for good, some...
Ch. 198 · The Lowest Depths
There disinterestedness vanishes. The demon is vaguely outlined. Each one is for himself. The I in the eyes howls, seeks, fumbles, and gnaws. The soci...
Ch. 199 · Babet, Gueulemer, Claquesous, and Montparnasse
A quartette of ruffians governed the third lower floor of Paris from 1830 to 1835: Claquesous, Gueulemer, Babet, and Montparnasse. Gueulemer was a Her...
Ch. 200 · Composition of the Troupe
These four ruffians formed a sort of Proteus, winding like a serpent among the police, lending each other their names and their traps, hiding in their...
Ch. 201 · Marius, While Seeking a Girl in a Bonnet, Encounters a Man in a Cap
Summer passed, then the autumn. Winter came. Neither Leblanc nor the young girl had again set foot in the Luxembourg garden. Thenceforth Marius had bu...
Ch. 202 · Treasure Trove
Marius had not left the Gorbeau house. He paid no attention to anyone there. At that epoch there were no other inhabitants except himself and those Jo...
Ch. 203 · Quadrifrons
That evening, as he was undressing, his hand came in contact, in the pocket of his coat, with the packet which he had picked up on the boulevard. He h...
Ch. 204 · A Rose in Misery
A very young girl was standing in the half-open door. The dormer window illuminated her with a wan light. She was a frail, emaciated, slender creature...
Ch. 205 · A Providential Peep-Hole
Marius had lived for five years in poverty, in destitution, even in distress, but he now perceived that he had not known real misery. True misery he h...
Ch. 206 · The Wild Man in His Lair
Cities, like forests, have their caverns. In cities what conceals itself is ferocious, unclean, and petty. In forests it is ferocious, savage, and gra...
Ch. 207 · Strategy and Tactics
Marius, with a load upon his breast, was on the point of descending from the hole when a sound attracted his attention and caused him to remain at his...
Ch. 208 · The Ray of Light in the Hovel
The big girl approached and laid her hand in her father's. Feel how cold I am, she said. Bah, replied the father, I am much colder than that. The moth...
Ch. 209 · Jondrette Comes Near Weeping
The hovel was so dark that people coming from without felt on entering it the effect produced on entering a cellar. The two newcomers advanced with a ...
Ch. 210 · Tariff of Licensed Cabs: Two Francs an Hour
Marius had lost nothing of this entire scene, and yet, in reality, had seen nothing. His eyes had remained fixed on the young girl. His heart had seiz...
Ch. 211 · Offers of Service from Misery to Wretchedness
Marius ascended the stairs of the hovel with slow steps. At the moment when he was about to re-enter his cell, he caught sight of the elder Jondrette ...
Ch. 212 · The Use Made of M. Leblanc’s Five-Franc Piece
Nothing in the aspect of the family was altered, except that the wife and daughters had levied on the package and put on woollen stockings and jackets...
Ch. 213 · Solus Cum Solo, in Loco Remoto, Non Cogitabuntur Orare Pater Noster
Marius, dreamer as he was, was firm and energetic by nature. His habits of solitary meditation had developed in him sympathy and compassion, and had p...
Ch. 214 · In Which a Police Agent Bestows Two Fistfuls on a Lawyer
On arriving at number 14, Rue de Pontoise, he ascended to the first floor and inquired for the commissary of police. The commissary is not here, said ...
Ch. 215 · Jondrette Makes His Purchases
A few moments later, about three o'clock, Courfeyrac chanced to be passing along the Rue Mouffetard in company with Bossuet. The snow had redoubled in...
Ch. 216 · In Which Will Be Found the Words to an English Air Which Was in Fashion In
Marius seated himself on his bed. It might have been half-past five. Only half an hour separated him from what was about to happen. He heard the beati...
Ch. 217 · The Use Made of Marius’ Five-Franc Piece
Marius decided that the moment had now arrived when he must resume his post at his observatory. In a twinkling, and with the agility of his age, he ha...
Ch. 218 · Marius’ Two Chairs Form a Vis-A-Vis
Suddenly the distant and melancholy vibration of a clock shook the panes. Six o'clock was striking from Saint-Médard. Jondrette marked off each stroke...
Ch. 219 · Occupying One’s Self with Obscure Depths
Hardly was Leblanc seated when he turned his eyes towards the pallets, which were empty. How is the poor little wounded girl? he inquired. Bad, replie...
Ch. 220 · The TrapThe Jondrette trap
The door of the garret opened abruptly. Three men in blue linen blouses, masked with black paper, stood there: one with an iron-tipped cudgel, one wit...
Ch. 221 · One Should Always Begin by Arresting the Victims
At nightfall Javert had posted his men and had gone into ambush himself between the trees of the Rue de la Barrière-des-Gobelins, facing the Gorbeau h...
Ch. 222 · The Little One Who Was Crying in Volume Two
On the day following that on which these events took place in the house on the Boulevard de l'Hôpital, a child, who seemed to be coming from the direc...
Volume IV: Saint-Denis
Chapters 223–298 · Rue Plumet, Gavroche, and 5 June 1832
Ch. 223 · Well Cut
1831 and 1832, the two years immediately connected with the Revolution of July, form one of the most peculiar and striking moments of history. These t...
Ch. 224 · Badly Sewed
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 ...
Ch. 225 · Louis Philippe
Revolutions have a terrible arm and a happy hand. They strike firmly and choose well. Even incomplete, even debased and reduced to the state of a juni...
Ch. 226 · Cracks Beneath the Foundation
At the moment when the drama is on the point of penetrating into the depths of one of the tragic clouds which envelop the beginning of this reign, the...
Ch. 227 · Facts Whence 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 bee...
Ch. 228 · Enjolras and His Lieutenants
It was about this epoch that Enjolras, in view of a possible catastrophe, instituted a kind of mysterious census. All were present at a secret meeting...
Ch. 229 · The Lark’s 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, beari...
Ch. 230 · Embryonic Formation of Crimes in the Incubation of Prisons
Javert's triumph in the Gorbeau hovel seemed complete, but had not been so. In the first place, and this constituted the principal anxiety, Javert had...
Ch. 231 · Apparition to Father Mabeuf
Marius no longer went to see any one, but he sometimes encountered Father Mabeuf by chance. While Marius was slowly descending those melancholy steps ...
Ch. 232 · An Apparition to Marius
Some days after this visit of a spirit to Farmer Mabeuf, one morning, it was on a Monday, the day when Marius borrowed the hundred-sou piece from Cour...
Ch. 233 · The House with a Secret
About the middle of the last century, a chief justice in the Parliament of Paris, having a mistress and concealing the fact, had a little house built ...
Ch. 234 · 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 occu...
Ch. 235 · Foliis Ac Frondibus
The garden thus left to itself for more than half a century had become extraordinary and charming. The passers-by of forty years ago halted to gaze at...
Ch. 236 · Change of Gate
It seemed that this garden, created in olden days to conceal wanton mysteries, had been transformed and become fitted to shelter chaste mysteries. The...
Ch. 237 · 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 that she was pretty. This threw he...
Ch. 238 · The Battle Begun
Cosette in her shadow, like Marius in his, was all ready to take fire. Destiny, with its mysterious and fatal patience, slowly drew together these two...
Ch. 239 · 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 ...
Ch. 240 · The Chain-Gang
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 ...
Ch. 241 · 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 w...
Ch. 242 · Mother Plutarque 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 r...
Ch. 243 · Solitude and the Barracks Combined
Cosette's grief, which had been so poignant and lively four or five months previously, had, without her being conscious of the fact, entered upon its ...
Ch. 244 · Cosette’s Apprehensions
During the first fortnight in April, Jean Valjean took a journey. This, as the reader knows, happened from time to time, at very long intervals. He re...
Ch. 245 · Enriched with Commentaries by Toussaint
In the garden, near the railing on the street, there was a stone bench, screened from the eyes of the curious by a plantation of yoke-elms, but which ...
Ch. 246 · 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. This is what Cosette reads. Love is the sa...
Ch. 247 · 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 note-book, the handsome office...
Ch. 248 · 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 bod...
Ch. 249 · The Malicious Playfulness of the Wind
Since 1823, when the tavern of Montfermeil was on the way to shipwreck and was being gradually engulfed, not in the abyss of a bankruptcy, but in the ...
Ch. 250 · 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. In the spring of 1832, the epoch when th...
Ch. 251 · The Vicissitudes of Flight
This is what had taken place that same night at La Force. An escape had been planned between Babet, Brujon, Guelemer, and Thenardier, although Thenard...
Ch. 252 · Origin
Pigritia is a terrible word. It engenders a whole world, la pegre, for which read theft, and a hell, la pegrenne, for which read hunger. Thus, idlenes...
Ch. 253 · Roots
Slang is the tongue of those who sit in darkness. Thought is moved in its most sombre depths in the presence of that enigmatic dialect at once so blig...
Ch. 254 · Slang Which Weeps and Slang Which Laughs
As the reader perceives, slang in its entirety, slang of four hundred years ago, like the slang of to-day, is permeated with that sombre, symbolical s...
Ch. 255 · The Two Duties: to Watch and to Hope
This being the case, is all social danger dispelled? Certainly not. There is no Jacquerie; society may rest assured on that point; blood will no longe...
Ch. 256 · Full Light
The reader has probably understood that Eponine, having recognized through the gate the inhabitant of that Rue Plumet whither Magnon had sent her, had...
Ch. 257 · The Bewilderment 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 ...
Ch. 258 · The Beginning of Shadow
Jean Valjean suspected nothing. Cosette, who was rather less dreamy than Marius, was gay, and that sufficed for Jean Valjean's happiness. The thoughts...
Ch. 259 · A Cab Runs in English and Barks in Slang
The following day was the 3d of June, 1832, a date which it is necessary to indicate on account of the grave events which at that epoch hung on the ho...
Ch. 260 · Things of the Night
After the departure of the ruffians, the Rue Plumet resumed its tranquil, nocturnal aspect. That which had just taken place in this street would not h...
Ch. 261 · 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...
Ch. 262 · The Old Heart and the Young Heart in the Presence of Each Other
At that epoch, Father Gillenormand was well past his ninety-first birthday. He still lived with his daughter in the old house in the Rue des Filles-du...
Ch. 263 · Jean Valjean
That same day, towards four o'clock in the afternoon, Jean Valjean was sitting alone on the back side of one of the most solitary slopes in the Champ-...
Ch. 264 · Marius
Marius had left his grandfather in despair. He had entered the house with very little hope, and quitted it with immense despair. However, the officer,...
Ch. 265 · M. Mabeuf
Jean Valjean's purse was of no use to Mabeuf. In his venerable, infantile austerity, the old warden had not accepted the gift of the stars. He had not...
Ch. 266 · The Surface of the Question
Of what is revolt composed? Of nothing and of everything. Of an electricity disengaged little by little, of a flame suddenly darting forth, of a wande...
Ch. 267 · The Root of the Matter
There is such a thing as an uprising, and there is such a thing as insurrection. These are two separate phases of wrath. One is in the wrong, the othe...
Ch. 268 · A Burial; an Occasion to Be Born Again
In the spring of 1832, although the cholera had been chilling all minds for the last three months and had cast over their agitation an indescribable a...
Ch. 269 · The Ebullitions of Former Days
Nothing is more extraordinary than the first breaking out of a riot. Everything bursts forth everywhere at once. Was it foreseen? Yes. Was it prepared...
Ch. 270 · Originality of Paris
During the last two years, as we have said, Paris had witnessed more than one insurrection. Nothing is, generally, more singularly calm than the physi...
Ch. 271 · Some Explanations with Regard to the Origin of Gavroche’s Poetry. The Influence of an Academician on This Poetry
At the instant when the insurrection, arising from the shock of the populace and the military in front of the Arsenal, started a movement in the multi...
Ch. 272 · Gavroche on the March
The brandishing of a triggerless pistol, grasped in one's hand in the open street, is so much of a public function that Gavroche felt his fervor incre...
Ch. 273 · Just Indignation of a Hair-Dresser
The worthy hair-dresser who had chased from his shop the two little fellows to whom Gavroche had opened the paternal interior of the elephant was at t...
Ch. 274 · The Child Is Amazed at the Old Man
In the meantime, in the Marche Saint-Jean, where the post had already been disarmed, Gavroche had just effected a junction with a band led by Enjolras...
Ch. 275 · The Old Man
Let us recount what had taken place. Enjolras and his friends had been on the Boulevard Bourdon, near the public storehouses, at the moment when the d...
Ch. 276 · Recruits
The band augmented every moment. Near the Rue des Billettes, a man of lofty stature, whose hair was turning gray, and whose bold and daring mien was r...
Ch. 277 · History of Corinthe from Its Foundation
The Parisians who nowadays enter the Rue Rambuteau near the Halles notice on their right, opposite the Rue Mondetour, a basket-maker's shop whose sign...
Ch. 278 · Preliminary Gayeties
Laigle de Meaux lived more with Joly than elsewhere. He had a lodging, as a bird has one on a branch. On the morning of the 5th of June they went to C...
Ch. 279 · 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. Co...
Ch. 280 · An Attempt to Console the Widow Hucheloup
Bahorel, in ecstasies over the barricade, shouted: Here's the street in its low-necked dress! How well it looks! Courfeyrac, as he demolished the wine...
Ch. 281 · Preparations
The journals of the day which said that the barricade of the Rue de la Chanvrerie reached to the level of the first floor were mistaken. The fact is, ...
Ch. 282 · 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,...
Ch. 283 · The Man Recruited in the Rue des Billettes
Night was fully come, nothing made its appearance. All that they heard was confused noises, and at intervals, fusillades, rare, badly sustained, and d...
Ch. 284 · Many Interrogation Points with Regard to a Certain le Cabuc Whose Name May Not Have Been le Cabuc
The tragic picture would not be complete were we to omit an incident of epic and savage horror which occurred almost immediately after Gavroche's depa...
Ch. 285 · From the Rue Plumet to the Quartier Saint-Denis
The voice which had summoned Marius through the twilight to the barricade of the Rue de la Chanvrerie had produced on him the effect of the voice of d...
Ch. 286 · An Owl’s View of Paris
A being who could have hovered over Paris that night with the wing of the bat or the owl would have had beneath his eyes a gloomy spectacle. All that ...
Ch. 287 · The Extreme Edge
Marius had reached the Halles. There everything was still calmer, more obscure and more motionless than in the neighboring streets. One would have sai...
Ch. 288 · The Flag: Act First
As yet, nothing had come. Ten o'clock had sounded from Saint-Merry. Enjolras and Combeferre had gone and seated themselves, carbines in hand, near the...
Ch. 289 · The Flag: Act Second
Since they had arrived at Corinthe, and had begun the construction of the barricade, no attention had been paid to Father Mabeuf. He had not quitted t...
Ch. 290 · Gavroche Would Have Done Better to Accept Enjolras’ Carbine
They threw a long black shawl of Widow Hucheloup's over Father Mabeuf. Six men made a litter of their guns. On this they laid the body, and bore it, w...
Ch. 291 · The Barrel of Powder
Marius, still concealed in the turn of the Rue Mondetour, had witnessed, shuddering and irresolute, the first phase of the combat. But he had not long...
Ch. 292 · End of the Verses of Jean Prouvaire
All flocked around Marius. Courfeyrac flung himself on his neck. Here you are! What luck! said Combeferre. You came in opportunely! ejaculated Bossuet...
Ch. 293 · The Agony of Death After the Agony of Life
The attack of the barricades is almost always made from the front. The insurgents' whole attention had been directed to the grand barricade. But Mariu...
Ch. 294 · Gavroche as a Profound Calculator of Distances
Marius kept his promise. He dropped a kiss on that livid brow, where the icy perspiration stood in beads. This was no infidelity to Cosette; it was a ...
Ch. 295 · A Drinker Is a Babbler
What are the convulsions of a city in comparison with the insurrections of the soul? Jean Valjean at that very moment was the prey of a terrible uphea...
Ch. 296 · The Street Urchin an Enemy of Light
How long did he remain thus? Jean Valjean sat on the post of his door, motionless as a form of ice. The street was deserted. A few uneasy bourgeois, r...
Ch. 297 · 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 darkness as an owl who grips his prey, ope...
Ch. 298 · Gavroche’s Excess of Zeal
In the meantime, Gavroche had had an adventure. After conscientiously stoning the lantern in the Rue du Chaume, he entered the Rue des Vieilles-Haudri...
Volume V: Jean Valjean
Chapters 299–365 · The barricade, the sewers, and the last blessing
Ch. 299 · The Charybdis of the Faubourg Saint Antoine and the Scylla of the Faubourg du Temple
The two most memorable barricades which the observer of social maladies can name do not belong to the period in which the action of this work is laid....
Ch. 300 · What Is to Be Done in the Abyss If One Does Not Converse
Sixteen years count in the subterranean education of insurrection, and June, 1848, knew a great deal more about it than June, 1832. The barricade of t...
Ch. 301 · Light and Shadow
Enjolras had been to make a reconnaissance. He had made his way out through Mondetour lane, gliding along close to the houses. The insurgents were ful...
Ch. 302 · Minus Five, Plus One
After the man who decreed the protest of corpses had spoken, there issued from all mouths a strangely satisfied and terrible cry: Long live death! Let...
Ch. 303 · The Horizon Which One Beholds from the Summit of a Barricade
The situation of all in that fatal hour and that pitiless place had as result and culminating point Enjolras's supreme melancholy. He bore within him ...
Ch. 304 · Marius Haggard, Javert Laconic
Let us narrate what was passing in Marius's thoughts. Everything was a vision to him now. His judgment was disturbed. He was under the shadow of the g...
Ch. 305 · The Situation Becomes Aggravated
The daylight was increasing rapidly. Not a window was opened, not a door stood ajar. It was the dawn but not the awaking. The end of the Rue de la Cha...
Ch. 306 · The Artillery-Men Compel People to Take Them Seriously
They flocked round Gavroche. But he had no time to tell anything. Marius drew him aside with a shudder. What are you doing here? Hullo, said the child...
Ch. 307 · Employment of the Old Talents of a Poacher and That Infallible Marksmanship Which Influenced the Condemnation Of
Opinions were exchanged in the barricade. The firing from the gun was about to begin again. Against that grape-shot, they could not hold out a quarter...
Ch. 308 · Dawn
At that moment, Cosette awoke. Her chamber was narrow, neat, unobtrusive, with a long sash-window facing the East on the back court-yard of the house....
Ch. 309 · The Shot Which Misses Nothing and Kills No One
The assailants' fire continued. Musketry and grape-shot alternated, but without committing great ravages, to tell the truth. The top alone of the Cori...
Ch. 310 · Disorder a Partisan of Order
Bossuet muttered in Combeferre's ear that he had not answered the question. He is a man who does good by gun-shots, said Combeferre. Those who have pr...
Ch. 311 · Passing Gleams
In the chaos of sentiments and passions which defend a barricade, there is a little of everything: bravery, youth, honour, enthusiasm, the ideal, conv...
Ch. 312 · Wherein Will Appear the Name of Enjolras’ Mistress
Courfeyrac, seated on a paving-stone beside Enjolras, continued to insult the cannon, and each time that the gloomy cloud of grape-shot passed overhea...
Ch. 313 · Gavroche Outside
Courfeyrac suddenly caught sight of some one at the base of the barricade, outside in the street, amid the bullets. Gavroche had taken a bottle basket...
Ch. 314 · How from a Brother One Becomes a Father
At that same moment, in the garden of the Luxembourg, two children were holding each other by the hand. One might have been seven years old, the other...
Ch. 315 · Mortuus Pater Filium Moriturum Expectat
Marius dashed out of the barricade, Combeferre followed him. But he was too late. Gavroche was dead. Combeferre brought back the basket of cartridges;...
Ch. 316 · The Vulture Become Prey
We must insist upon one psychological fact peculiar to barricades. The barricade, for those who are inside it, remains a vision. There is something of...
Ch. 317 · Jean Valjean Takes His RevengeValjean spares Javert
When Jean Valjean was left alone with Javert, he untied the rope which fastened the prisoner across the middle of the body. He made him a sign to rise...
Ch. 318 · The Dead Are in the Right and the Living Are Not in the Wrong
The death agony of the barricade was about to begin. Everything contributed to its tragic majesty: crashes in the air, the breath of armed masses in s...
Ch. 319 · The Heroes
All at once, the drum beat the charge. The attack was a hurricane. On the evening before, in the darkness, the barricade had been approached silently,...
Ch. 320 · Foot to Foot
When there were no longer any of the leaders left alive, except Enjolras and Marius at the two extremities, the centre, which had so long sustained Co...
Ch. 321 · Orestes Fasting and Pylades Drunk
At length, by dint of mounting on each other's backs, aiding themselves with the skeleton of the staircase, a score of assailants made an irruption in...
Ch. 322 · Prisoner
Marius was, in fact, a prisoner. The hand which had seized him from behind, at the moment of his fall, was that of Jean Valjean. Jean Valjean had take...
Ch. 323 · The Land Impoverished by the Sea
Paris casts twenty-five millions yearly into the water. And this without metaphor. Day and night. With no object. By means of its intestine. What is i...
Ch. 324 · Ancient History of the Sewer
Let the reader imagine Paris lifted off like a cover. The subterranean network of sewers, from a bird's-eye view, will outline on the banks a large br...
Ch. 325 · Bruneseau
The sewer of Paris in the Middle Ages was legendary. In the sixteenth century a king attempted a bore, which failed. Not a hundred years ago the cessp...
Ch. 326 · Details Ignored
The visit took place. It was a formidable campaign, a nocturnal battle against pestilence and suffocation. It was, at the same time, a voyage of disco...
Ch. 327 · Present Progress
Today the sewer is clean, cold, straight, correct. It almost realises the ideal of what is understood by the word respectable. It is proper and greyis...
Ch. 328 · Future Progress
The excavation of the sewer of Paris has been no slight task. The last ten centuries have toiled at it without being able to bring it to a termination...
Ch. 329 · The Sewer and Its Surprises
It was in the sewers of Paris that Jean Valjean found himself. Still another resemblance between Paris and the sea. As in the ocean, the diver may dis...
Ch. 330 · Explanation
On the day of the sixth of June, a battue of the sewers had been ordered. It was feared that the vanquished might have taken to them for refuge. The p...
Ch. 331 · The “Spun” Man
On the afternoon of the 6th of June, on the slope of the right shore a little beyond a bridge, two men, separated by a certain distance, seemed to be ...
Ch. 332 · He Also Bears His Cross
Jean Valjean had resumed his march and had not again paused. This march became more and more laborious. The average height of these vaults is calculat...
Ch. 333 · In the Case of Sand as in That of Woman, There Is a Fineness Which Is Treacherous
He felt that he was entering the water, and that he no longer had a pavement under his feet, but only mud. It sometimes happens, on certain shores, th...
Ch. 334 · The Fontis
Jean Valjean found himself in the presence of a fontis. This sort of quagmire was common at that period in the subsoil of a famous avenue, difficult t...
Ch. 335 · One Sometimes Runs Aground When One Fancies That One Is Disembarking
He set out on his way once more. However, although he had not left his life in the fontis, he seemed to have left his strength behind him there. That ...
Ch. 336 · The Torn Coat-Tail
In the midst of this prostration, a hand was laid on his shoulder, and a low voice said to him: Half shares. Some person in that gloom. Nothing so clo...
Ch. 337 · Marius Produces on Some One Who Is a Judge of the Matter, the Effect of Being Dead
He allowed Marius to slide down upon the shore. They were in the open air. The miasmas, darkness, horror lay behind him. The pure, healthful, living, ...
Ch. 338 · Return of the Son Who Was Prodigal of His Life
At every jolt over the pavement, a drop of blood trickled from Marius's hair. Night had fully closed in when the carriage arrived at the house in the ...
Ch. 339 · Concussion in the Absolute
They did not open their lips again during the whole space of their ride. What did Jean Valjean want. To finish what he had begun. To warn Cosette, to ...
Ch. 340 · The Grandfather
Basque and the porter had carried Marius into the drawing-room. The doctor who had been sent for had hastened thither. The aunt had risen. She went an...
Ch. 341 · Javert DerailedJavert derailed
Javert passed slowly down the street of the Armed Man. He walked with drooping head for the first time in his life, and likewise, for the first time i...
Ch. 342 · In Which the Tree with the Zinc Plaster Appears Again
Some time after these events, Boulatruelle experienced a lively emotion. He was that road-mender of Montfermeil, a man who broke stones and damaged tr...
Ch. 343 · Marius, Emerging from CIVIL War, Makes Ready for Domestic War
For a long time, Marius was neither dead nor alive. For many weeks he lay in a fever accompanied by delirium, and by grave cerebral symptoms, caused m...
Ch. 344 · Marius Attacked
One day, while his daughter was putting the phials and cups in order, the grandfather bent over Marius and said in his tenderest accents that if he we...
Ch. 345 · Mademoiselle Gillenormand Ends by No Longer Thinking It a Bad Thing That M. Fauchelevent Should Have Entered with Something under His Arm
Cosette and Marius beheld each other once more. What that interview was like we decline to say. There are things which one must not attempt to depict....
Ch. 346 · Deposit Your Money in a Forest Rather Than with a Notary
The reader is told what the package already implied. After the affair of the other condemned man, Jean Valjean had used a first escape of a few days t...
Ch. 347 · The Two Old Men Do Everything, Each One After His Own Fashion, to Render Cosette Happy
Everything was made ready for the wedding. The doctor named February. It was then December. A few ravishing weeks of perfect happiness passed. The gra...
Ch. 348 · The Effects of Dreams Mingled with Happiness
The lovers saw each other every day. Cosette came with Fauchelevent. The aunt said this was reversing things, to have the bride come to the house to d...
Ch. 349 · Two Men Impossible to Find
Marius's enchantment, great as it was, could not efface from his mind other pre-occupations. While the wedding was in preparation, he caused difficult...
Ch. 350 · The 16th of February,
The night of the 16th to the 17th of February, 1833, was a blessed night. Above its shadows heaven stood open. It was the wedding night of Marius and ...
Ch. 351 · Jean Valjean Still Wears His Arm in a Sling
To realize one's dream. To whom is this accorded. There must be elections for this in heaven. We are all candidates, unknown to ourselves. The angels ...
Ch. 352 · The Inseparable
What had become of Jean Valjean. Immediately after having laughed, at Cosette's graceful command, when no one was paying any heed to him, he had risen...
Ch. 353 · The Immortal Liver
The old and formidable struggle began once more. Jacob struggled with the angel but one night. How many times have we beheld Jean Valjean seized bodil...
Ch. 354 · The Seventh Circle and the Eighth HeavenThe morning confession
The days that follow weddings are solitary. On the morning of the 17th of February, a little past midday, Basque heard a light tap at the door. There ...
Ch. 355 · The Obscurities Which a Revelation Can Contain
Marius was quite upset. The sort of estrangement which he had always felt towards the man beside whom he had seen Cosette was now explained to him. Th...
Ch. 356 · The Lower Chamber
On the following day, at nightfall, Jean Valjean knocked at the carriage gate of the Gillenormand house. It was Basque who received him. Basque was in...
Ch. 357 · Another Step Backwards
On the following day, at the same hour, Jean Valjean came. Cosette asked him no questions, was no longer astonished, no longer exclaimed that she was ...
Ch. 358 · They Recall the Garden of the Rue Plumet
This was the last time. After that last flash of light, complete extinction ensued. No more familiarity, no more good-morning with a kiss, never more ...
Ch. 359 · Attraction and Extinction
During the last months of spring and the first months of summer in 1833, the rare passers-by in the Marais noticed an old man neatly clad in black, wh...
Ch. 360 · Pity for the Unhappy, but Indulgence for the Happy
It is a terrible thing to be happy. How content one is. How all-sufficient one finds it. How, being in possession of the false object of life, happine...
Ch. 361 · Last Flickerings of a Lamp without Oil
One day Jean Valjean descended his staircase, took three steps in the street, and seated himself on a post, the same stone post where Gavroche had fou...
Ch. 362 · A Pen Is Heavy to the Man Who Lifted the Fauchelevent’s Cart
One evening Jean Valjean found difficulty in raising himself on his elbow. He felt of his wrist and could not find his pulse. His breath was short. He...
Ch. 363 · A Bottle of Ink Which Only Succeeded in Whitening
That same evening, as Marius left the table to look over a case, Basque handed him a letter. The person who wrote it is in the antechamber. Cosette ha...
Ch. 364 · A Night Behind Which There Is Day
Jean Valjean turned round at the knock. Come in, he said feebly. The door opened. Cosette and Marius made their appearance. Cosette rushed into the ro...
Ch. 365 · The Grass Covers and the Rain Effaces
In the cemetery of Père-Lachaise, in the vicinity of the common grave, far from the elegant quarter of that city of sepulchres, far from all the tombs...
Using this guide
Study Guide FAQ
How to use Wide Reads for class, essays, and revision — and how this guide compares to traditional study sites.
Why Wide ReadsWhat makes this different from SparkNotes or CliffsNotes?
Traditional study guides summarise what happened in Les Misérables. This guide gives you that coverage: all 365 chapters, eight key figures, quotes, and discussion questions, plus Hugo's five-volume path from Fantine to the unmarked stone. Wide Reads adds The Power of Compassion and Mercy and Recognizing Redemption and Transformation traced through named scenes like the candlesticks and the tempest in a skull. You can jump by volume, then open any chapter for the original text beside the summary. Summaries include audio. Free, no paywall.
Is Les Misérables hard to read?
Les Misérables is rated intermediate. It is a long novel in 365 titled chapters and five volumes, with essay rooms (Waterloo, slang, the sewers) inside the story. Start with the eight hinge chapters on this page, then use the chapter summaries, quotes, and audio beside the original text. The novel is still the point.
Can I use this study guide for essays and homework?
Yes. Use this reading guide beside Hugo's text, not instead of it. The answer kit and chapter summaries help you find the candlesticks, the tempest in a skull, the barricade, and the morning confession before you write. Lessons and discussion questions can sharpen essays on mercy, a record that will not close, and a code that cannot survive being spared. Always return to the novel. The guide is the path; the book is still the point.
Begin with the bishop, before the silver moves
Chapter 1 opens on Bishop Myriel, a man who gives his income away as if it were never his, before a yellow passport and a bag of silver put that mercy to the test. Each chapter adds summaries, quotes, audio, and the Lesson thread that turns a 365-chapter novel into a map of what a record actually costs.
Wide Reads is different.
Plot, characters, and themes — plus audio, source text, and patterns you can use after class
Two ways in
Read & listen to the summary
Chapter by chapter, with audio. The meaning arrives because you experienced it — not because someone listed bullet points.
Start with this.
Read the original text
The actual words the author wrote, alongside every summary. Use the guide, then step into the source.
Then step into the source.
Either way, the door opens inward.
— and most of all, Why does this matter?
Continue Exploring
Guides, life skills, and the full library.More ways to read Les Misérables: guides, life skills, and the wider library.
