by Victor Hugo
Even more serious, in the relationship between Marius and his grandfather M. Gillmormand, is Marius’s admiration for his father, le Baron (the title reveals a person ennobled by Napoleon) de Pontmercy, who fought in Napoléon’s armies as a colonel. The Revolution brought Napoleon to power, and Pontmercy is therefore associated in the monarchist Gillenormand’s mind with the revolutionary excesses of the Reign of Terror in 1793, which began with the execution of the King and Queen in January, and eventually killed 20,000 people (fewer than the right-wing repression of the Paris Commune in 1871).
Transportation
Railroads were beginning to be constructed in France in the 1830s, but they are not mentioned in Les Misérables. All transportation is in horse-drawn carriages, on muleback (Bishop Myriel), or on foot. Fiacres are enclosed public cabs in Paris, holding up to six passengers, and drawn by a single horse. Diligences are stagecoaches, drawn by two to four horses; they provide transportation between towns, and transport packages (like UPS) and mail. Outside of cities, nearly all roads were unpaved and unlighted. Fresh horses and drivers are maintained at relay stations along the stage routes, including some that can be rented by individual travelers. These vehicles would travel at a slow trot, about 6 miles an hour on good roads, and could go up to 50 miles a day—even farther if the teams were changed. The major unit of distance, the league, was 4 kilometers (2.5 miles). Some other types of vehicles were the calèche (with four wheels, a raised front bench, and a hood sheltering the back seats), the carosse (a luxurious enclosed vehicle with four wheels, used by noble and wealthy families), the cabriolet (a light, two-wheeled vehicle), and a tilbury (a cabriolet with just two seats). The cacolet was a basket containing two seats with backs, placed over the back of a beast of burden such as a donkey, as opposed to the saddle, which had no back and held only one person.
A Note on Untranslated Words
The original translator left a number of words in French, without italics, to capture shades of meaning and to add a foreign flavor. We have left the following in French as well:
Argot: Slang, or thieves’ cant, used for secrecy. Opposed to professional jargon, the language of the professions.
Émeute: Insurrection (considered a violent but legitimate protest) or riot (undiscriminating mob violence).
Fiacre: Cab; see above.
Francs, livres: Units of money; see above.
Laurence M. Porter has published twelve books and a hundred articles and book chapters on Francophone studies, comparative literature, critical theory, French culture, and every period of French literature. These include a comprehensive book, Victor Hugo (1999), and several other articles and chapters on Hugo, including one on Hugo’s novels published by Legenda, the Humanities Research Institute at Oxford University, England. He was an NEH Senior Research Fellow in 1998, and has held other grants from the Ford Foundation, NEH, and USIS. He teaches French at Michigan State University; he won the Distinguished Faculty Award in 1995. He serves on the Editorial or Advisory Boards of Nineteenth-Century French Studies, Studies in Twentieth Century Literature, and Women in French Studies.
Acknowledgments
I gratefully acknowledge the permission from the Gale Research Company of Detroit, Michigan, to reproduce elements of Chapter Eight, “The Masterpiece,” from my book Victor Hugo (New York: Twayne/Macmillan, 1999), which form a portion of the preface to this edition of Les Misérables. Marjorie Porter helped substantially to clarify my writing, and John Rauk, the current Chair of Romance and Classical Languages at Michigan State University, kindly allowed me to defer one course from spring 2003 to next year, which made it possible to complete this edition—as well as tracking down an allusion from Horace.
A NOTE ON THE ABRIDGMENT
In the complex structure of Les Misérables, each of five long parts is divided into several books, and each book into several chapters. Hugo wrote simultaneously as an idealist who used a classical dramatic progression and as a realist who digressed into sociological essays. The idealist composed a vast drama of redemption in five acts, which correspond with the five parts of the novel. Part I presents the initial situation: society scornfully rejects two potentially virtuous, self-sacrificial characters, the former convict Jean Valjean and the prostitute Fantine. Part II introduces the complication that initiates the main action: Jean Valjean tries to protect Fantine’s orphaned daughter, Cosette, while fleeing the police. Part III, the moment of resolve, depicts the young Marius, who will learn to work for the political liberation of society through collective effort, after Valjean has been shown trying to achieve economic progress to be shared by all. Part IV, the climax, shows Marius risking his life behind the revolutionaries’ barricade, while Valjean knowingly sacrifices his happiness to save Marius’s life, allowing the youth to marry Cosette. Part V, the denouement, traces Valjean’s spiritual apotheosis, which will inspire Marius and Cosette. As a realist, Hugo shows how the glorious spiritual motivations mentioned above become entangled with selfish impulses, and he grounds his depiction of character in serious historical and sociological research.
In this abridged edition, the following long sections have been cut: the history of a religious order (part II, books six and seven); a linguistic examination of the secret languages of thieves (part IV, book seven); and the historical background of the 1832 insurrection in Paris (part IV, book ten). The titles of omitted books are enclosed in square brackets in the table of contents on pages 5—6 below.
Some entire chapters and opening sections of chapters have been cut. Chapter names come from the unabridged version, but chapters have been numbered to preserve an uninterrupted sequence. Above a chapter title, a larger number in parentheses, following a smaller number, is the chapter number in the unabridged version: for example, 5 (7).
Within the text, plain prose summaries in italics for chapters or other pieces of text that have been cut allow the reader to follow the action without reading all of Hugo’s subplots and side remarks.
PREFACE
So long as civilisation shall permit law and custom to impose a social condemnation that creates artificial hells on earth, complicating our divine destiny with a fatality driven by humans; so long as the three problems of the age—man degraded by poverty, woman demoralised by starvation, childhood stunted by physical and spiritual night—remain unsolved; as long as people may be suffocated, in certain regions, by society; in other words, taking a longer view, so long as ignorance and misery endure on earth, books such as this cannot but be useful.
FANTINE
BOOK ONE AN UPRIGHT MAN
1
M. MYRIEL
IN 1815, M. Charles François-Bienvenu Myriel was Bishop of D—. He was a man of about seventy-five, and had occupied the bishopric of D—since 1806. Although it in no manner concerns, even in the remotest degree, what we have to relate, it may not be useless, were it only for the sake of exactness in all things, to indicate here the reports and gossip which had arisen on his account from the time of his arrival in the diocese.
Be it true or false, what is said about men often has as much influence upon their lives, and especially upon their destinies, as what they do.
M. Myriel was the son of a counsellor of the Parlement of Aix who had acquired noble rank by belonging to the legal profession. His father, intending him to inherit his place, had contracted a marriage for him at the early age of eighteen or twenty, according to a widespread custom among parliamentary families. Charles Myriel, notwithstanding this marriage, had, it was said, been an object of much attention. He was well built, although rather short, he was elegant, witty, and graceful; all the earlier part of his life had been devoted to the world and to its pleasures. The revolution came, events crowded upon each other; the parliamentary families, decimated and hunted down, were soon dispersed. M. Charles Myriel, on the first outbreak of the revolution, emigrated to Italy. His wife died there of a lung complaint with which she had been long threatened. They had no children. What followed in the fate
of M. Myriel? The decay of the old French society, the fall of his own family, the tragic sights of ‘93, still more fearful, perhaps, to the exiles who beheld them from afar, magnified by fright—did these arouse in him ideas of renunciation and of solitude? Was he, in the midst of one of the reveries or attachments which then consumed his life, suddenly struck by one of those mysterious, terrible blows which sometimes overwhelm, by smiting to the heart, the man whom public disasters could not shake, by affecting his private life? No one could have answered; all that was known was that when he returned from Italy he was a priest.
In 1804, M. Myriel was cure of B—(Brignolles). He was then an old man, and lived in the deepest seclusion.
Near the time of the coronation,a a trifling matter of business belonging to his curacy—what it was, is not now known precisely—took him to Paris.
Among other personages of authority he went to Cardinal Fesch on behalf of his parishioners.
One day, when the emperor had come to visit his uncle, he happened to pass by the worthy priest, who was waiting in the anteroom. Napoleon noticing that the old man looked at him with a certain curiousness, turned around and said brusquely:
“Who is this goodman who is looking at me?”
“Sire,” said M. Myriel, “you behold a good man, and I a great man. Each of us may profit by it.”
That evening the emperor asked the cardinal the name of the cure and some time afterwards M. Myriel was overwhelmed with surprise on learning that he had been appointed Bishop of D—.
When M. Myriel came to D—he was accompanied by an old lady, Mademoiselle Baptistine, who was his sister, ten years younger than himself.
Their only domestic was a woman of about the same age as Mademoiselle Baptistine, who was called Madame Magloire, and who after having been the servant of M. le cure, now took the double title of femme de chambre of Mademoiselle and housekeeper of Monseigneur.
Mademoiselle Baptistine was a tall, pale, thin, sweet person. She fully realised the idea which is expressed by the word “respectable;” for it seems as if it were necessary that a woman should be a mother to be venerable. She had never been pretty; her whole life, which had been but a succession of pious works, had produced upon her a kind of transparent whiteness, and in growing old she had acquired what may be called the beauty of goodness. What had been thinness in her youth had become in maturity transparency, and this etherialness permitted the angel within to shine through. She was more a spirit than a virgin mortal. Her form was shadow-like, hardly enough body to convey the thought of sex—a little earth containing a spark—large eyes, always cast down; a pretext for a soul to remain on earth.
Madame Magloire was a little, white, fat, jolly, bustling old woman, always out of breath, caused first by her activity, and then by the asthma.b
M. Myriel, upon his arrival, was installed in his episcopal palace with the honours ordained by the imperial decrees, which class the bishop next in rank to the field-marshal. The mayor and the president made him the first visit, and he, for his part, paid like honour to the general and the prefect.
The installation being completed, the town was curious to see its bishop at work.
2
M. MYRIEL BECOMES MONSEIGNEUR BIENVENU
THE BISHOP’S PALACE at D—was contiguous to the hospital: the palace was a spacious and beautiful edifice, built of stone near the beginning of the last century by Monseigneur Henri Pujet, a doctor of theology of the Faculty of Paris, abbé of Simore, who was bishop of D—in 1712. The palace was in truth a lordly dwelling: there was an air of grandeur about everything, the apartments of the bishop, the parlors, the chambers, the court of honour, which was very wide, with arched walks after the antique Florentine style; and a garden planted with magnificent trees.
The hospital was a low, narrow, one-story building with a small garden.
Three days after the bishop’s advent he visited the hospital; when the visit was ended, he invited the director to oblige him by coming to the palace.
“Monsieur,” he said to the director of the hospital, “how many patients have you?”
“Twenty-six, monseigneur.”
“That is as I counted them,” said the bishop.
“The beds,” continued the director, “are very crowded.”
“I noticed it.”
“The wards are only small rooms, and are not easily ventilated.”
“It seems so to me.”
“And then, when the sun does shine, the garden is very small for the convalescents.”
“That was what I was thinking.”
“Of epidemics we have had typhus fever this year; two years ago we had military fever, sometimes one hundred patients, and we did not know what to do.”
“That occurred to me.”
“What can we do, monseigneur?” said the director; “we must be resigned.”
This conversation took place in the dining gallery on the ground floor.
The bishop was silent a few moments: then he turned suddenly towards the director.
“Monsieur,” he said, “how many beds do you think this hall alone would contain?”
“The dining hall of monseigneur!” exclaimed the director, stupefied.
The bishop ran his eyes over the hall, seemingly taking measure and making calculations.
“It will hold at least twenty beds,” said he to himself; then raising his voice, he said:
“Listen, Monsieur Director, to what I have to say. There is evidently a mistake here. There are twenty-six of you in five or six small rooms: there are only three of us here, and space for sixty. There is a mistake, I tell you. You have my house and I have yours. Give me back my house; the palace is your home now.”
Next day the twenty-six poor invalids were installed in the bishop’s palace, and the bishop was in the hospital.
M. Myriel had no property, his family having been impoverished by the revolution. His sister had a life income of five hundred francs which in the vicarage sufficed for her personal needs. M. Myriel received from the government as bishop a salary of fifteen thousand francs.
Bishop Myriel receives a salary of 15,000 francs a year. Instead of tithing—giving 10 percent of his income to the poor—he gives them 90 percent, carefully accounted for in his household budget.
Mademoiselle Baptistine accepted this arrangement with entire submission; for that saintly woman, M. Myriel was at once her brother and her bishop, her companion by ties of blood and her superior by ecclesiastical authority. She loved and venerated him unaffectedly; when he spoke, she obeyed; when he acted, she gave him her co-operation. Madame Magloire, however, their servant, grumbled a little. The bishop, as will be seen, had reserved but a thousand francs for himself; this, added to the income of Mademoiselle Baptistine, gave them a yearly independence of fifteen hundred francs, upon which the three old people subsisted.
Thanks, however, to the rigid economy of Madame Magloire, and the excellent management of Mademoiselle Baptistine, whenever a curate came to D—, the bishop found means to extend to him his hospitality.
About three months after the installation, the bishop said one day, “With all this money I have to scrimp a good deal.” “I think so too,” said Madame Magloire: “Monseigneur has not even asked for the sum due him by the department for his carriage expenses in town, and in his circuits in the diocese. It was formerly the custom with all bishops.”
“Yes!” said the bishop; “you are right, Madame Magloire.”
He made his application.
Some time afterwards the conseil-général took his claim into consideration and voted him an annual stipend of three thousand francs under this head: “Allowance to the bishop for carriage expenses, and travelling expenses for pastoral visits.”
The bourgeoisie of the town complained vociferously and a senator of the empire, formerly a member of the Council of Five Hundred, formerly in favor of the Eighteenth Brumaire and now provided with a rich senatorial seat near D—, wrote to M. Bigot de Préamen
eu, Minister of Public Worship, a fault-finding confidential epistle,1 from which we make the following extract:—
“Carriage expenses! What can he want it for in a town of fewer than 4000 inhabitants? Expenses of pastoral visits! And what good do they do, in the first place; and then, how is it possible to travel by post in this mountain region? There are no roads; he can go only on horseback. Even the bridge over the Durance at Château-Arnoux is scarcely passable for oxcarts. These priests are always so; greedy and miserly. This one played the good apostle at the outset: now he acts like the rest; he must have a carriage and post-chaise. He must have luxury like the former bishops. Bah! this whole priesthood! Monsieur le Comte, things will never be better till the emperor delivers us from these macaroni priests. Down with the pope! (Relations with Rome were becoming tense.) As for me, I am for Cæsar alone,” etc., etc., etc.
This application, on the other hand, pleased Madame Magloire exceedingly. “Good,” said she to Mademoiselle Baptistine; “Monseigneur began with others, but he has found at last that he must end by taking care of himself. He has arranged all his charities, and so now here are three thousand francs for us.”
Bishop Myriel drafts and gives to his sister, who had hoped for a little more comfort, a budget for his “carriage expenses”: all of this extra money will be given to the poor.
Such was the budget of M. Myriel.