The french masters, p.316
The French Masters, page 316
À sept heures, la petite Berthe, qui ne l’avait pas vu de toute l’après-midi, vint le chercher pour dîner.
Il avait la tête renversée contre le mur, les yeux clos, la bouche ouverte, et tenait dans ses mains une longue mèche de cheveux noirs.
— Papa, viens donc ! dit-elle.
Et, croyant qu’il voulait jouer, elle le poussa doucement. Il tomba par terre. Il était mort.
Trente-six heures après, sur la demande de l’apothicaire, M. Canivet accourut. Il l’ouvrit et ne trouva rien.
Quand tout fut vendu, il resta douze francs soixante et quinze centimes qui servirent à payer le voyage de mademoiselle Bovary chez sa grand-mère. La bonne femme mourut dans l’année même ; le père Rouault étant paralysé, ce fut une tante qui s’en chargea. Elle est pauvre et l’envoie, pour gagner sa vie, dans une filature de coton.
Depuis la mort de Bovary, trois médecins se sont succédé à Yonville sans pouvoir y réussir, tant M. Homais les a tout de suite battus en brèche. Il fait une clientèle d’enfer ; l’autorité le ménage et l’opinion publique le protège.
Il vient de recevoir la croix d’honneur.
FIN
LES MISÉRABLES by Victor Hugo
Translated by Isabel F. Hapgood
This famous 1862 novel is widely considered to be one of the greatest works of the nineteenth century. The narrative follows the lives and interactions of many French characters over a seventeen-year period in the early nineteenth century, starting in 1815 and culminating with the 1832 June Rebellion.
The novel focuses on the struggles of ex-convict Jean Valjean and his journey to redemption. While examining the nature of law and grace, Les Misérables also concerns the history of France, architecture of Paris, politics, moral philosophy, antimonarchism, justice, religion and many more themes.
Woven between various sub-plots, the main thread of Les Misérables is the story of Jean Valjean, known by his prison number 24601, who becomes a force for good in the world, but cannot escape his dark past. The novel is divided into five volumes, each volume divided into books, and subdivided into chapters (for a total of three hundred sixty-five chapters). Each chapter is relatively short, usually no longer than a few pages, though the novel is very large, numbering approximately 1,500 pages in most printed editions. As well as the main plots in the novel, Hugo fills many pages with his thoughts on religion, politics, and society, as well as including several lengthy digressions, one being a discussion on a famous convent, one on the construction of the Paris sewers, another being on argot and, most famously, his retelling of the Battle of Waterloo.
One of Jules Cheret’s popular illustrations, 1890
One of the original illustrations in the 1862 first edition
CONTENTS
The original French text of this novel can be accessed via the main menu.
VOLUME I. — FANTINE.
BOOK FIRST — A JUST MAN
BOOK SECOND — THE FALL
BOOK THIRD. — IN THE YEAR 1817
BOOK FOURTH. — TO CONFIDE IS SOMETIMES TO DELIVER INTO A PERSON’S POWER
BOOK FIFTH. — THE DESCENT.
BOOK SIXTH. — JAVERT
BOOK SEVENTH. — THE CHAMPMATHIEU AFFAIR
BOOK EIGHTH. — A COUNTER-BLOW
VOLUME II. — COSETTE
BOOK FIRST. — WATERLOO
BOOK SECOND. — THE SHIP ORION
BOOK THIRD. — ACCOMPLISHMENT OF THE PROMISE MADE TO THE DEAD WOMAN
BOOK FOURTH. — THE GORBEAU HOVEL
BOOK FIFTH. — FOR A BLACK HUNT, A MUTE PACK
BOOK SIXTH. — LE PETIT-PICPUS
BOOK SEVENTH. — PARENTHESIS
BOOK EIGHTH. — CEMETERIES TAKE THAT WHICH IS COMMITTED THEM
VOLUME III — MARIUS.
BOOK FIRST. — PARIS STUDIED IN ITS ATOM
BOOK SECOND. — THE GREAT BOURGEOIS
BOOK THIRD. — THE GRANDFATHER AND THE GRANDSON
BOOK FOURTH. — THE FRIENDS OF THE A B C
BOOK FIFTH. — THE EXCELLENCE OF MISFORTUNE
BOOK SIXTH. — THE CONJUNCTION OF TWO STARS
BOOK SEVENTH. — PATRON MINETTE
BOOK EIGHTH. — THE WICKED POOR MAN
VOLUME IV. — SAINT-DENIS.
BOOK FIRST. — A FEW PAGES OF HISTORY
BOOK SECOND. — EPONINE
BOOK THIRD. — THE HOUSE IN THE RUE PLUMET
BOOK FOURTH. — SUCCOR FROM BELOW MAY TURN OUT TO BE SUCCOR FROM ON HIGH
BOOK FIFTH. — THE END OF WHICH DOES NOT RESEMBLE THE BEGINNING
BOOK SIXTH. — LITTLE GAVROCHE
BOOK SEVENTH. — SLANG
BOOK EIGHTH. — ENCHANTMENTS AND DESOLATIONS
BOOK NINTH. — WHITHER ARE THEY GOING?
BOOK TENTH. — THE 5TH OF JUNE, 1832
BOOK ELEVENTH. — THE ATOM FRATERNIZES WITH THE HURRICANE
BOOK TWELFTH. — CORINTHE
BOOK THIRTEENTH. — MARIUS ENTERS THE SHADOW
BOOK FOURTEENTH. — THE GRANDEURS OF DESPAIR
BOOK FIFTEENTH. — THE RUE DE L’HOMME ARME
VOLUME V — JEAN VALJEAN
BOOK FIRST. — THE WAR BETWEEN FOUR WALLS
BOOK SECOND. — THE INTESTINE OF THE LEVIATHAN
BOOK THIRD. — MUD BUT THE SOUL
BOOK FOURTH. — JAVERT DERAILED
BOOK FIFTH. — GRANDSON AND GRANDFATHER
BOOK SIXTH. — THE SLEEPLESS NIGHT
BOOK SEVENTH. — THE LAST DRAUGHT FROM THE CUP
BOOK EIGHTH. — FADING AWAY OF THE TWILIGHT
BOOK NINTH. — SUPREME SHADOW, SUPREME DAWN
Detailed table of contents
This text was taken from our comprehensive collection:
Buy at www.delphiclassics.com
The Paris of 1830, the setting of Les Misérables
The 2000 TV series of four episodes
The 1998 Hollywood adaptation
The poster for the 1985 stage musical, which has since sparked great interest in Hugo’s works in English-speaking countries
The Queen’s Theatre in London, where the award winning musical adaptation is still performed today
VOLUME I. — FANTINE.
PREFACE
So long as there shall exist, by virtue of law and custom, decrees of damnation pronounced by society, artificially creating hells amid the civilization of earth, and adding the element of human fate to divine destiny; so long as the three great problems of the century — the degradation of man through pauperism, the corruption of woman through hunger, the crippling of children through lack of light — are unsolved; so long as social asphyxia is possible in any part of the world; — in other words, and with a still wider significance, so long as ignorance and poverty exist on earth, books of the nature of Les Misérables cannot fail to be of use.
HAUTEVILLE HOUSE, 1862.
BOOK FIRST — A JUST MAN
CHAPTER I — M. MYRIEL
In 1815, M. Charles-Francois-Bienvenu Myriel was Bishop of D —— He was an old man of about seventy-five years of age; he had occupied the see of D —— since 1806.
Although this detail has no connection whatever with the real substance of what we are about to relate, it will not be superfluous, if merely for the sake of exactness in all points, to mention here the various rumors and remarks which had been in circulation about him from the very moment when he arrived in the diocese. 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. M. Myriel was the son of a councillor of the Parliament of Aix; hence he belonged to the nobility of the bar. It was said that his father, destining him to be the heir of his own post, had married him at a very early age, eighteen or twenty, in accordance with a custom which is rather widely prevalent in parliamentary families. In spite of this marriage, however, it was said that Charles Myriel created a great deal of talk. He was well formed, though rather short in stature, elegant, graceful, intelligent; the whole of the first portion of his life had been devoted to the world and to gallantry.
The Revolution came; events succeeded each other with precipitation; the parliamentary families, decimated, pursued, hunted down, were dispersed. M. Charles Myriel emigrated to Italy at the very beginning of the Revolution. There his wife died of a malady of the chest, from which she had long suffered. He had no children. What took place next in the fate of M. Myriel? The ruin of the French society of the olden days, the fall of his own family, the tragic spectacles of ‘93, which were, perhaps, even more alarming to the emigrants who viewed them from a distance, with the magnifying powers of terror, — did these cause the ideas of renunciation and solitude to germinate in him? Was he, in the midst of these distractions, these affections which absorbed his life, suddenly smitten with one of those mysterious and terrible blows which sometimes overwhelm, by striking to his heart, a man whom public catastrophes would not shake, by striking at his existence and his fortune? No one could have told: all that was known was, that when he returned from Italy he was a priest.
In 1804, M. Myriel was the Curé of B —— [Brignolles]. He was already advanced in years, and lived in a very retired manner.
About the epoch of the coronation, some petty affair connected with his curacy — just what, is not precisely known — took him to Paris. Among other powerful persons to whom he went to solicit aid for his parishioners was M. le Cardinal Fesch. One day, when the Emperor had come to visit his uncle, the worthy Curé, who was waiting in the anteroom, found himself present when His Majesty passed. Napoleon, on finding himself observed with a certain curiosity by this old man, turned round and said abruptly: —
“Who is this good man who is staring at me?”
“Sire,” said M. Myriel, “you are looking at a good man, and I at a great man. Each of us can profit by it.”
That very evening, the Emperor asked the Cardinal the name of the Curé, and some time afterwards M. Myriel was utterly astonished to learn that he had been appointed Bishop of D ——
What truth was there, after all, in the stories which were invented as to the early portion of M. Myriel’s life? No one knew. Very few families had been acquainted with the Myriel family before the Revolution.
M. Myriel had to undergo the fate of every newcomer in a little town, where there are many mouths which talk, and very few heads which think. He was obliged to undergo it although he was a bishop, and because he was a bishop. But after all, the rumors with which his name was connected were rumors only, — noise, sayings, words; less than words — palabres, as the energetic language of the South expresses it.
However that may be, after nine years of episcopal power and of residence in D —— , all the stories and subjects of conversation which engross petty towns and petty people at the outset had fallen into profound oblivion. No one would have dared to mention them; no one would have dared to recall them.
M. Myriel had arrived at D —— accompanied by an elderly spinster, Mademoiselle Baptistine, who was his sister, and ten years his junior.
Their only domestic was a female servant of the same age as Mademoiselle Baptistine, and named Madame Magloire, who, after having been the servant of M. le Curé, now assumed the double title of maid to Mademoiselle and housekeeper to Monseigneur.
Mademoiselle Baptistine was a long, pale, thin, gentle creature; she realized the ideal expressed by the word “respectable”; for it seems that a woman must needs be a mother in order to be venerable. She had never been pretty; her whole life, which had been nothing but a succession of holy deeds, had finally conferred upon her a sort of pallor and transparency; and as she advanced in years she had acquired what may be called the beauty of goodness. What had been leanness in her youth had become transparency in her maturity; and this diaphaneity allowed the angel to be seen. She was a soul rather than a virgin. Her person seemed made of a shadow; there was hardly sufficient body to provide for sex; a little matter enclosing a light; large eyes forever drooping; — a mere pretext for a soul’s remaining on the earth.
Madame Magloire was a little, fat, white old woman, corpulent and bustling; always out of breath, — in the first place, because of her activity, and in the next, because of her asthma.
On his arrival, M. Myriel was installed in the episcopal palace with the honors required by the Imperial decrees, which class a bishop immediately after a major-general. The mayor and the president paid the first call on him, and he, in turn, paid the first call on the general and the prefect.
The installation over, the town waited to see its bishop at work.
CHAPTER II — M. MYRIEL BECOMES M. WELCOME
The episcopal palace of D —— adjoins the hospital.
The episcopal palace was a huge and beautiful house, built of stone at the beginning of the last century by M. Henri Puget, Doctor of Theology of the Faculty of Paris, Abbé of Simore, who had been Bishop of D —— in 1712. This palace was a genuine seignorial residence. Everything about it had a grand air, — the apartments of the Bishop, the drawing-rooms, the chambers, the principal courtyard, which was very large, with walks encircling it under arcades in the old Florentine fashion, and gardens planted with magnificent trees. In the dining-room, a long and superb gallery which was situated on the ground-floor and opened on the gardens, M. Henri Puget had entertained in state, on July 29, 1714, My Lords Charles Brulart de Genlis, archbishop; Prince d’Embrun; Antoine de Mesgrigny, the capuchin, Bishop of Grasse; Philippe de Vendome, Grand Prior of France, Abbé of Saint Honore de Lerins; Francois de Berton de Crillon, bishop, Baron de Vence; Cesar de Sabran de Forcalquier, bishop, Seignor of Glandeve; and Jean Soanen, Priest of the Oratory, preacher in ordinary to the king, bishop, Seignor of Senez. The portraits of these seven reverend personages decorated this apartment; and this memorable date, the 29th of July, 1714, was there engraved in letters of gold on a table of white marble.
The hospital was a low and narrow building of a single story, with a small garden.
Three days after his arrival, the Bishop visited the hospital. The visit ended, he had the director requested to be so good as to come to his house.
“Monsieur the director of the hospital,” said he to him, “how many sick people have you at the present moment?”
“Twenty-six, Monseigneur.”
“That was the number which I counted,” said the Bishop.
“The beds,” pursued the director, “are very much crowded against each other.”
“That is what I observed.”
“The halls are nothing but rooms, and it is with difficulty that the air can be changed in them.”
“So it seems to me.”
“And then, when there is a ray of sun, the garden is very small for the convalescents.”
“That was what I said to myself.”
“In case of epidemics, — we have had the typhus fever this year; we had the sweating sickness two years ago, and a hundred patients at times, — we know not what to do.”
“That is the thought which occurred to me.”
“What would you have, Monseigneur?” said the director. “One must resign one’s self.”
This conversation took place in the gallery dining-room on the ground-floor.
The Bishop remained silent for a moment; then he turned abruptly to the director of the hospital.
“Monsieur,” said he, “how many beds do you think this hall alone would hold?”
“Monseigneur’s dining-room?” exclaimed the stupefied director.
The Bishop cast a glance round the apartment, and seemed to be taking measures and calculations with his eyes.
“It would hold full twenty beds,” said he, as though speaking to himself. Then, raising his voice: —
“Hold, Monsieur the director of the hospital, I will tell you something. 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. There is some mistake, I tell you; you have my house, and I have yours. Give me back my house; you are at home here.”
On the following day the thirty-six patients were installed in the Bishop’s palace, and the Bishop was settled in the hospital.
M. Myriel had no property, his family having been ruined by the Revolution. His sister was in receipt of a yearly income of five hundred francs, which sufficed for her personal wants at the vicarage. M. Myriel received from the State, in his quality of bishop, a salary of fifteen thousand francs. On the very day when he took up his abode in the hospital, M. Myriel settled on the disposition of this sum once for all, in the following manner. We transcribe here a note made by his own hand: —
NOTE ON THE REGULATION OF MY HOUSEHOLD EXPENSES.
For the little seminary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1,500 livres
Society of the mission . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100 “
For the Lazarists of Montdidier . . . . . . . . . . 100 “
Seminary for foreign missions in Paris . . . . . . 200 “
Congregation of the Holy Spirit . . . . . . . . . . 150 “
Religious establishments of the Holy Land . . . . . 100 “
Charitable maternity societies . . . . . . . . . . 300 “
Extra, for that of Arles . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 “
Work for the amelioration of prisons . . . . . . . 400 “
Work for the relief and delivery of prisoners . . . 500 “
To liberate fathers of families incarcerated for debt 1,000 “
Addition to the salary of the poor teachers of the
