secretmellowblog
Mellow Blog
I'm Mellow! Check my pinned. Art blog is @secretmellowart, lotr sideblog is @overthinkinglotr, and comic adaptation of the Hobbit is @retellingthehobbit. Conservatives DNI
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Hugo keeps telling us that Valjean has told people something , or said something Often, or was Often Heard to Say X . Given that Valjean is a pretty isolated person who barely speaks about the past even to Cosette, who does he keep talking to??
#ASFGHJGF#I think he’s talking to himself#but also#we can’t erase Jean the talking cst from the narrative
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in which JVJ, who has never once opened up to another human being, a single time, ever.... talks about the scary nun for the rest of his life (?)
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before you ship something stop and ask yourself... Is this otp material? Make sure your characters are:
Obstinate and inflexible in their actions
Terrible for each other in most circumstances
Poor communicators
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There’s a little note I left in my copy of Les Mis that always makes me laugh because I would not fucking say that.
When did I write this?
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Ah thank YOU for all your insights, both on this post and in the discord! It’s been fascinating to hear your perspective as someone who lives in Paris now. And yeah, there’s something so fascinating about how “the city serves the story and vice versa;” the amount of history behind Paris add a layer of meaning to the novel that’s so compelling to explore, even as someone who’s never been there.
Les Mis Canon-era Paris Photographs: Jean Valjean and Cosette’s route to escape Javert, in Pictures!
Jean Valjean's escape through Paris is Victor Hugo's way of mourning the Paris he knew from before his exile, the Paris before the modern renovations.
Hugo wrote Les Mis from exile in Guernsey, at the same time as Paris was undergoing a series of massive renovations. The "Old City" of medieval Paris that Hugo loved was being replaced by the “New City" of Baron Haussman. The dark medieval labyrinth lit by oil lamps was being replaced by modern wide streets and standardized architecture lit by gas lamps. Victor Hugo is nostalgic for the Paris he remembers before his exile-- so Jean Valjean is able to escape Javert using things unique to the Old City. He escapes through a labyrinth of tiny medieval streets in a neighborhood Hugo claims was destroyed during the renovations; he climbs over the convent wall using the rope from an oil lamp, the very oil lamps that were being replaced by the more modern gas lanterns. The dark maze hides him from police surveillance in a way modern streets cannot.
A man named Charles Marville photographed Paris shortly before many (though not all) of the renovations occurred. In this post I'll go through all the different streets mentioned in the Valjean-Javert Paris chase chapters, and provide Marville's photographs whenever they the image has been labeled with the name of the street. Note that there may be some inaccuracies. Some street names changed over time.
Here is a map of what the chase looks like, taken from the book "Paris in the Times of Victor Hugo."
A quick overview: Jean Valjean starts in a slummy half-built suburban area. This area is highly associated with the King; the royal Jardin des Plantes is nearby, and King Louis XVIII often rides by in his carriage during the afternoons. After travelling down a bunch of streets, "zigzagging" back and forth, Jean Valjean decides to cross the Seine over the Bridge of Austerlitz (a bridge named after one of Napoleon's victories.) Then he reaches the areas of the city near the Faubourg Saint Antoine that are more associated with working class rebellion. From there he enters a dark isolated half-built medieval neighborhood near marshes and timberyards, with narrow mazey alleyways, that Hugo mostly made up. Hugo pretends this medieval neighborhood used to exist, but was destroyed like many others during the recent renovations. Now that we've gotten the overview out of the way, let's go more specific!
The chase starts out in "the old quarter of the Marche aux Chevaux." At the time, this was a less inhabited and poorer area of Paris; it's described as basically a slum. Here are some of Marville's photographs :
Then we're told "Jean Valjean described many and varied labyrinths in the Mouffetard quarter, which was already asleep, as though the discipline of the Middle Ages and the yoke of the curfew still existed. He combined in various manners, with cunning strategy, the Rue Censier:"
"and the Rue Copeau," (according to the map I linked earlier, the Rue Copeau is now the Rue Lacepede. Here is Marville's pic:)
"the Rue du Battoir-Saint-Victor and the Rue du Puits l’Ermite. There are lodging houses in this locality, but he did not even enter one, finding nothing which suited him. He had no doubt that if any one had chanced to be upon his track, they would have lost it."
"As eleven o’clock struck from Saint-Étienne-du-Mont:" (note: this refers to the church of Saint-Etienne)
"he was traversing the Rue de Pontoise, in front of the office of the commissary of police, situated at No. 14." (Jean Valjean sees Javert and the police following him on this street, because they're visible in the light of the lantern from the police station.)
"He took a circuit, turned into the Passage des Patriarches, which was closed on account of the hour,"
"strode along the Rue de l’Épée-de-Bois
and the Rue de l’Arbalète, and plunged into the Rue des Postes."
"At that time there was a square formed by the intersection of streets, where the College Rollin stands to-day, and where the Rue Neuve-Sainte-Geneviève turns off." (Note: these streets are labeled Montagne-Sainte-Geneviève, but not Neuve-Sainte-Geneviève, so they may be different streets! But I'm putting them here anyway.)
"It is understood, of course, that the Rue Neuve-Sainte-Geneviève is an old street, and that a posting-chaise does not pass through the Rue des Postes once in ten years. In the thirteenth century this Rue des Postes was inhabited by potters, and its real name is Rue des Pots." (Annotation: Hugo's bein silly and making little puns. He's snarkily pointing out the "new saint-genevieve street" is old, and the post street rarely has post-chaises/carriages go through it.)
(Jean Valjean hides in the shadows and watches to see who shows up in this big square intersection of streets. In the moonlight, he recognizes Javert.)
"He slipped from under the gate where he had concealed himself, and went down the Rue des Postes (which I shared a picture of previously), towards the region of the Jardin des Plantes." (Note: the Jardin des Plantes is a royal garden. Here is a modern photo from Wikipedia.)
"He left behind him the Rue de la Clef,
"then the Fountain Saint-Victor, skirted the Jardin des Plantes by the lower streets, and reached the quay. There he turned round. The quay was deserted. The streets were deserted. There was no one behind him. He drew a long breath.
He gained the Pont d’Austerlitz."
(The Pont d'Austerlitz, named after Napoleon's victory at the battle of Austerlitz, is a very famous bridge. Marville has no photographs but here's an 1830 engraving:)
"The bridge once crossed, he perceived some timber-yards on his right. He directed his course thither. In order to reach them, it was necessary to risk himself in a tolerably large unsheltered and illuminated space. He did not hesitate. Those who were on his track had evidently lost the scent, and Jean Valjean believed himself to be out of danger. Hunted, yes; followed, no."
Here's the quai by the pont-au-change-- a different quai, but gives you an idea of what the areas around the Seine often looked like.
(Then Jean Valjean sees Javert and the other police on the Bridge of Austerlitz, following him. He hurries towards the darker alleys of the city.)
"A little street, the Rue du Chemin-Vert-Saint-Antoine, opened out between two timber-yards enclosed in walls. This street was dark and narrow and seemed made expressly for him."
Here's an abandoned timber-yard-ish looking picture:
But Marville has no photographs of this street. I'd have to double check, but iirc this is the part where Hugo starts to 'make up' more street layouts. I wouldn't be surprised if this street really WAS made expressly for him (meaning Hugo made it up.)
"The point of Paris where Jean Valjean found himself, situated between the Faubourg Saint-Antoine and la Râpée, is one of those which recent improvements have transformed from top to bottom,—resulting in disfigurement according to some, and in a transfiguration according to others. The market-gardens, the timber-yards, and the old buildings have been effaced. To-day, there are brand-new, wide streets, arenas, circuses, hippodromes, railway stations, and a prison, Mazas, there; progress, as the reader sees, with its antidote."
(Here Hugo talks about the Haussman renovations directly, claiming that if his street layouts are "inaccurate" it's because these are some of the Old Medieval Streets that were razed during Paris's recent renovations. He goes on for a while comparing Petit-Picpus to various other areas that were changed during the renovations.)
"Le Petit-Picpus, which, moreover, hardly ever had any existence, and never was more than the outline of a quarter, had nearly the monkish aspect of a Spanish town. The roads were not much paved; the streets were not much built up. (....) Such was this quarter in the last century. The Revolution snubbed it soundly. The republican government demolished and cut through it. Rubbish shoots were established there. Thirty years ago, this quarter was disappearing under the erasing process of new buildings. To-day, it has been utterly blotted out."
The Petit-Picpus, of which no existing plan has preserved a trace, is indicated with sufficient clearness in the plan of 1727, published at Paris by Denis Thierry, Rue Saint-Jacques, opposite the Rue du Plâtre;
and at Lyons, by Jean Girin, Rue Mercière, at the sign of Prudence.
Petit-Picpus had, as we have just mentioned, a Y of streets, formed by the Rue du Chemin-Vert-Saint-Antoine, which spread out in two branches, taking on the left the name of Little Picpus Street, and on the right the name of the Rue Polonceau. The two limbs of the Y were connected at the apex as by a bar; this bar was called Rue Droit-Mur.
The Rue Polonceau ended there; Rue Petit-Picpus passed on, and ascended towards the Lenoir market. A person coming from the Seine reached the extremity of the Rue Polonceau, and had on his right the Rue Droit-Mur, turning abruptly at a right angle, in front of him the wall of that street, and on his right a truncated prolongation of the Rue Droit-Mur, which had no issue and was called the Cul-de-Sac Genrot."
Here is @everyonewasabird's attempt to puzzle this out:
It was here that Jean Valjean stood."
Then Jean Valjean escapes by pulling down an old oil lantern, strung up by ropes. Hugo notes that this would have been "impossible if the streets were lit with gas, the way they would be after the renovations. This picture shows an old oil lamp strung up by ropes:
Finally, Jean Valjean climbs over the wall into the Petit-Picpus convent. This convent is fictional. Hugo pretends it used to exists but is no longer around-- another relic of the early 19th century that has been lost over time.
TLDR:
Jean Valjean's escape through Paris is Hugo way of mourning the Paris he knew from before his exile, the Paris before the modern renovations. To quote Volume 2 Book 5 Chapter 1:
The author of this book, who regrets the necessity of mentioning himself, has been absent from Paris for many years. Paris has been transformed since he quitted it. A new city has arisen, which is, after a fashion, unknown to him. There is no need for him to say that he loves Paris: Paris is his mind’s natal city. In consequence of demolitions and reconstructions, the Paris of his youth, that Paris which he bore away religiously in his memory, is now a Paris of days gone by. He must be permitted to speak of that Paris as though it still existed. It is possible that when the author conducts his readers to a spot and says, “In such a street there stands such and such a house,” neither street nor house will any longer exist in that locality. Readers may verify the facts if they care to take the trouble. For his own part, he is unacquainted with the new Paris, and he writes with the old Paris before his eyes in an illusion which is precious to him. It is a delight to him to dream that there still lingers behind him something of that which he beheld when he was in his own country, and that all has not vanished. So long as you go and come in your native land, you imagine that those streets are a matter of indifference to you; that those windows, those roofs, and those doors are nothing to you; that those walls are strangers to you; that those trees are merely the first encountered haphazard; that those houses, which you do not enter, are useless to you; that the pavements which you tread are merely stones. Later on, when you are no longer there, you perceive that the streets are dear to you; that you miss those roofs, those doors; and that those walls are necessary to you, those trees are well beloved by you; that you entered those houses which you never entered, every day, and that you have left a part of your heart, of your blood, of your soul, in those pavements. All those places which you no longer behold, which you may never behold again, perchance, and whose memory you have cherished, take on a melancholy charm, recur to your mind with the melancholy of an apparition, make the holy land visible to you, and are, so to speak, the very form of France, and you love them; and you call them up as they are, as they were, and you persist in this, and you will submit to no change: for you are attached to the figure of your fatherland as to the face of your mother.
#les mis#les mis letters#lm 2.5.1#lm 2.5.2#lm 2.5.4#also Vapaus corrected me on the Rue de st Genevieve (it’s a different name now)#but otherwise the photos should be accurate!
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The Daily Tribune, Terre Haute, Vigo County, 7 March 1918
Before the end of the world war, thousands of Americans will have seen Paris—the Paris of Victor Hugo, for there have been no great changes in the sections which he so eloquently describes in his marvelous works.
I'm sorry but that is just not true! That Paris had changed dramatically is like, the whole point of why Hugo was writing about it. Anyways....
But to see Victor Hugo's Paris without braving the dangers of German U-boats, it is only necessary to visit the American today, Friday or Saturday. "Les Miserables," pronounced "Law Miserawl" by some of the scholars of my acquaintance, has been given a fine film production by William Fox, I am told.
American's can't pronounce Les Miserables? Some things never change. In a different edition, a writer in this paper wrote that didn't matter if you called it 'Less Miserables than Usual," or 'Law Miseraub."
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doodle found in my high school papers and which still rings true
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Les Mis Canon-era Paris Photographs: Jean Valjean and Cosette’s route to escape Javert, in Pictures!
Jean Valjean's escape through Paris is Victor Hugo's way of mourning the Paris he knew from before his exile, the Paris before the modern renovations.
Hugo wrote Les Mis from exile in Guernsey, at the same time as Paris was undergoing a series of massive renovations. The "Old City" of medieval Paris that Hugo loved was being replaced by the “New City" of Baron Haussman. The dark medieval labyrinth lit by oil lamps was being replaced by modern wide streets and standardized architecture lit by gas lamps. Victor Hugo is nostalgic for the Paris he remembers before his exile-- so Jean Valjean is able to escape Javert using things unique to the Old City. He escapes through a labyrinth of tiny medieval streets in a neighborhood Hugo claims was destroyed during the renovations; he climbs over the convent wall using the rope from an oil lamp, the very oil lamps that were being replaced by the more modern gas lanterns. The dark maze hides him from police surveillance in a way modern streets cannot.
A man named Charles Marville photographed Paris shortly before many (though not all) of the renovations occurred. In this post I'll go through all the different streets mentioned in the Valjean-Javert Paris chase chapters, and provide Marville's photographs whenever they the image has been labeled with the name of the street. Note that there may be some inaccuracies. Some street names changed over time.
Here is a map of what the chase looks like, taken from the book "Paris in the Times of Victor Hugo."
A quick overview: Jean Valjean starts in a slummy half-built suburban area. This area is highly associated with the King; the royal Jardin des Plantes is nearby, and King Louis XVIII often rides by in his carriage during the afternoons. After travelling down a bunch of streets, "zigzagging" back and forth, Jean Valjean decides to cross the Seine over the Bridge of Austerlitz (a bridge named after one of Napoleon's victories.) Then he reaches the areas of the city near the Faubourg Saint Antoine that are more associated with working class rebellion. From there he enters a dark isolated half-built medieval neighborhood near marshes and timberyards, with narrow mazey alleyways, that Hugo mostly made up. Hugo pretends this medieval neighborhood used to exist, but was destroyed like many others during the recent renovations. Now that we've gotten the overview out of the way, let's go more specific!
The chase starts out in "the old quarter of the Marche aux Chevaux." At the time, this was a less inhabited and poorer area of Paris; it's described as basically a slum. Here are some of Marville's photographs :
Then we're told "Jean Valjean described many and varied labyrinths in the Mouffetard quarter, which was already asleep, as though the discipline of the Middle Ages and the yoke of the curfew still existed. He combined in various manners, with cunning strategy, the Rue Censier:"
"and the Rue Copeau," (according to the map I linked earlier, the Rue Copeau is now the Rue Lacepede. Here is Marville's pic:)
"the Rue du Battoir-Saint-Victor and the Rue du Puits l’Ermite. There are lodging houses in this locality, but he did not even enter one, finding nothing which suited him. He had no doubt that if any one had chanced to be upon his track, they would have lost it."
"As eleven o’clock struck from Saint-Étienne-du-Mont:" (note: this refers to the church of Saint-Etienne)
"he was traversing the Rue de Pontoise, in front of the office of the commissary of police, situated at No. 14." (Jean Valjean sees Javert and the police following him on this street, because they're visible in the light of the lantern from the police station.)
"He took a circuit, turned into the Passage des Patriarches, which was closed on account of the hour,"
"strode along the Rue de l’Épée-de-Bois
and the Rue de l’Arbalète, and plunged into the Rue des Postes."
"At that time there was a square formed by the intersection of streets, where the College Rollin stands to-day, and where the Rue Neuve-Sainte-Geneviève turns off." (Note: these streets are labeled Montagne-Sainte-Geneviève, but not Neuve-Sainte-Geneviève, so they may be different streets! But I'm putting them here anyway.)
"It is understood, of course, that the Rue Neuve-Sainte-Geneviève is an old street, and that a posting-chaise does not pass through the Rue des Postes once in ten years. In the thirteenth century this Rue des Postes was inhabited by potters, and its real name is Rue des Pots." (Annotation: Hugo's bein silly and making little puns. He's snarkily pointing out the "new saint-genevieve street" is old, and the post street rarely has post-chaises/carriages go through it.)
(Jean Valjean hides in the shadows and watches to see who shows up in this big square intersection of streets. In the moonlight, he recognizes Javert.)
"He slipped from under the gate where he had concealed himself, and went down the Rue des Postes (which I shared a picture of previously), towards the region of the Jardin des Plantes." (Note: the Jardin des Plantes is a royal garden. Here is a modern photo from Wikipedia.)
"He left behind him the Rue de la Clef,
"then the Fountain Saint-Victor, skirted the Jardin des Plantes by the lower streets, and reached the quay. There he turned round. The quay was deserted. The streets were deserted. There was no one behind him. He drew a long breath.
He gained the Pont d’Austerlitz."
(The Pont d'Austerlitz, named after Napoleon's victory at the battle of Austerlitz, is a very famous bridge. Marville has no photographs but here's an 1830 engraving:)
"The bridge once crossed, he perceived some timber-yards on his right. He directed his course thither. In order to reach them, it was necessary to risk himself in a tolerably large unsheltered and illuminated space. He did not hesitate. Those who were on his track had evidently lost the scent, and Jean Valjean believed himself to be out of danger. Hunted, yes; followed, no."
Here's the quai by the pont-au-change-- a different quai, but gives you an idea of what the areas around the Seine often looked like.
(Then Jean Valjean sees Javert and the other police on the Bridge of Austerlitz, following him. He hurries towards the darker alleys of the city.)
"A little street, the Rue du Chemin-Vert-Saint-Antoine, opened out between two timber-yards enclosed in walls. This street was dark and narrow and seemed made expressly for him."
Here's an abandoned timber-yard-ish looking picture:
But Marville has no photographs of this street. I'd have to double check, but iirc this is the part where Hugo starts to 'make up' more street layouts. I wouldn't be surprised if this street really WAS made expressly for him (meaning Hugo made it up.)
"The point of Paris where Jean Valjean found himself, situated between the Faubourg Saint-Antoine and la Râpée, is one of those which recent improvements have transformed from top to bottom,—resulting in disfigurement according to some, and in a transfiguration according to others. The market-gardens, the timber-yards, and the old buildings have been effaced. To-day, there are brand-new, wide streets, arenas, circuses, hippodromes, railway stations, and a prison, Mazas, there; progress, as the reader sees, with its antidote."
(Here Hugo talks about the Haussman renovations directly, claiming that if his street layouts are "inaccurate" it's because these are some of the Old Medieval Streets that were razed during Paris's recent renovations. He goes on for a while comparing Petit-Picpus to various other areas that were changed during the renovations.)
"Le Petit-Picpus, which, moreover, hardly ever had any existence, and never was more than the outline of a quarter, had nearly the monkish aspect of a Spanish town. The roads were not much paved; the streets were not much built up. (....) Such was this quarter in the last century. The Revolution snubbed it soundly. The republican government demolished and cut through it. Rubbish shoots were established there. Thirty years ago, this quarter was disappearing under the erasing process of new buildings. To-day, it has been utterly blotted out."
The Petit-Picpus, of which no existing plan has preserved a trace, is indicated with sufficient clearness in the plan of 1727, published at Paris by Denis Thierry, Rue Saint-Jacques, opposite the Rue du Plâtre;
and at Lyons, by Jean Girin, Rue Mercière, at the sign of Prudence.
Petit-Picpus had, as we have just mentioned, a Y of streets, formed by the Rue du Chemin-Vert-Saint-Antoine, which spread out in two branches, taking on the left the name of Little Picpus Street, and on the right the name of the Rue Polonceau. The two limbs of the Y were connected at the apex as by a bar; this bar was called Rue Droit-Mur.
The Rue Polonceau ended there; Rue Petit-Picpus passed on, and ascended towards the Lenoir market. A person coming from the Seine reached the extremity of the Rue Polonceau, and had on his right the Rue Droit-Mur, turning abruptly at a right angle, in front of him the wall of that street, and on his right a truncated prolongation of the Rue Droit-Mur, which had no issue and was called the Cul-de-Sac Genrot."
Here is @everyonewasabird's attempt to puzzle this out:
It was here that Jean Valjean stood."
Then Jean Valjean escapes by pulling down an old oil lantern, strung up by ropes. Hugo notes that this would have been "impossible if the streets were lit with gas, the way they would be after the renovations. This picture shows an old oil lamp strung up by ropes:
Finally, Jean Valjean climbs over the wall into the Petit-Picpus convent. This convent is fictional. Hugo pretends it used to exists but is no longer around-- another relic of the early 19th century that has been lost over time.
TLDR:
Jean Valjean's escape through Paris is Hugo way of mourning the Paris he knew from before his exile, the Paris before the modern renovations. To quote Volume 2 Book 5 Chapter 1:
The author of this book, who regrets the necessity of mentioning himself, has been absent from Paris for many years. Paris has been transformed since he quitted it. A new city has arisen, which is, after a fashion, unknown to him. There is no need for him to say that he loves Paris: Paris is his mind’s natal city. In consequence of demolitions and reconstructions, the Paris of his youth, that Paris which he bore away religiously in his memory, is now a Paris of days gone by. He must be permitted to speak of that Paris as though it still existed. It is possible that when the author conducts his readers to a spot and says, “In such a street there stands such and such a house,” neither street nor house will any longer exist in that locality. Readers may verify the facts if they care to take the trouble. For his own part, he is unacquainted with the new Paris, and he writes with the old Paris before his eyes in an illusion which is precious to him. It is a delight to him to dream that there still lingers behind him something of that which he beheld when he was in his own country, and that all has not vanished. So long as you go and come in your native land, you imagine that those streets are a matter of indifference to you; that those windows, those roofs, and those doors are nothing to you; that those walls are strangers to you; that those trees are merely the first encountered haphazard; that those houses, which you do not enter, are useless to you; that the pavements which you tread are merely stones. Later on, when you are no longer there, you perceive that the streets are dear to you; that you miss those roofs, those doors; and that those walls are necessary to you, those trees are well beloved by you; that you entered those houses which you never entered, every day, and that you have left a part of your heart, of your blood, of your soul, in those pavements. All those places which you no longer behold, which you may never behold again, perchance, and whose memory you have cherished, take on a melancholy charm, recur to your mind with the melancholy of an apparition, make the holy land visible to you, and are, so to speak, the very form of France, and you love them; and you call them up as they are, as they were, and you persist in this, and you will submit to no change: for you are attached to the figure of your fatherland as to the face of your mother.
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I love how Javert’s beadle disguise is handled in the 1925 silent film adaptation, where Javert is so bundled up in layers of coat and cloth that he's just waddling around. I gueSS he doesn't look "like Javert" but he also looks like someone who is obviously Disguised. It's very powerful
Also obsessed with his quick change where he comedically flings off his hat and coat
Master of disguise, that one
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Jean Valjean blowing out the candle is supposed to just be part of a larger moment of tension as he tries to figure out what’s going on, but after learning that there’s a specific way convicts blow out candles earlier in the book, I really just want to know how he blew it out.
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The one, in which Veljean’s and Cosette’s idyll is shattered, and it is Javert who torments them. The moment of recognition is so vividly depicted that it sends shivers down my spine: “He experienced the same impression that one would have on finding one’s self, all of a sudden, face to face, in the dark, with a tiger. He recoiled, terrified, petrified, daring neither to breathe, to speak, to remain, nor to flee, staring at the beggar who had dropped his head, which was enveloped in a rag, and no longer appeared to know that he was there.” Despite this stark realization, Valjean deceives himself into believing it is impossible: “He hardly dared to confess, even to himself, that the face which he thought he had seen was the face of Javert.” It’s understandable why he clings to this denial — he doesn’t want his peaceful life with Cosette to be abruptly interrupted by this impossible intrusion.
And he continues to deceive himself, as he hears an unfamiliar presence in the Gorbeau house. Valjean’s reaction to this unwanted presence is to remain silent and invisible in the darkness. Cosette, obedient as ever, falls silent and heads to bed without question. This obedience reflects her past life, where compliance was likely a survival mechanism.
Javert’s presence and surveillance in the Grobeau house are marked by the light of the candle which “formed a sort of sinister star” through the keyhole. It’s such a powerful and terrifying image! As soon as we hear that in the morning Valjean sees the man “of lofty stature” through the keyhole, we can be sure that it is Javert. This pattern of a mysterious man turning out to be Valjean and a man “of lofty stature” turning out to be Javert is consistent throughout the narrative.
As Valjean’s worse suspicions are confirmed, he takes Cosette and leaves the Gorbeau house, not to return there in the next seven years or so.
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I want to do a version of Les Mis where everyone's songs are replaced with that Gavroche introduction.
Big "My name is BLANK and I'm here to say" energy, is what I'm going for
(LOOK DOWN orchestral intro swells then suddenly cuts out)
'OW DO YA DO, MY NAME'S JAVERT
I'M A POLICEMAN, YOU'RE A THIEF
YOU MAY NOW BE ON PAROLE
BUT NO-ONE CAN CHANGE, THAT'S MY BELIEF
(immediate reply)
'OW DO YA DO, MY NAME'S VALJEAN
I ONLY STOLE A LOAF OF BREAD
PAY ATTENTION TO HOW I LIFT
THE KNOWLEDGE WILL STAND YOU IN GOOD STEAD
and it would just go on like that for, like, 2 hours of shouty vaguely-cockney-accented exposition
(granted, i feel like it'd be a bit unbearable by 2 minutes... but still)
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She also noticed that there were all sorts of things in the pockets. Not only the needles, thread, and scissors which she had seen, but a big pocket-book, a very large knife, and—a suspicious circumstance—several wigs of various colors. Each pocket of this coat had the air of being in a manner provided against unexpected accidents.
me, with all sorts of toiletries, gadgets, and stationery in my backpack for only a 9 to 5 office job: he's just like me fr
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wait I just realized
It’s Wig Pocket Wednesday 🎉
Happy Wig Pocket day to everyone following @lesmisletters!
She also noticed that there were all sorts of things in the pockets [of Valjean’s coat.] Not only the needles, thread, and scissors which she had seen, but a big pocket-book, a very large knife, and—a suspicious circumstance—several wigs of various colors. Each pocket of this coat had the air of being in a manner provided against unexpected accidents.
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