Part I: Fantine

The unabridged version of the book does not start with Jean Valjean’s journey into Digne, but with an in-depth description of the bishop of Digne, Monsieur Charles-Francois-Bienvenu, an elderly man of about 75. To see into his character, read this letter written by his sister (who lives with him) and sent to a friend:

THE BROTHER AS THE SISTER TELLS IT

To give you an idea of the domestic life of Monseigneur, the bishop of Digne, and the way in which those two saintly women subordinated their actions, thoughts, and even their instincts as women easily frightened, to the habits and designs of the bishop, without his even needing to go to the trouble of putting anything into words, we cannot do better than to set down here a letter of Mademoiselle Baptistine to Madame la vicomtesse de Boischevron, her childhood friend. This letter is in our possession.

Digne, December 16, 18---

My dear Madame,

Not a day goes by without our talking about you. It is something of a habit we’ve gotten into…I’m as happy as ever. My brother is so good. He gives everything he has to the sick and needy. We are feeling the pinch. The winters here are bitterly cold and of course we have to try and do something for those in need. We manage to stay warm and have light, though. You see how well off we are.

My brother has his little ways. When he mentions them, he says that’s just how a bishop should be. Just imagine---the front door of the house is never locked. Anyone can just walk in off the street and make themselves right at home in the middle of his room. He’s not afraid of anything, even at night. That’s his form of courage, as he says.

He doesn’t want me to be frightened for him or for Madame Magloire to be frightened. He exposes himself to every danger and he doesn’t want us to even look as though we notice. You’ve got to know him to know what he’s about.

He goes out in the rain, he walks in the water, he travels in the winter. He is not afraid of the dark or of dangerous roads or of running into someone.

Last year, he went all on his own into territory full of thieves. He wouldn’t hear of taking us along. He stayed away for a fortnight. When he came back, nothing had happened to him, we thought he was dead and he was in great spirits, and he said: “You see how they robbed me!” And he opened up a chest full of all the jewels from Embrum Cathedral which the thieves had given him.

That last time I’d gone with some friends of his to meet him at a spot a couple of miles away, and as we were returning home, I couldn’t help but scold him a little, being careful only to talk when the carriage was making a racket to so no one else could hear.

In the old days, I used to say to myself: “There is no danger that can stop him, he’s terrible.” Now I’ve ended up getting used to it. I motion to Madame Magloire not to go against him. Let him take whatever risks he will. I cart Madame Magloire away, go to my room and I pray for him and I fall asleep. I’m perfectly calm, because I know full well that if anything happened to him, it would be the end of me. I’d go to the good Lord with my brother and my bishop. It’s been a lot harder for Madame Magloire to come to terms with what she calls his recklessness. But now we have our routine. We both pray, we are both frightened together, and we fall asleep. If the devil came into the house, we’d let him do his worst. After all, what can we be frightened of in this house? There is always someone with us who is the strongest. The devil might pass through, but the good Lord lives here.

That is it. My brother doesn’t even have to say a word to me now. I understand him without his needing to speak and we put ourselves in the hands of Providence.

And that is how hone should be with a man of his greatness of spirit…Goodbye for now, I’m running out of paper so I must leave you here, very best wishes,

BAPTISTINE

(Hugo 28-30)

After Jean Valjean was put in prison for stealing the bread, what happened to his sister and the children? Here is the excerpt from the book to answer that question:

What became of his sister? What became of the seven children? What was going to worry about that? What becomes of a handful of leaves from the yellow tree sawn off at its base?

It’s the same old story. These poor living beings, God’s creatures, now without support, without a guide, without shelter, drifted off aimlessly, scattered in the wind, who knows?...They left their home country. The bell tower of what was once their village forgot them; the boundary of what was once their field forgot them; after a few years’ sojourn in jail, Jean Valjean himself forgot them. In that heart where there was once a wound, was now a scar. That is all. During the whole time he was in Toulon he had only once heard talk of his sister. It was, I think, toward the end of his fourth year in captivity. I no longer remember through what channel the news reached him. Someone, who had known them back home, had seen his sister. She was in Paris. She lived in a mean street near Saint-Suplice, the rue de Gindre. She had only one child with her by then, a little boy, the baby of the bunch. Where were the other six? She herself, perhaps, did not know. Every morning she went to a printer’s in the rue de Sabot, no. 3, where she was a folder and a stitcher. She had to be there at six in the morning, well before daybreak in winter. In the same building as the printing works there was s school and she took her little boy, who was seven, there. Only, as she started work at six o’clock, and the school did not open till seven, the child had to wait for an hour, in the courtyard, for the school to open; an hour in the dark in the winter in the open air! They wouldn’t let the boy come into the printer’s because he got in the way, they said. As they passed by of a morning, the workers would see the poor little mite sitting on the cobblestones, nodding off to sleep and sometimes sound asleep in the dark, crouched and curled up over his basket. When it rained, an old lady, the concierge, would take pity on him; she would take him into her shabby squat, where there was nothing but a pallet, a spinning wheel, and two wooden chairs, and the little boy would sleep there in a corner, cuddling up to the cat for warmth. At seven o’clock, the school would open and in he would go. That is what someone told Jean Valjean. They spoke to him about it, one day, and just for a moment, there was a flash of lightning, like a window suddenly opening on the destiny of these creatures he had loved, then everything shut again; he never heard another word about them again, not ever. Nothing further about them ever reached him; he never saw them again, never ran into them, and for the rest of this painful story, we will not stumble across them again. (Hugo 73-74)

Since the story of Fantine’s relationship with her lover is completely left out of your version, here is the shortened version: Fantine and three other women, Zephine, Dahlia, and Favorite, were in Paris and hung out together, along with their lovers, wealthy young men who enjoyed being with beautiful young women. Fantine’s lover, Felix Tholomyes, was the leader of their group. Hugo writes the following lines about their relationship and her origins:

Fantine’s was a first love, a unique love, a faithful love. She was the only one of the four to whom one man alone had whispered sweet nothings…She was born at Montreuil-sur-mer. Who were her parents? Who could say? No one had ever known her to have a father or a mother. She called herself Fantine. Why Fantine? No one had ever told her to go by any other name. At the time of her birth, the Directoire still held sway. She had no family name, since she had no family; she had no Christian name, since the Church had become a spent force. She was called whatever the first person who had happened along felt like calling her when they ran across her as a tiny toddler padding around the streets barefoot. A name had fallen upon her the same way water from the clouds fell on her head when it rained. They called her la petite Fantine. That was all anyone knew about her. This human being had come into existence just like that. At the age of ten, Fantine left town and went into service with a farming family in the district. At fifteen, she came to Paris “to seek her fortune.” Fantine was beautiful and remained pure for as long as she could. A pretty blonde with beautiful teeth, she had gold and pearls for a dowry, but her gold was on her head and her pearls were in her mouth. She worked in order to live; then, also in order to live, she loved, for the heart has its own hunger.

She loved Tholomyes. For him, it was a simple love affair; for her, passion. (Hugo 104)

One day, two years after they met, the four gentlemen took the women on a grand adventure of a date, ending up at a fancy restaurant for dinner. The men told the women that they had something important planned for them and proceeded to get up and leave the restaurant. An hour later, the following letter was delivered to the women, who were still waiting for the grand finale to the date:

O, lovers of ours!

Know that we have parents. Parents are not something you know much about. They are called mothers and fathers in the civil code, which is puerile but honest. Now, these parents are moaning, these old men want to claim us, these good old men and women call us prodigal sons; they want us to return and offer to kill fatted calves for us. Being virtuous, we obey them. By the time you read this, five fiery steeds will be bringing us back to our mamas and papas. We are packing up our tents, as Bossuet would say. We are leaving, we have left. We are fleeing in the arms of Lafitte and on the wings of Caillard. The Toulouse diligence is tearing us away from the abyss and the abyss is you, O, our beautiful little darlings! We are returning to society, to duty, and to order, at a great clip, at the rate of three leagues an hour. It is important for the homeland that we be, like everyone else, police commissioners, fathers of families, council employees, and members of Council of State. Venerate us. We are sacrificing ourselves. Mourn us rapidly and replace us pronto. If this letter tears you apart, tear it apart back. Adieu.

For nearly two years, we have made you happy. Don’t hold it against us.

Signed: BLACHEVELLE

FAMUEL

LISTOLIER

FELIX THOLOMYES

Post Scriptum: The meal is paid for.

The four girls looked at each other.

Favorite was the first to break the silence.

“Well!” she cried. “That’s a pretty good joke, I’ll give them that.”

“Very droll,” said Zephine.

“It must have been Blachevelle’s idea,” Favorite went on. “It makes me feel quite in love with him. No sooner lost than loved. That’s the way it goes.”

“No,” said Dahlia, “it’s Tholomyes’s idea. You can tell.”

“In that case,” retorted Favorite, “down with Blachevelle and long live Tholomyes!”

“Long live Tholomyes!” cried Dahlia and Zephine.

And they burst out laughing.

Fantine laughed with them.

An hour later, when she was back in her room, she cried. He was, as we said, her first love; she had given herself to this Tholomyes as to a husband, and the poor girl had a child. (Hugo 121-122)

The character of Javert is not described in depth in your version, especially his background, so read this longer description to better understand Javert:

It is our conviction that if souls were visible to the naked eye, we would clearly see the strange phenomenon whereby every individual member of the human race corresponds to one of the species of the animal kingdom; and we could easily recognize this truth, scarcely entertained by the theorists, that from the oyster to the eagle, from the pig to the tiger, all animals are in man and each of them is in a man---sometimes even several of them simultaneously…

The Asturian peasants are convinced that in every litter of wolves there is one pup who is killed by the mother because otherwise it would grow up to devour all the other pups.

Give that male wolf puppy a human face, and you’d have Javert.

Javert was born in prison to a fortune-teller who read the cards and whose husband was serving time in the galleys. As he was growing up, he felt as though he were on the outside of society and despaired of ever getting in. He noticed that society kept at bay two classes of men, those who attack it and those who guard it; his only choice was between these two classes. At the same time, he felt in himself some kind of basic rigidity, steadiness, honesty, clouded by an inexpressible hatred for that race of bohemians to whom he belonged. He joined the police.

He did well there. At the age of forty, he was in inspector.

As a young man he had been stationed as a warden in the galleys of the south.

Before moving on to better things, let’s be clear about the term human face, which we applied a moment ago to Javert.

The human face of Javert consisted of a pug nose, with two wide nostrils, toward which two enormous sideburns climbed down his cheeks. You felt disconcerted the first time you set eyes on these two forests flanking those two cavernous holes. When Javert laughed, which was rare and terrible, his thin lips parted and revealed not only his teeth but his gums, and a line appeared around his nose that was as flat and feral as on the muzzle of one of the big cats. When Javert was serious, he was a mastiff; when he laughed, he was a tiger. For the rest, not much of a skull, a lot of jaw, hair that hid his forehead and fell into his eyes, a permanent frown line between his eyes like a star of anger, a dark glance, a pinched and formidable mouth, a ferocious air of command…

In his rare spare time, although he hated books, he would read; the result was that he was not altogether illiterate. This could be gauged by a certain emphasis in his speech.

He had no vices whatsoever, as we said. When he was pleased with himself, he allowed himself a pinch of tobacco. That is the thread by which he hung on to humanity. (Hugo 143-145)

After Fantine dropped Cosette off with the Thenardiers, she went to her hometown of Montreuil-sur-mer and got a job in a factory, working for the Mayor of the town. When they found out that she had an illegitimate child, they fired her. It was near the end of the winter and she had to find other ways to earn money to support Cosette…

Fantine did not earn enough. Her debts had mushroomed. The Thenardiers, not getting regular payments, bombarded her with letters the contents of which distressed her and the postage costs of which were ruining her. One day they wrote to tell her that her little Cosette was quite naked in the freezing cold they were having, that she needed a woolen skirt and that the mother would have to send at least ten francs to cover the cost. She accepted the latter and carried it around in her hand all day, screwed up into a ball. That evening she went to the barber’s shop at the end of the street and took the comb out of her hair. Her wondrous blond locks tumbled down to the small of her back.

“What beautiful hair!” the barber cried.

“How much will you give me for it?” she asked.

“Ten francs.”

“Cut it off.”

She bought a knitted skirt and sent it to the Thenardiers.

The skirt made the Thenardiers furious. It was the money they wanted. They gave the skirt to Eponine. The poor little Lark went on freezing… (Hugo 154)

After receiving a letter from the Thenardiers that Cosette had the military fever and they needed 40 francs for the medicine and doctor, the following scene happened…

The next morning, as Marguerite came into Fantine’s room before daybreak, for they always worked together and so could share the one candle between the two of them, she found Fantine sitting on her bed, pale, icy cold. She had not been to bed. Her cap had fallen to her knees. The candle had been burning all night and was very nearly burned out.