7.23 Hugo — Les Misérables — Epoché
What you will be able to do Read two chapters from the opening of Victor Hugo's Les Misérables , about 3,000 words: the convict Jean Valjean at the bishop's door, and the morning of the silver candlesticks. Follow a scene told largely in dialogue, in which one character speaks much and the other little. Recognise Hugo's rhetoric: antitheses, short sentences after long ones, and words chosen for their moral weight. Understand the turning point of the novel: an act of mercy that changes a man. Sentences from this text, before the notes. Read the French aloud; all of them come back below. French English L’évêque s’approcha de lui, et lui dit à voix basse The bishop came close to him and said in a low voice Le lendemain, au soleil levant, monseigneur Bienvenu se promenait dans son jardin. The next day, at sunrise, Monseigneur Bienvenu was walking in his garden. Il avait son sac sur l’épaule, son bâton à la main He had his bag on his shoulder, his stick in his hand Personne n’est ici chez soi, excepté celui qui a besoin d’un asile. No one here is at home, except the one who needs a refuge. J’ai été à une autre auberge. I went to another inn. Le feu de la cheminée l’éclairait. The fire in the fireplace lit him up. Prerequisites : 7.22 — this reading follows 7.22 Reading . You need the law and justice words of 5.16 Vocabulary : le gendarme , voler , la prison . The philosophy words of 5.20 Vocabulary , such as l'âme and la conscience , matter in the last lines. About this text Victor Hugo (1802–1885) was the great figure of French romanticism: poet, playwright, novelist, and a politician who spent nineteen years in exile, mostly on the island of Guernsey, for opposing Napoleon III. He finished Les Misérables there, and it appeared in 1862. It follows Jean Valjean, a poor tree-pruner sent to the galleys for stealing a loaf of bread for his sister's children, through nearly forty years of French history. In October 1815, Valjean has just been released after nineteen years in the bagne , the prison of hard labour at Toulon. He arrives at nightfall in the town of Digne. His yellow passport marks him as a former convict, and every inn and every house turns him away. Someone tells him to knock at the bishop's door. The bishop, Monseigneur Myriel, whom the poor call Monseigneur Bienvenu, welcomes him, gives him dinner with the silver cutlery, and a bed. In the night Valjean steals the silver and escapes. In the morning, the gendarmes bring him back. The text here gives two chapters of the second book of the first part, about 3,000 words, in the illustrated edition published in Paris by Émile Testard in 1890, as transcribed in French Wikisource: chapter 3, Valjean's arrival and the dinner, and chapter 12, the morning after. The chapters between them, the night and the theft, are left out and marked […]. Reading Hugo Valjean speaks. In chapter 3, Valjean pours out his story in one rush, before the bishop can turn him away: Je m'appelle Jean Valjean. Je suis un galérien. His sentences are short, blunt, repeated. The bishop answers in a few calm words, and simply tells his servant to lay another place. Antithesis. Hugo builds his effects on opposites: the convict and the bishop, the darkness outside and the candles inside, le mal and le bien . The last sentence of the excerpt turns on such an antithesis. Monsieur. The bishop calls Valjean monsieur , and the convict is overwhelmed: no one has addressed him so for nineteen years. Hugo compares it to un verre d'eau à un naufragé de la Méduse , a glass of water for a survivor of the Méduse , the ship whose wreck in 1816 left its survivors starving on a raft, the subject of Géricault 's famous painting. The bishop's titles. The servant says monseigneur and votre grandeur , the old forms of address for a bishop; the bishop himself prefers the simplest words. Reading it a second time, part by part The door opens. A man enters the bishop's room: a traveller with a bag and a stick, rough and exhausted. Madame Magloire, the servant, starts and stands open-mouthed; the bishop's sister, Mademoiselle Baptistine, half rises in fright, then looks to her brother and grows calm. The confession. Before anyone speaks, the man tells everything: his name, nineteen years in the galleys, the inns that refused him, the yellow passport. He asks only for a stable and some food, and he can pay. The welcome. The bishop tells Madame Magloire to lay a place and to put sheets on the bed in the alcove; when he remarks that the lamp gives poor light, she understands and brings the two silver candlesticks, already lit. The man cannot believe it and repeats that he is a convict. The bishop answers that the house is not his but Christ's. The morning. The next day, Madame Magloire runs to the bishop: the basket of silver is empty. The bishop answers calmly that the silver belonged to the poor. Then the gendarmes arrive with Valjean. The candlesticks. The bishop tells the gendarmes that he gave the silver, and asks Valjean why he did not take the candlesticks too. Released, Valjean hears the bishop's last words, which give the excerpt its end. Full translation An English translation of the whole text, made for this course and kept close to the original. The numbers are the paragraph numbers of the original text, so you can move between the two. Les Misérables The door opened. It opened quickly, wide open, as if someone were pushing it with energy and resolve. A man came in. We already know this man. He is the traveller we saw a little while ago wandering in search of a lodging. He came in, took one step and stopped, leaving the door open behind him. He had his bag on his shoulder, his stick in his hand, and a rough, bold, weary and violent expression in his eyes. The fire in the fireplace lit him up. He was hideous. It was a sinister apparition. Madame Magloire did not even have the strength to cry out. She started, and stood there open-mouthed. Mademoiselle Baptistine turned round, saw the m