Underrated hero of Les mis: the porter who responds to Marius’s questions about Valjean with “WHAT ARE YOU, a COP?”
“And what is that gentleman’s business?” began Marius again.
“He is a gentleman of property, sir. A very kind man who does good to the unfortunate, though not rich himself.”
“What is his name?” resumed Marius.
The porter raised his head and said:—
“Are you a police spy, sir?”
For context: this is when Marius, after seeing Cosette in the Luxembourg gardens, decides to follow her home and interrogate the porter about who her dad is. Later the porter also doesn’t tell Marius anything about where Valjean has fled to.
“Where is he living now?”
“I don’t know anything about it.”
“So he has not left his new address?”
“No.”
And the porter, raising his eyes, recognized Marius.
“Come! So it’s you!” said he; “but you are decidedly a spy then?”
Idk it’s nice that in a world where everyone keeps narcing on Valjean, there’s one random dude who hears a cop asking for information and— with no other context— responds
“He’s a nice guy and I don’t talk to cops.”
It’s also a neat parallel with Valjean’s portress from M-Sur-M, who’s also one of the only people in town to stand by him after he’s revealed to be a convict. Hugo puts a much bigger emphasis on Sister Simplice’s lie, but the portress’s more subtle undramatic heroism that happens right before is really touching:
Three or four persons in all the town remained faithful to his memory. The old portress who had served him was among the number.
(…)
(Valjean) heard a tumult of ascending footsteps, and the old portress saying in her loudest and most piercing tones:—
“My good sir, I swear to you by the good God, that not a soul has entered this house all day, nor all the evening, and that I have not even left the door.”
I also think there’s a sort of tragedy to the portress in that subplot? Her lie isn’t able to save Valjean because she’s just a portress, and poor, and Javert doesn’t put any weight on the words of someone like her. She is not the kind of person who Javert would ever listen to. He ignores her lie and brushes last her.
It’s only when the exact same lie is repeated by Sister Simplice, who has a level of Authority/social standing that the portress doesn’t, that Javert is forced to believe it.
But these two porters contrast with the Principal Tenant at the Gorbeau House, who happily sells Valjean out to cops. I wonder if it has something to do with her being a Landlady as much as portress? I still haven’t gotten to Toussaint and the second part of the book, but to me the way Valjean’s porters stand up against police for him seems sorta like it might be a bit of subtle Class Solidarity. I wonder if that continues through the entire book.
Real excited to be starting this readalong! Going in chronological order should be an exciting experience for us all, I’m sure! Thanks to @alicedrawslesmis for suggesting running this experience via the Tumblr queue; I can’t think of a website I trust more!
We’re starting our readalong in 1805 with everyone’s favorite character, Bruneseau!
diversity win! The police spy at your barricade had been tempted a score of times to fling himself upon Jean Valjean, to seize him an devour him, that is to say, to arrest him
Ever wonder what happens when you combine an under-utilized French degree and procrastination? Les Misérables translations, of course.
I present my translation of Volume V, Book the first, Chapter XXIII of the brick, “Oreste à jeun et Pylade ivre” which depicts the death of Enjolras and Grantaire. It’s always been a scene I’ve found particularly moving and I’ve never been totally satisfied with the unabridged translations I’ve seen. I was inspired to do a retranslation after reading the Hapgood (1887) translation and definitely used it for comparison.
Have you read Les Misérables in French? Do you have any favorite translations? I’m totally open to discussion and corrections of any words/expressions I may have misinterpreted (or just plain typos!). If people are interested I can post the plain text as well. Hope you enjoy!
The next morning she looked at herself again, not by accident this time, and she was assailed with doubts: “Where did I get such an idea?” said she; “no, I am ugly.” She had not slept well, that was all, her eyes were sunken and she was pale. She had not felt very joyous on the preceding evening in the belief that she was beautiful, but it made her very sad not to be able to believe in it any longer. She did not look at herself again, and for more than a fortnight she tried to dress her hair with her back turned to the mirror.
My barricade day surprise is that I tracked down a copy of I Miserabili, published in 1966 and illustrated by the incredible Renato Guttuso!
His illustrations are absolutely out of this world and he uses so many different styles and levels of polish just in this book. I tried to show a decent sampling here while also getting the most impressive page spreads (imo).
Let me know if anyone wants to see illustrations of any particular character/scene because he drew them all and I mean that I will happily post more pics below of some faves. Marius looks like a particularly forlorn shade of grey rat in this one, I will say.
“I repeat,” the old man continued, “you’ve mentioned Louis XVII. I agree, let’s weep together for all the innocent, all the martyrs, all the children, humble as well as mighty. I’m for that. But then, as I said, we must go further back than ‘93, and our tears must start before Louis XVII. I will weep for the children of kings with you if you will weep with me for the children of the people.”
—Les Misérables, Victor Hugo
“I will weep for the children of kings with you if you will weep with me for the children of the people” slaps SO hard. get his ass old man.
Another funny detail I feel a lot of people miss about Javert is how he literally Does Not Care At All about protecting people. He cares solely about punishment. Sometimes, he will put innocent people in danger because it makes it easier for him to punish people!
The two most obvious examples of this are the plot points where Javert “rescues” a bourgeoise person and then is unable to ask them questions because he’s so busy “punishing the evil poor people” that he doesn’t even glance in their direction. This happens after he “rescues” Bamatabois from Fantine and after he “rescues” Valjean from Patron-Minette. In both cases he’s so busy making a big pompous Ceremony over punishing the criminal that he doesn’t even bother to check on the victims. Because he doesn’t actually care about the victims.
The most compelling example of how little Javert cares about protecting people, imho, is the way he handles the Gorbeau House ambush.
After Marius overhears Thenardier planning to ambush Valjean— his first plan is very reasonable! He plans to intercept Valjean the moment he arrives at the house, talk to him before he enters, and warn him to leave.
Should he wait for M. Leblanc at the door that evening at six o’clock, at the moment of his arrival, and warn him of the trap? But Jondrette and his men would see him on the watch, the spot was lonely…
Marius’s top priority is Valjean’s safety.
He only goes to the police because he’s afraid to warn Valjean on his own and believes that the police will give him the backup he needs to execute this plan to prevent any harm from coming to an innocent person– but that isn’t what happens.
The problem is that police— and Javert— have completely different priorities than Marius. They don’t care about protecting the innocent person who’s in danger. They care about arresting and punishing as many people as possible.
Javert gives Marius a pistol that he can fire to call in the police. Then he tells Marius that the most important priority is that he must wait until the criminals have done something that can legally be punished by the law, to make sure they’ll have a good case when they go to court. That is Javert’s only concern. Never, not once in the entire scene, does he express any concern for the victim.
“Leave them to their own devices for a time. When you think matters have reached a crisis, and that it is time to put a stop to them, fire a shot. Not too soon. The rest concerns me. A shot into the ceiling, the air, no matter where. Above all things, not too soon.“
Instead of attempting to warn/rescue the innocent victim Javert deliberately encourages putting the victim in danger so that they can have something to punish! He expresses no concern for the victim’s life or health! It’s not his job to worry about those things, they aren’t things the government cares about! (And again, he has no idea this man is Valjean, he just thinks it’s some random innocent gentleman!) He has no empathy, and cares more about protecting the abstract concept of Order than he does the lives of human beings.
A couple Discord Server buddies and I have talked about how the Gorbeau House would have gone so much better if Marius had asked for help from Les Amis instead of the cops— and YES. Because Les Amis actually care about protecting people and would’ve probably gone along with Marius’s initial plan of “warning Valjean before he even enters the house,” because they would’ve been motivated by a desire to protect the innocent person.
I’d also like to add that, along with Javert not caring about protecting other people— he also doesn’t care about protecting himself. At the barricade he’s completely indifferent to his own death. He smiles haughtily when he’s caught; he surrenders with complete tranquility; he doesn’t utter a single protest or plea for mercy; he seems very content to die. In fact, he repeatedly encourages them to execute him sooner.
He doesn’t value the lives of other people, but he also doesn’t value his own. He won’t defend other people, but he also won’t defend himself. He believes human life is worthless.
And that’s why the moment when he lets Valjean go is such a turning point— it’s the first moment in the book when he does act out of compassion, when he does realize someone’s life is worth defending. And it’s not a coincidence that in order to be compassionate he has to rebel and deliberately refuse to follow orders and do his job, and “turn in his resignation to God” and the police at once.
I’m an American so I’m so used to being bombarded with a 24/7 stream of obnoxious cop propaganda fiction about how “police are your lovable compassionate friends who are here to protect the innocent” so it’s both nice and depressing to see a novel from the 19th century already mocking that idea.
