Brickclub: 2.5.1
Victor Hugo loves Paris so much he makes me love Paris, and that’s a pretty big accomplishment, honestly.
Victor Hugo is also painting a picture of a place that no longer exists, and there’s a poignant melancholy in this whole image. He knows that even if he goes home again it won’t really be the home he remembers, and all he can do is write what he remembers and hope that, on some small level, that is enough to keep the memory of his city as he fell in love with it alive.
And on that note, “for the face of your homeland is as dear to you as the face of your mother." We’re just going to leave this here.
Anyway, this chapter tricks you by making you think it’s going to be a digression and then suddenly making a hard swerve back to the plot. (I actually wonder if the whole opening is a response to an editor comment, honestly. Like, he wrote it up and his editor was like, “Victor, Paris doesn’t look like this anymore, people are going to be confused,” and Hugo went, “yeah, well, I don’t care,” and wrote a preface. But anyway.)
So Valjean and Cosette are running, deliberately confusing their tracks, trying not to be seen. And Valjean is confident that he is not being followed, but Hugo drops enough hints to the contrary that we’re not really sure whether or no to share in his confidence. “Perhaps he gave too little consideration to what the dark side hid from him” is a heck of a qualifying statement.
And sure enough, it turns out they are, in fact, being followed, and by a whole group at that. Valjean trusts his instincts and so is able to notice them, but noticing them doesn’t guarantee safety, and we are left not just with a cliffhanger but with a reveal: It’s Javert!
