#le cabuc

[hyperjolyac]

My second favorite part of the book 🥹

[resnovae]

I'm once again begging for someone with actual artistic talent to draw an animatics of Enjolras executing Le Cabuc to the tune of I'm just a man from Epic the musical, it just fits him so well and I have this need that cannot be placated otherwise 😩😩😩😩😩

[checcotheperson]

Claquesous' design in the Manga Classics adaptation is so funny to me.

[pureanonofficial]

I appreciate that this Barricade Day more people are appreciating the weird yaoi potential of Enjolras/Mabeuf. We need to do Enjolras/Le Cabuc next.

[nortism]

i know the whole point of this scene is that murder is bad but unfortunately this is the coolest anyone has ever been

[kim-the-miserable-rat]

LES MIS INCORRECT QUOTES

(PART 8 -some of this are references to things in the brick so im really sorry non brick readers- HOPE YOU ENJOY THEM)

JOLLLLY (to the national guards)

FEUILLY

LE CABUC (to Enjolras before being shot)

COSETTE (I swear that's her in the brick)

BARRICADE BOYS (the 6th of June of 1832)

GRANTAIRE (about Marius)

GAVROCHE

BAHOREL

COMBEFERE

MARIUS (Cosette asks -after the love letter-)

[thecandlesticksfromlesmis]

Le Cabuc tried to resist, but he seemed to have been seized by a superhuman hand.

Pale and disheveled, his throat bared, Enjolras, with his womanly face, had at that moment something of ancient Themis about him. His flaring nostrils, his downcast eyes, gave to his implacable Greek profile that expression of wrath and that expression of chastity that for the ancient world are appropriate to justice.

Defeated, Le Cabuc no longer made any attempt to struggle, and trembled in every limb. Enjolras released him and drew out his watch.

“Prepare yourself,” he said. “With prayer or reflection. You have one minute.”

[dolphin1812]

The fun thing about rereading works is seeing a bunch of new details each time that you do.

I'll admit that I haven't kept up with Les Mis Letters this year as much as I would have liked to, but when I saw that the Le Cabuc chapter had passed this week, I wanted to look over it again, and it's fascinating to see how different details stand out this time around!

Of course, Enjolras' speech is always memorable, but there are a few descriptions that I had never thought about that I'd like to note here:

-"This man, whose name or nickname was Le Cabuc, and who was, moreover, an utter stranger to those who pretended to know him, was very drunk, or assumed the appearance of being so, and had seated himself with several others at a table which they had dragged outside of the wine-shop."

I love how, from the outset, everything about Le Cabuc is in doubt. Hearsay and gossip are a significant part of character journeys and descriptions in this work in general (just how many times do we see Jean Valjean from an outsider's perspective?), but Le Cabuc still stands out for how little is certain about him, as well as for being a much shadier character than most of our "unknown figures." All of the details we're given of him (his name is Le Cabuc, people know him, and he was drunk) are automatically thrown into question in the very sentence presenting them, making us skeptical of the veracity of his identity even before we're introduced to the theory that he was Claquesous (and a police spy). Moreover, he's made menacing by this through the idea that he was "an utter stranger to those who pretended to know him." While strangers are not necessarily menacing throughout the novel, there's something suspicious about people pretending to know someone. Of course, the barricade (as Hugo points out) draws many strangers together and unites them around a common cause, so it's not unusual for strangers to bond, but the specific choice of the word "pretending" (and not speaking to or getting to know) suggests something more sinister.

-"It was an ancient alley door, low, vaulted, narrow, solid, entirely of oak, lined on the inside with a sheet of iron and iron stays, a genuine prison postern. The blows from the butt end of the gun made the house tremble, but did not shake the door."

I don't have any coherent thoughts on this, but the choice to compare the door to a prison was certainly intentional on Hugo's part.

-I think it's interesting that Hugo chooses the word "spurn" to describe Enjolras moving Le Cabuc's corpse ("Then he spurned the corpse with his foot"). His rejection of him is so all-encompassing that he not only details it in his speech, but demonstrates it so clearly through his actions that Hugo elected to employ this unusual verb for a movement to describe this action (it is possible, of course, that the French original is a more common word, but this word does stand out in the English translation).