#lm 1.3.3

[itsa-me-cavaradossi]

Insightful friend commentary here on Les Misérables, Volume I, Book 3, Chapter 3 ("Four by Four").

[scuttleton]

LM 1.3.1

Guys what year are we talking about

Oh boy we're in footnote city again

Napoleon was on St Helena, and as England refused to provide him with green cloth he was having his old coats turned.

There is something here about Marius and his green coat, I'm sure of it

Fifty footnotes later...

1.3.2

The names of these particular Oscars were Félix Tholomyès

Hey it's the guy everyone seems to hate that Courfeyrac gets compared to

Or at least the last name is the same

Tholomyès had Fantine

HEY IT'S THE LADY THE VOLUME IS NAMED AFTER

Oh wow Favourite's mother sucks B/

She loved Tholomyès. A conquest for him, for her the love of her life.

I can already see where this is going and I already hate this guy for it. Now I better understand where Courfeyrac diverges and I haven't even reached what this scoundrel does.

One day Tholomyès took the other three aside, made sure he had their full attention and said, ‘Fantine, Dahlia, Zéphine and Favourite have been asking us for nearly a year to give them a surprise. We’ve made a solemn promise to do so. . . . At the same time our parents keep writing to us. Attacked on both sides. I think the time has come. Let’s talk.’ At this point Tholomyès lowered his voice and mysteriously described something so amusing that a huge enthusiastic guffaw emerged simultaneously from the mouths of all four of them and Blachevelle cried, ‘That’s a great idea!’

I don't know what the plan is but I already don't like it. Just based on the description given to Tholomyès, I don't trust his plans. (On that note, I didn't expect him to be depicted as so ugly HAHA)

1.3.3

Oh, no matter who you may be, don’t you remember? Have you walked through the bushes, holding aside the branches for the pretty face following behind you?

Oh get out of here with this "No matter who you may be" type nonsense again 🙄

Blondeau mention 🫵 may he rest in peace

1.3.4

Okay, I am becoming increasingly baffled by the fact that Tholomyès is even with Fantine. He seems Like the sort that would prefer to have a lady who is fine with him doing whatever the heck he wants with her, but Fantine won't even get on the swing or accept kisses throughout the day like the other girls.

Maybe it comes back around to the conquest thing. She's pretty and if he can say that he was the one who..... (face of disgust) conquered her... It's like some kind of bragging right. "Yeah I managed to get with the chaste Fantine, that's how suave and impressive I am" kind of mentality. He wants the challenge? Ugh.

"on Sundays tiredness has the day off" oh if only

1.3.5

Horse mention 😔

1.3.6

This prompted Blachevelle to ask, ‘What would you do, Favourite, if I stopped loving you?’ ‘What would I do!’ cried Favourite. ‘Oh, don’t say that even as a joke! If you stopped loving me, I’d come after you, I’d scratch and claw you, I’d throw water over you, I’d have you arrested.’ Blachevelle smiled with the voluptuous self-conceit of a man whose vanity is flattered. . . . As she ate, Dahlia said quietly to Favourite amid the uproar, ‘So you really worship your Blachevelle, do you?’ ‘I detest him,’ replied Favourite in a similar undertone, picking up her fork again. ‘He’s stingy. It’s the lad who lives opposite me I love.

HAHA DANG

All the same, I tell Blachevelle I adore him. What a liar I am! Eh? What a liar!’ Favourite paused, then went on, ‘You see, Dahlia, I feel miserable. It’s done nothing but rain all summer, the wind’s always blowing, it gets on my nerves, Blachevelle’s very tight-fisted, there are hardly any peas in the market, you don’t know what to eat. I’m down in the dumps, as the English say, butter’s so expensive, and look, here we are eating in a room with a bed in it. It’s disgusting! It makes me fed up with life.’

... Dang.

You say you love actors, but girl you could be one.

[les-mis-daily-doodles]

awww she’s so pretty nothing bad could ever happen to her!!

[anderperries]

has the les mis fandom shipped zéphine and dahlia yet? cause if not, we ought to get on that

[lmchaptertitlebracket]

Round 1, Matchup 29: I.iii.2 vs I.iii.3

Which chapter title do you prefer?

Double Quartet

Four by Four

Voting ended onApr 21, 2025

[cliozaur]

This chapter is the first in a series of Hugo’s nostalgic musings about old Paris.

However, it is Fantine who is in focus. From the detailed description of her outfit, I suspect that it was relatively expensive for a poor grisette. Can it be that at least part of it was a gift from Tholomyès? She is the only one from the company with her chest covered (an example of a canezou in the picture below). Hugo is trying hard to emphasize her exceptional modesty, chastity, naivety, and virginity. And, as always, he is awkward discussing virginity. Oof.

Here we have the first parallel between Fantine and Enjolras, who are both likened to statues: “sculptural and exquisite—such was Fantine; and beneath these feminine adornments and these ribbons, one could divine a statue, and in that statue, a soul.”

[lesmisletters-daily]

Four And Four

Les Mis Letters reading club explores one chapter of Les Misérables every day. Join us on Discord, Substack - or share your thoughts right here on tumblr - today's tag is #lm 1.3.3

It is hard nowadays to picture to one’s self what a pleasure-trip of students and grisettes to the country was like, forty-five years ago. The suburbs of Paris are no longer the same; the physiognomy of what may be called circumparisian life has changed completely in the last half-century; where there was the cuckoo, there is the railway car; where there was a tender-boat, there is now the steamboat; people speak of Fécamp nowadays as they spoke of Saint-Cloud in those days. The Paris of 1862 is a city which has France for its outskirts.

The four couples conscientiously went through with all the country follies possible at that time. The vacation was beginning, and it was a warm, bright, summer day. On the preceding day, Favourite, the only one who knew how to write, had written the following to Tholomyès in the name of the four: “It is a good hour to emerge from happiness.” That is why they rose at five o’clock in the morning. Then they went to Saint-Cloud by the coach, looked at the dry cascade and exclaimed, “This must be very beautiful when there is water!” They breakfasted at the <i>Tête-Noir</i>, where Castaing had not yet been; they treated themselves to a game of ring-throwing under the quincunx of trees of the grand fountain; they ascended Diogenes’ lantern, they gambled for macaroons at the roulette establishment of the Pont de Sèvres, picked bouquets at Pateaux, bought reed-pipes at Neuilly, ate apple tarts everywhere, and were perfectly happy.

The young girls rustled and chatted like warblers escaped from their cage. It was a perfect delirium. From time to time they bestowed little taps on the young men. Matutinal intoxication of life! adorable years! the wings of the dragonfly quiver. Oh, whoever you may be, do you not remember? Have you rambled through the brushwood, holding aside the branches, on account of the charming head which is coming on behind you? Have you slid, laughing, down a slope all wet with rain, with a beloved woman holding your hand, and crying, “Ah, my new boots! what a state they are in!”

Let us say at once that that merry obstacle, a shower, was lacking in the case of this good-humored party, although Favourite had said as they set out, with a magisterial and maternal tone, <i>“The slugs are crawling in the paths,—a sign of rain, children.”</i>

All four were madly pretty. A good old classic poet, then famous, a good fellow who had an Éléonore, M. le Chevalier de Labouisse, as he strolled that day beneath the chestnut-trees of Saint-Cloud, saw them pass about ten o’clock in the morning, and exclaimed, “There is one too many of them,” as he thought of the Graces. Favourite, Blachevelle’s friend, the one aged three and twenty, the old one, ran on in front under the great green boughs, jumped the ditches, stalked distractedly over bushes, and presided over this merry-making with the spirit of a young female faun. Zéphine and Dahlia, whom chance had made beautiful in such a way that they set each off when they were together, and completed each other, never left each other, more from an instinct of coquetry than from friendship, and clinging to each other, they assumed English poses; the first <i>keepsakes</i> had just made their appearance, melancholy was dawning for women, as later on, Byronism dawned for men; and the hair of the tender sex began to droop dolefully. Zéphine and Dahlia had their hair dressed in rolls. Listolier and Fameuil, who were engaged in discussing their professors, explained to Fantine the difference that existed between M. Delvincourt and M. Blondeau.

Blachevelle seemed to have been created expressly to carry Favourite’s single-bordered, imitation India shawl of Ternaux’s manufacture, on his arm on Sundays.

Tholomyès followed, dominating the group. He was very gay, but one felt the force of government in him; there was dictation in his joviality; his principal ornament was a pair of trousers of elephant-leg pattern of nankeen, with straps of braided copper wire; he carried a stout rattan worth two hundred francs in his hand, and, as he treated himself to everything, a strange thing called a cigar in his mouth. Nothing was sacred to him; he smoked.

“That Tholomyès is astounding!” said the others, with veneration. “What trousers! What energy!”

As for Fantine, she was a joy to behold. Her splendid teeth had evidently received an office from God,—laughter. She preferred to carry her little hat of sewed straw, with its long white strings, in her hand rather than on her head. Her thick blond hair, which was inclined to wave, and which easily uncoiled, and which it was necessary to fasten up incessantly, seemed made for the flight of Galatea under the willows. Her rosy lips babbled enchantingly. The corners of her mouth voluptuously turned up, as in the antique masks of Erigone, had an air of encouraging the audacious; but her long, shadowy lashes drooped discreetly over the jollity of the lower part of the face as though to call a halt. There was something indescribably harmonious and striking about her entire dress. She wore a gown of mauve barège, little reddish brown buskins, whose ribbons traced an X on her fine, white, open-worked stockings, and that sort of muslin spencer, a Marseilles invention, whose name, <i>canezou</i>, a corruption of the words <i>quinze août</i>, pronounced after the fashion of the Canebière, signifies fine weather, heat, and midday. The three others, less timid, as we have already said, wore low-necked dresses without disguise, which in summer, beneath flower-adorned hats, are very graceful and enticing; but by the side of these audacious outfits, blond Fantine’s <i>canezou</i>, with its transparencies, its indiscretion, and its reticence, concealing and displaying at one and the same time, seemed an alluring godsend of decency, and the famous Court of Love, presided over by the Vicomtesse de Cette, with the sea-green eyes, would, perhaps, have awarded the prize for coquetry to this <i>canezou</i>, in the contest for the prize of modesty. The most ingenious is, at times, the wisest. This does happen.

Brilliant of face, delicate of profile, with eyes of a deep blue, heavy lids, feet arched and small, wrists and ankles admirably formed, a white skin which, here and there allowed the azure branching of the veins to be seen, joy, a cheek that was young and fresh, the robust throat of the Juno of Ægina, a strong and supple nape of the neck, shoulders modelled as though by Coustou, with a voluptuous dimple in the middle, visible through the muslin; a gayety cooled by dreaminess; sculptural and exquisite—such was Fantine; and beneath these feminine adornments and these ribbons one could divine a statue, and in that statue a soul.

Fantine was beautiful, without being too conscious of it. Those rare dreamers, mysterious priests of the beautiful who silently confront everything with perfection, would have caught a glimpse in this little working-woman, through the transparency of her Parisian grace, of the ancient sacred euphony. This daughter of the shadows was thoroughbred. She was beautiful in the two ways—style and rhythm. Style is the form of the ideal; rhythm is its movement.

We have said that Fantine was joy; she was also modesty.

To an observer who studied her attentively, that which breathed from her athwart all the intoxication of her age, the season, and her love affair, was an invincible expression of reserve and modesty. She remained a little astonished. This chaste astonishment is the shade of difference which separates Psyche from Venus. Fantine had the long, white, fine fingers of the vestal virgin who stirs the ashes of the sacred fire with a golden pin. Although she would have refused nothing to Tholomyès, as we shall have more than ample opportunity to see, her face in repose was supremely virginal; a sort of serious and almost austere dignity suddenly overwhelmed her at certain times, and there was nothing more singular and disturbing than to see gayety become so suddenly extinct there, and meditation succeed to cheerfulness without any transition state. This sudden and sometimes severely accentuated gravity resembled the disdain of a goddess. Her brow, her nose, her chin, presented that equilibrium of outline which is quite distinct from equilibrium of proportion, and from which harmony of countenance results; in the very characteristic interval which separates the base of the nose from the upper lip, she had that imperceptible and charming fold, a mysterious sign of chastity, which makes Barberousse fall in love with a Diana found in the treasures of Iconia.

Love is a fault; so be it. Fantine was innocence floating high over fault.

[pureanonofficial]

LES MIS LETTERS IN ADAPTATION - Four and Four, LM 1.3.3 (Les Miserables 1925)

To an observer who studied her attentively, that which breathed from her athwart all the intoxication of her age, the season, and her love affair, was an invincible expression of reserve and modesty. She remained a little astonished. This chaste astonishment is the shade of difference which separates Psyche from Venus. Fantine had the long, white, fine fingers of the vestal virgin who stirs the ashes of the sacred fire with a golden pin. Although she would have refused nothing to Tholomyès, as we shall have more than ample opportunity to see, her face in repose was supremely virginal; a sort of serious and almost austere dignity suddenly overwhelmed her at certain times, and there was nothing more singular and disturbing than to see gayety become so suddenly extinct there, and meditation succeed to cheerfulness without any transition state. This sudden and sometimes severely accentuated gravity resembled the disdain of a goddess. Her brow, her nose, her chin, presented that equilibrium of outline which is quite distinct from equilibrium of proportion, and from which harmony of countenance results; in the very characteristic interval which separates the base of the nose from the upper lip, she had that imperceptible and charming fold, a mysterious sign of chastity, which makes Barberousse fall in love with a Diana found in the treasures of Iconia.

Love is a fault; so be it. Fantine was innocence floating high over fault.