#lm 1.3.5

[les-mis-daily-doodles]

yay it’s the working class!! not sure why they’re here but that’s ok!!!

[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.

[cliozaur]

At Bombarda's by Mead Schaeffer

[lmchaptertitlebracket]

Round 1, Matchup 30: I.iii.5 vs IV.xii

Which chapter title do you prefer?

At Bombarda's

Corinthe

Voting ended onApr 21, 2025

[lesmisletters-daily]

At Bombarda’s

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 1.3.5

The Russian mountains having been exhausted, they began to think about dinner; and the radiant party of eight, somewhat weary at last, became stranded in Bombarda’s public house, a branch establishment which had been set up in the Champs-Élysées by that famous restaurant-keeper, Bombarda, whose sign could then be seen in the Rue de Rivoli, near Delorme Alley.

A large but ugly room, with an alcove and a bed at the end (they had been obliged to put up with this accommodation in view of the Sunday crowd); two windows whence they could survey beyond the elms, the quay and the river; a magnificent August sunlight lightly touching the panes; two tables; upon one of them a triumphant mountain of bouquets, mingled with the hats of men and women; at the other the four couples seated round a merry confusion of platters, dishes, glasses, and bottles; jugs of beer mingled with flasks of wine; very little order on the table, some disorder beneath it

“They made beneath the table

A noise, a clatter of the feet that was abominable,”

says Molière.

This was the state which the shepherd idyl, begun at five o’clock in the morning, had reached at half-past four in the afternoon. The sun was setting; their appetites were satisfied.

The Champs-Élysées, filled with sunshine and with people, were nothing but light and dust, the two things of which glory is composed. The horses of Marly, those neighing marbles, were prancing in a cloud of gold. Carriages were going and coming. A squadron of magnificent body-guards, with their clarions at their head, were descending the Avenue de Neuilly; the white flag, showing faintly rosy in the setting sun, floated over the dome of the Tuileries. The Place de la Concorde, which had become the Place Louis XV. once more, was choked with happy promenaders. Many wore the silver fleur-de-lys suspended from the white-watered ribbon, which had not yet wholly disappeared from button-holes in the year 1817. Here and there choruses of little girls threw to the winds, amid the passers-by, who formed into circles and applauded, the then celebrated Bourbon air, which was destined to strike the Hundred Days with lightning, and which had for its refrain:—

“Rendez-nous notre père de Gand,

Rendez-nous notre père.”

“Give us back our father from Ghent,

Give us back our father.”

Groups of dwellers in the suburbs, in Sunday array, sometimes even decorated with the fleur-de-lys, like the bourgeois, scattered over the large square and the Marigny square, were playing at rings and revolving on the wooden horses; others were engaged in drinking; some journeyman printers had on paper caps; their laughter was audible. Everything was radiant. It was a time of undisputed peace and profound royalist security; it was the epoch when a special and private report of Chief of Police Anglès to the King, on the subject of the suburbs of Paris, terminated with these lines:—

“Taking all things into consideration, Sire, there is nothing to be feared from these people. They are as heedless and as indolent as cats. The populace is restless in the provinces; it is not in Paris. These are very pretty men, Sire. It would take all of two of them to make one of your grenadiers. There is nothing to be feared on the part of the populace of Paris the capital. It is remarkable that the stature of this population should have diminished in the last fifty years; and the populace of the suburbs is still more puny than at the time of the Revolution. It is not dangerous. In short, it is an amiable rabble.”

Prefects of the police do not deem it possible that a cat can transform itself into a lion; that does happen, however, and in that lies the miracle wrought by the populace of Paris. Moreover, the cat so despised by Count Anglès possessed the esteem of the republics of old. In their eyes it was liberty incarnate; and as though to serve as pendant to the Minerva Aptera of the Piræus, there stood on the public square in Corinth the colossal bronze figure of a cat. The ingenuous police of the Restoration beheld the populace of Paris in too “rose-colored” a light; it is not so much of “an amiable rabble” as it is thought. The Parisian is to the Frenchman what the Athenian was to the Greek: no one sleeps more soundly than he, no one is more frankly frivolous and lazy than he, no one can better assume the air of forgetfulness; let him not be trusted nevertheless; he is ready for any sort of cool deed; but when there is glory at the end of it, he is worthy of admiration in every sort of fury. Give him a pike, he will produce the 10th of August; give him a gun, you will have Austerlitz. He is Napoleon’s stay and Danton’s resource. Is it a question of country, he enlists; is it a question of liberty, he tears up the pavements. Beware! his hair filled with wrath, is epic; his blouse drapes itself like the folds of a chlamys. Take care! he will make of the first Rue Grenétat which comes to hand Caudine Forks. When the hour strikes, this man of the faubourgs will grow in stature; this little man will arise, and his gaze will be terrible, and his breath will become a tempest, and there will issue forth from that slender chest enough wind to disarrange the folds of the Alps. It is, thanks to the suburban man of Paris, that the Revolution, mixed with arms, conquers Europe. He sings; it is his delight. Proportion his song to his nature, and you will see! As long as he has for refrain nothing but <i>la Carmagnole</i>, he only overthrows Louis XVI.; make him sing the <i>Marseillaise</i>, and he will free the world.

This note jotted down on the margin of Anglès’ report, we will return to our four couples. The dinner, as we have said, was drawing to its close.

[secretmellowblog]

I do love how Victor Hugo pauses Les Mis to go on a tangent about the Revolutionary Power of Cats(tm)

Prefects of the police do not deem it possible that a cat can transform itself into a lion; that does happen, however, and in that lies the miracle wrought by the populace of Paris. Moreover, the cat so despised by Count Anglès possessed the esteem of the republics of old. In their eyes it was liberty incarnate; and as though to serve as pendant to the Minerva Aptera of the Piræus, there stood on the public square in Corinth the colossal bronze figure of a cat.

Les Meowserables….

[pureanonofficial]

LES MIS LETTERS IN ADAPTATION - At Bombarda's, LM 1.3.5 (Les Miserables 1934)

The Russian mountains having been exhausted, they began to think about dinner; and the radiant party of eight, somewhat weary at last, became stranded in Bombarda’s public house, a branch establishment which had been set up in the Champs-Élysées by that famous restaurant-keeper, Bombarda, whose sign could then be seen in the Rue de Rivoli, near Delorme Alley.

A large but ugly room, with an alcove and a bed at the end (they had been obliged to put up with this accommodation in view of the Sunday crowd); two windows whence they could survey beyond the elms, the quay and the river; a magnificent August sunlight lightly touching the panes; two tables; upon one of them a triumphant mountain of bouquets, mingled with the hats of men and women; at the other the four couples seated round a merry confusion of platters, dishes, glasses, and bottles; jugs of beer mingled with flasks of wine; very little order on the table, some disorder beneath it;

[dolphin1812]

Hugo’s use of “historical documents” returns!

The report of the Chief of Police, Anglès, feels very ironic - not just because of Hugo’s criticism of it right afterward, but because Hugo’s immediate audience (in the 1860s) would have known that the “royalist security” of 1817 wouldn’t last. There was a new monarch by 1830, another republic in 1848, and at the time of this novel’s publication, France was under another imperial Bonapartist regime. The chief’s report, then, is funny not just because he’s oblivious to the people, but because of a sort of dramatic irony: he has no idea how much will change in just a few years.

As for the report itself:

““Taking all things into consideration, Sire, there is nothing to be feared from these people. They are as heedless and as indolent as cats. The populace is restless in the provinces; it is not in Paris. These are very pretty men, Sire. It would take all of two of them to make one of your grenadiers. There is nothing to be feared on the part of the populace of Paris the capital. It is remarkable that the stature of this population should have diminished in the last fifty years; and the populace of the suburbs is still more puny than at the time of the Revolution. It is not dangerous. In short, it is an amiable rabble.””

Hugo analyzes the “cat” comparison himself by saying that a cat can transform into a lion, but I think this description is especially interesting given how we’ve seen him use this image before, with Valjean. After stealing the silver, Valjean was a “tiger” - perhaps the use of a lion instead represents the more noble aims of the people, or maybe a more political connotation since lions were common symbols for kings and nobles - but when calm, he too was described as a “cat.” The use of the same animal serves to link Valjean to the people and vice versa. Just as Valjean can be peaceful and gentle until circumstances force him to be otherwise, so too can the people become rebellious. However, while Valjean’s wild animal imagery is linked to a form of criminality that he himself detests, the people’s “crime” would simply be opposing an unjust regime here, both linking their resistance to a cruel society/political structure and differentiating between them (because the “lion” does not dislike itself like Valjean does).

The contempt the Chief of Police has for the people of Paris is also really clear from his use of the phrase “amiable rabble” and how he describes their weakness. At the same time, even his characterization of them carries hints of discontent. For instance, he focuses on their short stature as a sign of the monarchy’s security, but one possible reason that a population would literally be shorter than they were before is a lack of food leading to malnutrition (which is also a common reason for rebellion). Similarly, he claims that it would take two Parisians to make one of the king’s grenadiers, but he doesn’t realize that based on numbers alone, that would put the balance with the people. One Parisian man would not be able to compare to the king’s soldier, but if two together are already his equal, then that doesn’t bode well for the monarchy.

I also love how Hugo immediately jumps to making classical references for a full paragraph, I feel like he started doing so to describe Fantine and just can’t stop himself anymore.