#lm 1.7.7

[les-mis-daily-doodles]

what will he do??!?

[cliozaur]

From the pictures, Arras appears to be a charming city. However, Valjean is greeted by unwelcoming dark streets where he soon finds himself lost. What a clever move from the old man – to prearrange his swift retreat and have everything ready for departure at night.

Did you notice how crowded the courthouse was in the late evening? In French courts, public admission to hearings was a relatively new trend. Under the ancien régime, courts were closed to the public, and in the eighteenth century, you could only learn about what was happening through specific pamphlets, which were extremely popular. After the Revolution, courts were open and became quite an entertainment for the audience. In the case of the Arras court on the night of Valjean’s arrival, they seem to have a cause célèbre – a woman accused of committing infanticide. It’s so somber.

I love Valjean speaking “in an authoritative manner.” It’s a pity it won’t last.

Contemporary Arras:

[lmchaptertitlebracket]

Round 2, Matchup 34: I.vii.7 vs II.iii

Which chapter title do you prefer?

The Traveller On His Arrival Takes Precautions For Departure

Fulfilment of the Promise to the Departed

Voting ended onJun 11, 2025

[lesmisletters-daily]

The Traveller On His Arrival Takes Precautions For Departure

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 1.7.7

It was nearly eight o’clock in the evening when the cart, which we left on the road, entered the porte-cochère of the Hotel de la Poste in Arras; the man whom we have been following up to this moment alighted from it, responded with an abstracted air to the attentions of the people of the inn, sent back the extra horse, and with his own hands led the little white horse to the stable; then he opened the door of a billiard-room which was situated on the ground floor, sat down there, and leaned his elbows on a table; he had taken fourteen hours for the journey which he had counted on making in six; he did himself the justice to acknowledge that it was not his fault, but at bottom, he was not sorry.

The landlady of the hotel entered.

“Does Monsieur wish a bed? Does Monsieur require supper?”

He made a sign of the head in the negative.

“The stableman says that Monsieur’s horse is extremely fatigued.”

Here he broke his silence.

“Will not the horse be in a condition to set out again to-morrow morning?”

“Oh, Monsieur! he must rest for two days at least.”

He inquired:—

“Is not the posting-station located here?”

“Yes, sir.”

The hostess conducted him to the office; he showed his passport, and inquired whether there was any way of returning that same night to M. sur M. by the mail-wagon; the seat beside the post-boy chanced to be vacant; he engaged it and paid for it. “Monsieur,” said the clerk, “do not fail to be here ready to start at precisely one o’clock in the morning.”

This done, he left the hotel and began to wander about the town.

He was not acquainted with Arras; the streets were dark, and he walked on at random; but he seemed bent upon not asking the way of the passers-by. He crossed the little river Crinchon, and found himself in a labyrinth of narrow alleys where he lost his way. A citizen was passing along with a lantern. After some hesitation, he decided to apply to this man, not without having first glanced behind and in front of him, as though he feared lest some one should hear the question which he was about to put.

“Monsieur,” said he, “where is the court-house, if you please.”

“You do not belong in town, sir?” replied the bourgeois, who was an oldish man; “well, follow me. I happen to be going in the direction of the court-house, that is to say, in the direction of the hotel of the prefecture; for the court-house is undergoing repairs just at this moment, and the courts are holding their sittings provisionally in the prefecture.”

“Is it there that the Assizes are held?” he asked.

“Certainly, sir; you see, the prefecture of to-day was the bishop’s palace before the Revolution. M. de Conzié, who was bishop in ’82, built a grand hall there. It is in this grand hall that the court is held.”

On the way, the bourgeois said to him:—

“If Monsieur desires to witness a case, it is rather late. The sittings generally close at six o’clock.”

When they arrived on the grand square, however, the man pointed out to him four long windows all lighted up, in the front of a vast and gloomy building.

“Upon my word, sir, you are in luck; you have arrived in season. Do you see those four windows? That is the Court of Assizes. There is light there, so they are not through. The matter must have been greatly protracted, and they are holding an evening session. Do you take an interest in this affair? Is it a criminal case? Are you a witness?”

He replied:—

“I have not come on any business; I only wish to speak to one of the lawyers.”

“That is different,” said the bourgeois. “Stop, sir; here is the door where the sentry stands. You have only to ascend the grand staircase.”

He conformed to the bourgeois’s directions, and a few minutes later he was in a hall containing many people, and where groups, intermingled with lawyers in their gowns, were whispering together here and there.

It is always a heart-breaking thing to see these congregations of men robed in black, murmuring together in low voices, on the threshold of the halls of justice. It is rare that charity and pity are the outcome of these words. Condemnations pronounced in advance are more likely to be the result. All these groups seem to the passing and thoughtful observer so many sombre hives where buzzing spirits construct in concert all sorts of dark edifices.

This spacious hall, illuminated by a single lamp, was the old hall of the episcopal palace, and served as the large hall of the palace of justice. A double-leaved door, which was closed at that moment, separated it from the large apartment where the court was sitting.

The obscurity was such that he did not fear to accost the first lawyer whom he met.

“What stage have they reached, sir?” he asked.

“It is finished,” said the lawyer.

“Finished!”

This word was repeated in such accents that the lawyer turned round.

“Excuse me sir; perhaps you are a relative?”

“No; I know no one here. Has judgment been pronounced?”

“Of course. Nothing else was possible.”

“To penal servitude?”

“For life.”

He continued, in a voice so weak that it was barely audible:—

“Then his identity was established?”

“What identity?” replied the lawyer. “There was no identity to be established. The matter was very simple. The woman had murdered her child; the infanticide was proved; the jury threw out the question of premeditation, and she was condemned for life.”

“So it was a woman?” said he.

“Why, certainly. The Limosin woman. Of what are you speaking?”

“Nothing. But since it is all over, how comes it that the hall is still lighted?”

“For another case, which was begun about two hours ago.”

“What other case?”

“Oh! this one is a clear case also. It is about a sort of blackguard; a man arrested for a second offence; a convict who has been guilty of theft. I don’t know his name exactly. There’s a bandit’s phiz for you! I’d send him to the galleys on the strength of his face alone.”

“Is there any way of getting into the court-room, sir?” said he.

“I really think that there is not. There is a great crowd. However, the hearing has been suspended. Some people have gone out, and when the hearing is resumed, you might make an effort.”

“Where is the entrance?”

“Through yonder large door.”

The lawyer left him. In the course of a few moments he had experienced, almost simultaneously, almost intermingled with each other, all possible emotions. The words of this indifferent spectator had, in turn, pierced his heart like needles of ice and like blades of fire. When he saw that nothing was settled, he breathed freely once more; but he could not have told whether what he felt was pain or pleasure.

He drew near to many groups and listened to what they were saying. The docket of the session was very heavy; the president had appointed for the same day two short and simple cases. They had begun with the infanticide, and now they had reached the convict, the old offender, the “return horse.” This man had stolen apples, but that did not appear to be entirely proved; what had been proved was, that he had already been in the galleys at Toulon. It was that which lent a bad aspect to his case. However, the man’s examination and the depositions of the witnesses had been completed, but the lawyer’s plea, and the speech of the public prosecutor were still to come; it could not be finished before midnight. The man would probably be condemned; the attorney-general was very clever, and never <i>missed</i> his culprits; he was a brilliant fellow who wrote verses.

An usher stood at the door communicating with the hall of the Assizes. He inquired of this usher:—

“Will the door be opened soon, sir?”

“It will not be opened at all,” replied the usher.

“What! It will not be opened when the hearing is resumed? Is not the hearing suspended?”

“The hearing has just been begun again,” replied the usher, “but the door will not be opened again.”

“Why?”

“Because the hall is full.”

“What! There is not room for one more?”

“Not another one. The door is closed. No one can enter now.”

The usher added after a pause: “There are, to tell the truth, two or three extra places behind Monsieur le Président, but Monsieur le Président only admits public functionaries to them.”

So saying, the usher turned his back.

He retired with bowed head, traversed the antechamber, and slowly descended the stairs, as though hesitating at every step. It is probable that he was holding counsel with himself. The violent conflict which had been going on within him since the preceding evening was not yet ended; and every moment he encountered some new phase of it. On reaching the landing-place, he leaned his back against the balusters and folded his arms. All at once he opened his coat, drew out his pocket-book, took from it a pencil, tore out a leaf, and upon that leaf he wrote rapidly, by the light of the street lantern, this line: <i>M. Madeleine, Mayor of M. sur M.</i>; then he ascended the stairs once more with great strides, made his way through the crowd, walked straight up to the usher, handed him the paper, and said in an authoritative manner:—

“Take this to Monsieur le Président.”

The usher took the paper, cast a glance upon it, and obeyed.

[dolphin1812]

I love how Hugo continues to build suspense throughout this chapter with “delays.” First, we have the suggestion that the courthouse may indeed be closed. Then (and most effectively), we have the case of the woman, which Valjean mistakes for Champmathieu’s and begins to think his turmoil has come to an end before he’s told what the case is. Finally, he’s not permitted to enter the courtroom because it’s full, although it seems he’ll be able to enter now that he’s proved he’s a “public functionary.” 

The cases themselves are also intriguing. Hugo himself points out that most of the verdicts are decided in advance:

“It is rare that charity and pity are the outcome of these words. Condemnations pronounced in advance are more likely to be the result.”

We can see this from the way the bourgeois talks to Valjean, as he seems confident of the outcome of all the cases despite not being in the room for any of them (his prejudices are clear as well, as he says he would send Champmathieu “’to the galleys on the strength of his face alone’”). The groups involved in the cases are also those we have so far seen as the most vulnerable in society: a woman, a child, and an ex-convict. Although the biases of the bourgeois and of the courts themselves make their pronouncements suspect, the case of the woman suggests that Hugo is not only interested in the vulnerability of these groups to the system (all of these cases are expected to end in condemnations), but to each other, as the woman is said to have killed her child. 

Champmathieu’s case highlights the absurdities of this system to an even greater extent. We know, of course, that he’s not Valjean, but the crime he’s been accused of (stealing apples) hasn’t even been proved. He’s expected to be condemned for his identity alone.

It’s also so ironic that Valjean can’t enter the room without establishing himself as a public functionary. The popularity of the trial (for such a minor case and for so late at night) illustrates the somewhat grotesque obsession with the spectacle of punishment, with much of the audience presumably being there for the entertainment/curiosity of seeing a “hardened criminal” condemned for life. While watching the trial may reassure the viewer that they are not like that convict regardless of their own status, class is very much present at the trial, and not just in the case itself. The expectation simply isn’t that the place of honor reserved for public functionaries is about to be occupied by the convict at the center of the case.

[everyonewasabird]

Brickclub 1.7.7 ‘The traveler arrives and provides for his return’

Sometimes the chapter titles are basic descriptors, and sometimes they’re straight-up jokes, but for this chapter and the last one they seem to be pulling more weight than usual, emphasizing themes a reader could miss. The last chapter pointed out Simplice’s moral quandary. This one emphasizes that Valjean is still bargaining with himself and still pretending he can get out of this, as if booking his return ticket first makes him feel safer going in there.

Poor Valjean.

Hugo describes the courthouse with bee metaphors, as a gloomy hive that is building “dark structures.” It has a connotation of mindlessness to my ear--all these men are working as cogs in a well-oiled machine, but there’s no overall intelligence saying that what they build actually should be built. It reminds me of the miners metaphor we see later, in terms of building in the dark, but as far as I can tell, in this metaphor these are above-ground structures that lack even the subtlety of the worst of society’s underminers.

I’ve looked up bees in the text now, and while there are some intermittent bee mentions, the humming hive metaphor comes back for 1) the activity of the convent, first the children then later the nuns, and 2) insurrections and barricades. Beehives seem to be Hugo’s way of talking about crowds that have developed collective mind and will and action, for better or worse.

This chapter has several dark counterparts of things we’ve already encountered:

- A repurposed bishop’s palace, but this one is repurposed not for healing but to hold trials. It seems clear that this is a worse idea on all fronts.

- The description of this prosecutor who is also a poet, who never “fails” with his prisoners, is such a biting, brutal, bitterly sarcastic line. Poetry is an inherently positive topic for Hugo, and Prouvaire (our major poet and at least associated with law students, whether or not he is one, so I’m taking him (very loosely) as a foil here) is gentle and thoughtful because of it. But this is a perverse form, removed from human sympathy and even from notions of justice. This man is good with words, and that’s his weapon. He uses it to crush the misérables purely to keep up his unbroken streak of successes. We’ve seen law students before and will again, but this is our real exposure to lawyers, aside from the mention of Tholomyes’s future doings. They haven’t gotten much better.

- And the mother who commits infanticide, the dark counterpart of Fantine.

..Some background on why I think that:

Canon-era infanticide always makes me think of Petrus Borel, whose Champavert argues that the prevalence of infanticide in the time period was a women’s rights issue. Because the social cost of being seen to have a child out of wedlock was so horrifically high, infanticide was a common method of escaping it. Borel lays a very large portion of the blame for infanticide at society’s feet.

We never learn the details of this trial--we don’t even know that the case against the woman was better than the one against Champmathieu--but I find it easy to imagine a shadow-world version of Fantine who, instead of dying to support her daughter, took the other road.

Of course, they both ended up crushed by the system regardless, because it turns out there wasn’t any way out, no matter what.

[fremedon]

Brickclub Retrobricking 1.7.7, “The Traveller on Arrival Makes Sure of Being Able to Leave” and 1.7.8, “Privileged Access”

The courthouse is being renovated and the courts have been temporarily moved to the prefecture—which, to make sure all the social authorities are represented, was the Bishop’s palace before the Revolution. The mention of a bishop—if one whose palace is being put to a worse use than Myriel’s—obviously reminds us of Valjean’s moral crossroad, but I am also reminded that Bishop Myriel’s father was a superior court judge in the ancien regime, who hoped to have his son inherit his position. From the very first page of the book, bishops and the legal system have been positioned in a kind of opposition—as, in fact, we’ll see again in the introduction of Bossuet, who is aligned with the bishop through his story function as well as his nickname, and whose first action in the story is to renounce his legal career.

The infanticide trial, just concluded as Valjean enters, is a dark mirror for Fantine--a reminder she could also have abandoned Cosette; and a reminder that, unlike Tholomyès, she probably would have faced consequences for it. (And, yeah, this aside really does read differently after reading *Champavert*.)

The lawyer Valjean asks for directions—because it is dark enough in the antechamber that he feels safe to approach—says of Champmathieu, “Now there’s someone who looks like a villain! Just for having a face like that, I’d clap him in chains!” And *that*, boys and girls, is why eyewitness identification is wildly inaccurate and super racist!

After the usher turns Valjean away from the courtroom because there are no seats left—the last of the long series of external obstacles—we are told “He walked with his head bowed, crossed the antechamber, and slowly descending the staircase as though hesitating at every step. He was probably debating with himself.” I love how the “as though” and, even more, the “probably” pull us back into the conceit that this is an account assembled from sources—the hedging, paradoxically, presents it as truer.

After this, the only barriers to Valjean’s entering the courtroom are internal, but they still fill another whole chapter—his hesitation, and then the last and most dramatic of the moments where that deliberate hesitation and automatic movement come into conflict, as he walks right back out of the judge’s chamber, down the hall, fleeing “as if he were being chased,” and finally retraces his steps “as if someone had caught up with him as he fled and was bringing him back.” Or as if, as he says to Marius at the end of the book, he has himself by the collar.

(I kind of want to see an adaptation now with a Valjean who’s a good enough physical comedian to play Valjean literally and physically struggling with himself without the comedy. . .aaand now I’m imagining Peter Sellers as Valjean and it’s not actually terrible but it sure is weird.

Though. If we’re talking about living actors who could still play the part, man I still want to see Ron Perlman play Valjean. He could play this scene exactly as it’s written and make it *riveting.*)

Other details:

—Madeleine has also funded or extended credit to industries in other towns in the area. I wonder what happens to those after he’s gone? —The judge’s chamber is described in one sentence as “the very place where the judges deliberate and reach a verdict” and in the next as “this quiet and forbidding room where so many lives had been destroyed.” —What’s the significance of the Pache letter on the courtroom wall, do we think? It’s an example of magistrates being dragged from a position of official power and into the grinder of the legal system. The mistaken date—mixing the Republican and Gregorian calendars—is a nice bit of historical color, but also strikes me as significant: it’s a relic of someone living at once in the past and the present (or even the past and the future, given republic = future = hope). It’s a reminder of the ways time slips in this book, and the power contained in that slippage. Valjean is about to kill one self and accept death for the other, and after that death is deferred he will be untouchable until the task he’s about to take on is complete.

[lmchaptertitlebracket]

I.vii.7 Le Voyageur Arrivé Prend Ses Précautions Pour Repartir

Which is your favorite translation of this chapter title?

The Traveller Arrives and Provides for His Return

The Traveller Takes Precautions For Returning

The Traveller On His Arrival Takes Precautions For Departure

The Traveller who has Arrived Takes Measures for His Return

The Traveller Arrives Only To Get Ready To Leave Again

The Traveller on Arrival Makes Sure of Being Able to Leave

Voting ended onNov 4, 2024

The Traveller Arrives and Provides for His Return: Wilbour, Denny, FMA

The Traveller Takes Precautions For Returning: Wraxall

The Traveller On His Arrival Takes Precautions For Departure: Hapgood

The Traveller who has Arrived Takes Measures for His Return: Walton

The Traveller Arrives Only To Get Ready To Leave Again: Rose

The Traveller on Arrival Makes Sure of Being Able to Leave: Donougher