Back to my savior, "The Lowest Depths". It's nice being able to enjoy some pros about the sewers of society after having to endure everything with Marius and Tholomyès. I don't know how long it will last but I'm determined to enjoy it while I can.
They are brutally voracious, that is to say, ravenous, not tyrant-like but tiger-like.
This is a really neat comparison. Tyrants are in positions of power, or else there's nothing for them to be a tyrant over. They are noticeable, and they are often times aware of the law, but above the law because of the power they wield. Tigers, well, there is no law to a tiger. You can try to catch a tiger that's roaming a city and lock it up because it's a danger to others, but the tiger has no sense of right and wrong. No morals. A tiger is a tiger and it will attack and eat whenever it feels like it. And you certainly won't know there's a tiger stalking you down until it's already upon you. No overt, controlling power being exercised, just a silent threat that could come at you at any given moment if you're in the wrong place at the wrong time.
We have just seen, in Book Four, one of the chambers of the upper mine, of the great political, revolutionary and philosophical tunnel. There, as we have just said, everything is noble, honourable, admirable, honest. There, certainly, mistakes might be made, mistakes are made, but so much heroism is involved, any erring is to be respected. All the work done there has a name: Progress.
The moment has come to take a glimpse at other depths, hideous depths.
Ooh are we about to get the antithesis to the Amis?
I wonder for what reason we have departed from Marius and are going to investigate the criminal underworld. It is probably going to be a surprise tool that will help us later so to speak, but I wonder for what. I feel like it would be odd for us not to return to Marius and his love story after we're done here, even though I would love to hope otherwise, so I'm assuming this relates back to that in some way. Unless we go to the Amis after this, and then circle back to Marius after that? Since those in this third level, so to speak, have been pretty much directly compared to the Amis as being their opposites, this could be setting the stage for some sort of conflict between the two groups. Alternatively, since Marius had his dealings with the Amis, perhaps he'll next have his dealings with the antithesis group. He sort of rejected the Amis... I can't really foresee him accepting the offerings of terrible criminals, but also... He's dumb sometimes. He might get tricked by them or something. Or maybe Lanoire gets accosted by bad guys, and the idiot stops lurking around and does something and that's how they actually properly come to interact.
There's a variety of ways this could go. Could very well be a secret nth option I'm not even aware of.
Even the chapter titles suck. Last one was "In Despair", and now we've got "The Deep and the Dark".
Man overboard! So what? The ship does not stop. . . . The man disappears, then reappears, he sinks and rises to the surface again, he calls for help, his arms reach out. No one hears. . . . the crew and the passengers do not even see the man in the water. His pathetic head is but a speck in the enormity of the waves.
Starting off strong... 🫠
He, this puny force, immediately exhausted, combats the inexhaustible. . . . He is a dying witness to the immense frenzy of the sea.
Okay I won't lie though, these lines are so good. Honestly, the prose in this entire chapter is really good.
Of men there are none. Where is God?
He shouts. Someone! Someone! He keeps on shouting. Nothing on the horizon. Nothing in the heavens.
He implores the expanse, the waves, the seaweed, the rocks. They are deaf. He beseeches the tempest. The insensate tempest obeys only the infinite.
I mean, dang. Bravo Hugo.
The sea is the inexorable social darkness into which the penal system casts its damned. The sea is immense wretchedness.
The soul cut adrift in these fathomless deeps may become a corpse. Who will resuscitate it?
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.
Here's to hoping this one is less painful. Chapter title is "Mines and Miners", which I would like to think does not somehow get applied to Marius. We will see.
Beneath the structure of society, that complicated marvel of a ramshackle edifice, are all sorts of excavations. There is the religious mine, the philosophical mine, the economic mine, the revolutionary mine. One person digs with an idea, another with numbers, another with anger. People call out and answer each other from one catacomb to another. Utopias make their way underground through these conduits. They branch out in all directions. They sometimes run into each other and make common cause.
Fun analogy going on here. All those on the surface, living their lives, easily capable of being unaware or at least ignoring, if they want, what's going on "beneath them".
The deeper down, the more mysterious the workers. Down to a level the social philosopher can identify, the work is good. Beyond that level it is dubious and variable. Lower still, it becomes terrible. At a certain depth the excavations become impenetrable to the spirit of civilization, the bounds of man’s breathable environment have been exceeded. This may be the beginning of monsters.
Oh, VERY much like how this bit is written. The straightforwardness of that last sentence is kind of chilling. Thinking about how the deeper you go in the ocean, the more alien things start to look....
There is a point where delving deeper means entombment, and light is quenched.
Beneath all these mines we have just described, beneath all these galleries, beneath this whole vast vein-like subterranean network of progress and Utopia, much further down in the earth, deeper than Marat, deeper than Babeuf, deeper, much deeper, and without any connection with the upper levels, is the last tunnel. A terrible place. This is what we have called the third level down. It is the pit of darkness. It is the cavern of the blind. Inferi.
It connects directly with the abyss.
YEAHHHH OH WE'RE BACK BABY!!!! Back to sentences that actually draw me in instead of making me want to shut my eyes!!!! Sentences I want to devour instead of spit out!!!!
Guzzling down this chapter like the most refreshing lemonade on the hottest of days. Not a single "Ugh" was felt, not a single sigh breathed.
To know that her name was Ursule was already a great deal. But it was not very much. In three or four weeks Marius had consumed this blessing. He wanted another. He wanted to know where she lived.
Oh no
He followed ‘Ursule’.
From that moment on, Marius added to his happiness of seeing her at the Luxembourg the happiness of following her home. His hunger increased. He knew her name, her first name at least, a lovely name, a truly feminine name. He knew where she lived. He wanted to know who she was.
One evening after he had followed them home and seen them disappear through the carriage gateway he went in after them and said pluckily to the porter, ‘Was that the gentleman on the first floor that just came in?’
‘No,’ replied the porter. ‘That was the gentleman on the third floor.’
Another advance made. This success emboldened Marius.
‘At the front?’ he asked.
‘Good lord!’ said the porter. ‘The house doesn’t go back any further, it all faces the street.’
‘And what does the gentleman do for a living?’ Marius went on.
‘He’s a man of independent means, monsieur. A very kind man, and though not rich he’s good to the poor.’
‘What’s his name?’ resumed Marius.
The porter looked up and said, ‘Is monsieur a police spy?’
Thank you for quitting while you were behind, porter. I suppose back then there was not the same understanding of caution when a stranger comes around asking questions about a specific person, but at least he caught on eventually that this was Weird.
On arriving at the carriage entrance Monsieur Leblanc let his daughter go on ahead of him, then before stepping through himself he stopped, turned, and stared intently at Marius.
GET HIM. SCARE HIM OFF. PLEASE. I AM CONCERNED ABOUT THE SAFETY OF YOUR DAUGHTER. AND YOU FOR THAT MATTER.
The next day they did not come to the Luxembourg. Marius waited in vain all day long. At nightfall he went to Rue de l’Ouest and saw light shining from the third-floor windows. He walked about below those windows until the light went out.
The next day, no one at the gardens. Marius waited all day, then went to do his evening stint beneath the windows.
He's literally not learning. He's literally not connecting any dots. The dots didn't even enter his brain.
On the eighth day, when he arrived beneath the windows there was no light in them.
I hope they moved. Heck, I hope they moved out of the country.
Marius knocked at the carriage entrance, went in, and said to the porter, ‘The gentleman on the third floor?’
‘Moved out,’ replied the porter.
Marius reeled and said weakly, ‘How long ago?’
‘Yesterday.’
‘Where’s he living now?’
‘I’ve no idea.’
‘So he didn’t leave his new address?’
‘No.’
And looking up, the porter recognized Marius. ‘Well, well!’ he said. ‘It’s you again! So you really are a police sleuth then?’
He might be worse than a police sleuth actually.
I feel obliged to leave a copy of some messages I sent on Discord two days ago regarding Marius' behavior, because they seem quite apt now:
He already knows their garden schedule typically, but of course it is only downhill from here. So you know. Eventually he'll probably start following them around when they go, not even knowing where his feet take him, standing behind light poles that he's extremely visible from when they glance back. He'll spawn in right outside their house and start kissing the door.
Hiding behind things to stare at people are how restraining orders begin, you know
Except those probably don't exist yet
The obsession over a handkerchief is another point against him. I am worried for her
If he's capable of thinking the birds are laughing at him, that she's going "you're taking too long! I will come to you!" and being all modest about him making out with "her" handkerchief in front of her, well. I'm sure he's capable of him interpreting her blinking when dust flies into her eyes as a sign that she's seducing him, to which he will steal her away. He is delusional. We are five fragile steps away from that delusion being legitimately harmful*. He is SUCH an extreme guy that I genuinely would not put it past him to advance in creepy behavior, and for it to be painted as romantic. Heck, you know how much media today still injects the idea of a domineering, forceful guy as being the ideal hottie? Yeah, let's trap a girl against a wall and threaten her to behave. Let's make her feel scared. That's exactly how a relationship should be. And this is MODERN times, when people should know better (but you know, how good and useful and wonderful it is to brainwash ladies into thinking toxic behavior is a green flag, but that's another matter entirely)
Point is, in an era like this, I don't doubt there's a high chance of him being More Horrible and that being painted as Charming and Good. What he's doing right now would already be raising a million alarm bells for a lady who values her safety and knows what to watch for. This is surely just the start. Idk this girl, really, but I wanna tell her and her dad to get the heck out of France before things get worse.
*"Legitimately harmful" as in it permanently affecting her life by putting her in danger or "ruining" her as a woman as was a whole big deal back in ye old day (and I assume was similar in France). This kind of behavior, at least today, could already be legitimately harmful just by making a girl feel scared and uncomfortable. Could make her scared to leave the house for goodness sake. Granted, this is a different era, but even so. Don't want someone thinking I don't consider this harmful, at the very least, in today's time.
Though honestly even if it was normal to this time, which I have since confirmed it is Not, I don't like it all the same. It's still harmful just in the fact that it is a thing, even if people were made to believe it was usual behavior (being made to believe it's okay or whatever is its own problem). Yes yes it's painted as comedic bumbling stupidity but like. Ugh. Ughhhhhhhh.
Can't believe people were defending his behavior, even more so now that I know they knew THIS escalated creepy behavior was in the the near future
Like okay, defend the way Hugo is trying to portray it, sure, explain Hugo's intent and whatnot, okay, that's one thing
But surely we can all still acknowledge that Marius' methods are Not Okay. We can explain and reason but still say But It's Wrong. You can like a character and admit they do Wrong Things sometimes, regardless of the character's or author's reasons or intent
Les Miserables / Arai manga readalong - Volume 3 : Marius - Chapter 3 : Marius, while seeking a girl in a bonnet, encounters a man in a cap
We finally get to the part where Marius and Cosette fall in love ! The manga spends some time on Marius's obsession before Cosette disappears, so it immediately becomes obvious that he doesn't pay attention to anything else. However, I'm still wondering about the choice of this title for the chapter, because Arai doesn't actually give us the scene of Marius meeting Valjean with a cap... so if you don't know the Brick it's hard to understand what this means.
Also for convenience reasons I will be using Cosette and Valjean's real names, but let's not forget that Marius does not know them at this point
(also you get peak Courfeyrac in this chapter. just saying)
Part 1
@lesmisletters
This chapter begins with Marius alone in the Luxembourg garden, as he watches a man and a girl : at first we only see them from the back, but then it's easy to recognize... you guessed it, Valjean and Cosette (and !! Cosette is actually a brunette now !!) This is the scene where Cosette's skirt goes up because of the wind, which allows Arai to highlight both Marius's attention, since his gaze is focused on Cosette and he doesn't miss her movement, and his jealousy when he thinks the old man noticed it too.
The manga then cuts to an original scene, which doesn't appear in the Brick but is a good occasion for Marius to elaborate on his own feelings and attitude : he is in a restaurant with Grantaire, Courfeyrac and Jean Prouvaire... and they are all making fun of him, especially when Marius shows them the handkerchief.
Courfeyrac explains the nicknames "Leblanc" and "Lanoire", before immediately going to sniff Grantaire's coat in an attempt to mock Marius and his handkerchief. Grantaire mostly finds the old man strange and is busy trying to brush off Courfeyrac, while Prouvaire is the only one who attempts to comfort Marius at all : he even tells Courfeyrac to leave poor Marius alone, which. doesn't work.
Even though Arai doesn't include the scene of Marius going out in his new suit, but this makes up for it since Courfeyrac still gets to make fun of him
The next few pages are entirely silent, as Marius and Cosette only communicate through their eyes : their relationship develops without a word being spoken, and it also creates the impression of an intimate atmosphere, focused on feelings more than on action. Marius's longing goes on for a while, as he keeps sniffing the handkerchief, pretending to read and walking past Cosette's bench in the garden... and Cosette's eyes gradually begin to follow him.
This tension builds up when Cosette and Valjean get ready to walk toward Marius's bench : the manga alternates frames of Cosette, who has stars in her eyes, and of Marius who looks terrified. Marius's heart keep beating louder and louder as he lowers his head, but once they have passed him, he decides to follow them.
However !! when they get home we can see Valjean watching Marius suspiciously from the window... and the next day Marius is alone at the Luxembourg, staring at the bench as if he could make Cosette appear.
The next time spoken words are used, it's to definitely break the spell of this whole "falling in love moment" : Marius goes to asks the landlady of Valjean's building a question... but the scene cuts before he actually asks, which means this scene is less funny than in the Brick since we don't get the "are you a spy ?" conversation. I think Arai mostly tried to focus on Marius's sadness and loneliness here, so the comic effect wouldn't really have fit into the scene.
The scene cuts to what looks like some kind of party, where Grantaire, Courfayrac, Bossuet and Jean Prouvaire took Marius to look for Cosette. If we follow the timeline of the Brick, this place could be the Bal de Sceaux, where (according to Grantaire) you usually find all lost women. However, Cosette obviously isn't here, and Courfeyrac tries to comfort Marius by saying there are plenty of other women... at which point Prouvaire has to physically silence him because, again, this isn't what Marius wants to hear.
(what I'm trying to say is. les amis de l'abc dynamic is top tier in this chapter)
"Even War Veterans Can Be Happy" - a very curious chapter title.
...we should say that on one occasion, however, in the midst of his raptures, ‘his Ursule’ gave him very serious grounds for complaint.
Oh did she now
I literally never want to see the words "delicious shiver" side-by-side in a book again
All of a sudden a gust of wind . . . lifted her dress, a dress more sacred than that of Isis, almost to the height of her garter. An exquisitely shaped leg appeared. Marius saw it. He was incensed, infuriated. With a sublimely startled gesture the young girl swiftly batted down her dress, but he was nonetheless upset. True, he was alone on the path. But there might have been someone there. And what if there had been! Imagine such a thing! It was horrifying what she had just done!
IF YOU'RE GOING TO BE MAD THAT THE WIND BLEW UP HER DRESS AND YOU SAW HER LEG YOU SHOULD BE MAD AT THE WIND NOT HER?????
Alas, the poor child had done nothing. There was only one culprit, the wind. But the Bartolo that exists in Cherubino was quickening in some obscure part of him and, jealous of his own shadow, Marius was determined to be cross. . . . Marius darted a fierce and sullen look at her. The young girl stiffened, drawing herself back slightly, that movement accompanied by a raising of the eyebrows that signifies ‘Now, what’s the matter with him?’
A lot of things. Too many things. Possibly almost everything. Run for your life.
If these guys end up together and a man bumps against her or touches her hand without permission it seems Marius is likely to blame the girl for it. Yikes. Not the kind of person who should be in a relationship.
Marius’s jealousy reached its peak. ‘Perhaps he was there!’ he said to himself. ‘Perhaps he saw!’ And he felt like killing the veteran.
Ooooor he'll also want to kill the man involved for it. Blame the girl, get jealous of the man want to kill him... Yeah that's. That is the behavior of a well-adjusted person who should be in a relationship. 🙂
However fair and justifiable, Marius’s anger against ‘Ursule’ passed. He eventually forgave her, but it took a great effort. He sulked for three days.
Fair and justifiable ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhh my goodness gracious grief almighty. I've said it before, I'll say it again: This guy is delusional.
