(VOLUME II: COSETTE; BOOK I: WATERLOO) Several squares of the Guard, motionless amid this stream of the defeat, as rocks in running water, held their own until night. Night came, death also; they awaited that double shadow, and, invincible, allowed themselves to be enveloped therein. Each regiment, isolated from the rest, and having no bond with...Learn More

(VOL. I: FANTINE; BOOK III: IN THE YEAR 1817) 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-Elysees by that famous restaurant-keeper, Bombarda, whose sign...Learn More

(VOLUME I: FANTINE; BOOK II: THE FALL) Towards the middle of the night Jean Valjean woke. Jean Valjean came from a poor peasant family of Brie. He had not learned to read in his childhood. When he reached man's estate, he became a tree-pruner at Faverolles. His mother was named Jeanne Mathieu; his father was called Jean Valjean or Vlajean,...Learn More

(VOLUME I: FANTINE; BOOK I: A JUST MAN) In order to furnish an idea of the private establishment of the Bishop of D——, and of the manner in which those two sainted women subordinated their actions, their thoughts, their feminine instincts even, which are easily alarmed, to the habits and purposes of the Bishop, without his even taking the trouble...Learn More

(VOLUME I: FANTINE; BOOK II: THE FALL) Jean Valjean left the town as though he were fleeing from it. He set out at a very hasty pace through the fields, taking whatever roads and paths presented themselves to him, without perceiving that he was incessantly retracing his steps. He wandered thus the whole morning, without having eaten anything and...Learn More

(VOLUME I: FANTINE; BOOK I: A JUST MAN) In 1815, M. Charles-Francois-Bienvenu Myriel was Bishop of D—— He was an old man of about seventy-five years of age; he had occupied the see of D—— since 1806. Although this detail has no connection whatever with the real substance of what we are about to relate, it will not be superfluous, if merely for...Learn More

(VOL. I: FANTINE; BOOK VII: THE CHAMPMATHIEU AFFAIR) Although he did not suspect the fact, the mayor of M. sur M. enjoyed a sort of celebrity. For the space of seven years his reputation for virtue had filled the whole of Bas Boulonnais; it had eventually passed the confines of a small district and had been spread abroad through two or three...Learn More

(VOLUME II: COSETTE; BOOK I: WATERLOO) End of the dictatorship. A whole European system crumbled away. The Empire sank into a gloom which resembled that of the Roman world as it expired. Again we behold the abyss, as in the days of the barbarians; only the barbarism of 1815, which must be called by its pet name of the counter-revolution, was not...Learn More

(VOLUME II: COSETTE; BOOK I: WATERLOO) Every one knows the rest,—the irruption of a third army; the battle broken to pieces; eighty-six mouths of fire thundering simultaneously; Pirch the first coming up with Bulow; Zieten's cavalry led by Blucher in person, the French driven back; Marcognet swept from the plateau of Ohain; Durutte dislodged from...Learn More

(VOLUME II: COSETTE; BOOK I: WATERLOO) Let us return—it is a necessity in this book—to that fatal battle-field. On the 18th of June the moon was full. Its light favored Blucher's ferocious pursuit, betrayed the traces of the fugitives, delivered up that disastrous mass to the eager Prussian cavalry, and aided the massacre. Such tragic favors of...Learn More

(VOLUME I: FANTINE; BOOK II: THE FALL) Jean Valjean listened. Not a sound. He gave the door a push. He pushed it gently with the tip of his finger, lightly, with the furtive and uneasy gentleness of a cat which is desirous of entering. The door yielded to this pressure, and made an imperceptible and silent movement, which enlarged the opening a...Learn More

(VOLUME II: COSETTE; BOOK I: WATERLOO) There were three thousand five hundred of them. They formed a front a quarter of a league in extent. They were giant men, on colossal horses. There were six and twenty squadrons of them; and they had behind them to support them Lefebvre-Desnouettes's division,—the one hundred and six picked gendarmes, the...Learn More