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Les Misérables - The Beginning of an Enigma

1. M. Myriel

2. M. Myriel becomes M. Welcome

3. A Hard Bishopric for a Good Bishop

4. Works corresponding to Words

5. Monseigneur Bienvenu made his Cassocks last too long

6. Who guarded his House for him

7. Cravatte

8. Philosophy after Drinking

9. The Brother as depicted by the Sister

10. The Bishop in the Presence of an Unknown Light

11. A Restriction

12. The Solitude of Monseigneur Welcome

13. What he believed

14. What he thought

15. The Evening of a Day of Walking

16. Prudence counselled to Wisdom

17. The Heroism of Passive Obedience

18. Details concerning the Cheese-Dairies of Pontarlier

19. Tranquillity

20. Jean Valjean

21. The Interior of Despair

22. Billows and Shadows

23. New Troubles

24. The Man aroused

25. What he does

26. The Bishop works

27. Little Gervais

28. The Year 1817

29. A Double Quartette

30. Four and Four

31. Tholomyes is so Merry that he sings a Spanish Ditty

32. At Bombardas

33. A Chapter in which they adore Each Other

34. The Wisdom of Tholomyes

35. The Death of a Horse

36. A Merry End to Mirth

37. One Mother meets Another Mother

38. First Sketch of Two Unprepossessing Figures

39. The Lark

40. The History of a Progress in Black Glass Trinkets

41. Madeleine

42. Sums deposited with Laffitte

43. M. Madeleine in Mourning

44. Vague Flashes on the Horizon

45. Father Fauchelevent

46. Fauchelevent becomes a Gardener in Paris

47. Madame Victurnien expends Thirty Francs on Morality

48. Madame Victurnien's Success

49. Result of the Success

50. Christus nos Liberavit

51. M. Bamatabois's Inactivity

52. The Solution of Some Questions connected with the Municipal Police

53. The Beginning of Repose

54. How Jean may become Champ

55. Sister Simplice

56. The Perspicacity of Master Scaufflaire

57. A Tempest in a Skull

58. Forms assumed by Suffering during Sleep

59. Hindrances

60. Sister Simplice put to the Proof

61. The Traveller on his Arrival takes Precautions for Departure

62. An Entrance by Favor

63. A Place where Convictions are in Process of Formation

64. The System of Denials

65. Champmathieu more and more Astonished

66. In what Mirror M. Madeleine contemplates his Hair

67. Fantine Happy

68. Javert Satisfied

69. Authority reasserts its Rights

70. A Suitable Tomb

71. What is met with on the Way from Nivelles

72. Hougomont

73. The Eighteenth of June, 1815

74. A

75. The Quid Obscurum of Battles

76. Four o'clock in the Afternoon

77. Napoleon in a Good Humor

78. The Emperor puts a Question to the Guide Lacoste

79. The Unexpected

80. The Plateau of Mont-Saint-Jean

81. A Bad Guide to Napoleon; a Good Guide to Bulow

82. The Guard

83. The Catastrophe

84. The Last Square

85. Cambronne

86. Quot Libras in Duce?

87. Is Waterloo to be considered Good?

88. A Recrudescence of Divine Right

89. The Battle-Field at Night

90. Number 24,601 becomes Number 9,430

91. In which the reader will peruse Two Verses which are of the Devil's Composition possibly

92. The Ankle-Chain must have undergone a Certain Preparatory Manipulation to be thus broken with a Blow from a Hammer

93. The Water Question at Montfermeil

94. Two Complete Portraits

95. Men must have Wine, and Horses must have Water

96. Entrance on the Scene of a Doll

97. The Little One All Alone

98. Which possibly proves Boulatruelle's Intelligence

99. Cosette Side by Side with the Stranger in the Dark

100. The Unpleasantness of receiving into One's House a Poor Man who may be a Rich Man

101. Thenardier at his Manoeuvres

102. He who seeks to better himself may render his Situation Worse

103. Number 9,430 reappears, and Cosette wins it in the Lottery

104. Master Gorbeau

105. A Nest for Owl and a Warbler

106. Two Misfortunes Make One Piece of Good Fortune

107. The Remarks of the Principal Tenant

108. A Five-Franc Piece Falls on the Ground and Produces a Tumult

109. The Zigzags of Strategy

110. It Is Lucky That the Pont D'Austerlitz Bears Carriages

111. To Wit, the Plan of Paris in 1727

112. The Gropings of Flight

113. Which Would be Impossible With Gas Lanterns

114. The Beginning of an Enigma

115. Continuation of the Enigma

116. The Enigma Becomes Doubly Mysterious

117. The Man with the Bell

118. Which Explains How Javert Got on the Scent

119. Number 62 Rue Petit-Picpus

120. The Obedience of Martin Verga

121. Austerities

122. Gayeties

123. Distractions

124. The Little Convent

125. Some Silhouettes of this Darkness

126. Post Corda Lapides

127. A Century under a Guimpe

128. Origin of the Perpetual Adoration

129. End of the Petit-Picpus

130. The Convent as an Abstract Idea

131. The Convent as an Historical Fact

132. On What Conditions One can respect the Past

133. The Convent from the Point of View of Principles

134. Prayer

135. The Absolute Goodness of Prayer

136. Precautions to be observed in Blame

137. Faith, Law

138. Which treats of the Manner of entering a Convent

139. Fauchelevent in the Presence of a Difficulty

140. Mother Innocente

141. In which Jean Valjean has quite the Air of having read Austin Castillejo

142. It is not Necessary to be Drunk in order to be Immortal

143. Between Four Planks

144. In which will be found the Origin of the Saying: Don't lose the Card

145. A Successful Interrogatory

146. Cloistered







Jean Valjean found himself in a sort of garden which was very vast
and of singular aspect; one of those melancholy gardens which seem made
to be looked at in winter and at night. This garden was oblong in shape,
with an alley of large poplars at the further end, tolerably tall
forest trees in the corners, and an unshaded space in the centre,
where could be seen a very large, solitary tree, then several fruit-trees,
gnarled and bristling like bushes, beds of vegetables, a melon patch,
whose glass frames sparkled in the moonlight, and an old well.
Here and there stood stone benches which seemed black with moss.
The alleys were bordered with gloomy and very erect little shrubs.
The grass had half taken possession of them, and a green mould
covered the rest.

Jean Valjean had beside him the building whose roof had served him
as a means of descent, a pile of fagots, and, behind the fagots,
directly against the wall, a stone statue, whose mutilated face was
no longer anything more than a shapeless mask which loomed vaguely
through the gloom.

The building was a sort of ruin, where dismantled chambers were
distinguishable, one of which, much encumbered, seemed to serve as a shed.

The large building of the Rue Droit-Mur, which had a wing on the Rue
Petit-Picpus, turned two facades, at right angles, towards this garden.
These interior facades were even more tragic than the exterior.
All the windows were grated. Not a gleam of light was visible
at any one of them. The upper story had scuttles like prisons.
One of those facades cast its shadow on the other, which fell over the
garden like an immense black pall.

No other house was visible. The bottom of the garden was lost in mist
and darkness. Nevertheless, walls could be confusedly made out,
which intersected as though there were more cultivated land beyond,
and the low roofs of the Rue Polonceau.

Nothing more wild and solitary than this garden could be imagined.
There was no one in it, which was quite natural in view of the hour;
but it did not seem as though this spot were made for any one to walk in,
even in broad daylight.

Jean Valjean's first care had been to get hold of his shoes
and put them on again, then to step under the shed with Cosette.
A man who is fleeing never thinks himself sufficiently hidden.
The child, whose thoughts were still on the Thenardier, shared his
instinct for withdrawing from sight as much as possible.

Cosette trembled and pressed close to him. They heard the tumultuous
noise of the patrol searching the blind alley and the streets;
the blows of their gun-stocks against the stones; Javert's appeals
to the police spies whom he had posted, and his imprecations mingled
with words which could not be distinguished.

At the expiration of a quarter of an hour it seemed as though that
species of stormy roar were becoming more distant. Jean Valjean
held his breath.

He had laid his hand lightly on Cosette's mouth.

However, the solitude in which he stood was so strangely calm,
that this frightful uproar, close and furious as it was,
did not disturb him by so much as the shadow of a misgiving.
It seemed as though those walls had been built of the deaf stones
of which the Scriptures speak.

All at once, in the midst of this profound calm, a fresh sound arose;
a sound as celestial, divine, ineffable, ravishing, as the other had
been horrible. It was a hymn which issued from the gloom, a dazzling
burst of prayer and harmony in the obscure and alarming silence of
the night; women's voices, but voices composed at one and the same time
of the pure accents of virgins and the innocent accents of children,--
voices which are not of the earth, and which resemble those that the
newborn infant still hears, and which the dying man hears already.
This song proceeded from the gloomy edifice which towered above
the garden. At the moment when the hubbub of demons retreated, one
would have said that a choir of angels was approaching through the gloom.

Cosette and Jean Valjean fell on their knees.

They knew not what it was, they knew not where they were; but both
of them, the man and the child, the penitent and the innocent,
felt that they must kneel.

These voices had this strange characteristic, that they
did not prevent the building from seeming to be deserted.
It was a supernatural chant in an uninhabited house.

While these voices were singing, Jean Valjean thought of nothing.
He no longer beheld the night; he beheld a blue sky. It seemed to him
that he felt those wings which we all have within us, unfolding.

The song died away. It may have lasted a long time. Jean Valjean
could not have told. Hours of ecstasy are never more than a moment.

All fell silent again. There was no longer anything in the street;
there was nothing in the garden. That which had menaced,
that which had reassured him,--all had vanished. The breeze
swayed a few dry weeds on the crest of the wall, and they gave
out a faint, sweet, melancholy sound.




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