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Les Misérables - M. Bamatabois's Inactivity

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







There is in all small towns, and there was at M. sur M. in particular,
a class of young men who nibble away an income of fifteen hundred
francs with the same air with which their prototypes devour
two hundred thousand francs a year in Paris. These are beings
of the great neuter species: impotent men, parasites, cyphers,
who have a little land, a little folly, a little wit; who would
be rustics in a drawing-room, and who think themselves gentlemen
in the dram-shop; who say, "My fields, my peasants, my woods";
who hiss actresses at the theatre to prove that they are persons
of taste; quarrel with the officers of the garrison to prove that
they are men of war; hunt, smoke, yawn, drink, smell of tobacco,
play billiards, stare at travellers as they descend from the diligence,
live at the cafe, dine at the inn, have a dog which eats the bones
under the table, and a mistress who eats the dishes on the table;
who stick at a sou, exaggerate the fashions, admire tragedy,
despise women, wear out their old boots, copy London through Paris,
and Paris through the medium of Pont-A-Mousson, grow old as dullards,
never work, serve no use, and do no great harm.

M. Felix Tholomyes, had he remained in his own province and never
beheld Paris, would have been one of these men.

If they were richer, one would say, "They are dandies;" if they
were poorer, one would say, "They are idlers." They are simply
men without employment. Among these unemployed there are bores,
the bored, dreamers, and some knaves.

At that period a dandy was composed of a tall collar, a big cravat,
a watch with trinkets, three vests of different colors, worn one
on top of the other--the red and blue inside; of a short-waisted
olive coat, with a codfish tail, a double row of silver buttons
set close to each other and running up to the shoulder; and a pair
of trousers of a lighter shade of olive, ornamented on the two
seams with an indefinite, but always uneven, number of lines,
varying from one to eleven--a limit which was never exceeded.
Add to this, high shoes with little irons on the heels, a tall
hat with a narrow brim, hair worn in a tuft, an enormous cane,
and conversation set off by puns of Potier. Over all, spurs and
a mustache. At that epoch mustaches indicated the bourgeois,
and spurs the pedestrian.

The provincial dandy wore the longest of spurs and the fiercest
of mustaches.

It was the period of the conflict of the republics of South
America with the King of Spain, of Bolivar against Morillo.
Narrow-brimmed hats were royalist, and were called morillos;
liberals wore hats with wide brims, which were called bolivars.

Eight or ten months, then, after that which is related in the
preceding pages, towards the first of January, 1823, on a snowy evening,
one of these dandies, one of these unemployed, a "right thinker,"
for he wore a morillo, and was, moreover, warmly enveloped in one
of those large cloaks which completed the fashionable costume
in cold weather, was amusing himself by tormenting a creature
who was prowling about in a ball-dress, with neck uncovered and
flowers in her hair, in front of the officers' cafe. This dandy
was smoking, for he was decidedly fashionable.

Each time that the woman passed in front of him, he bestowed on her,
together with a puff from his cigar, some apostrophe which he
considered witty and mirthful, such as, "How ugly you are!--
Will you get out of my sight?--You have no teeth!" etc., etc.
This gentleman was known as M. Bamatabois. The woman, a melancholy,
decorated spectre which went and came through the snow,
made him no reply, did not even glance at him, and nevertheless
continued her promenade in silence, and with a sombre regularity,
which brought her every five minutes within reach of this sarcasm,
like the condemned soldier who returns under the rods. The small
effect which he produced no doubt piqued the lounger; and taking
advantage of a moment when her back was turned, he crept up behind
her with the gait of a wolf, and stifling his laugh, bent down,
picked up a handful of snow from the pavement, and thrust it abruptly
into her back, between her bare shoulders. The woman uttered a roar,
whirled round, gave a leap like a panther, and hurled herself upon
the man, burying her nails in his face, with the most frightful words
which could fall from the guard-room into the gutter. These insults,
poured forth in a voice roughened by brandy, did, indeed, proceed in
hideous wise from a mouth which lacked its two front teeth.
It was Fantine.

At the noise thus produced, the officers ran out in throngs from
the cafe, passers-by collected, and a large and merry circle,
hooting and applauding, was formed around this whirlwind composed
of two beings, whom there was some difficulty in recognizing
as a man and a woman: the man struggling, his hat on the ground;
the woman striking out with feet and fists, bareheaded, howling,
minus hair and teeth, livid with wrath, horrible.

Suddenly a man of lofty stature emerged vivaciously from the crowd,
seized the woman by her satin bodice, which was covered with mud,
and said to her, "Follow me!"

The woman raised her head; her furious voice suddenly died away.
Her eyes were glassy; she turned pale instead of livid, and she
trembled with a quiver of terror. She had recognized Javert.

The dandy took advantage of the incident to make his escape.




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