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Les Misérables - Number 24,601 becomes Number 9,430

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 had been recaptured.

The reader will be grateful to us if we pass rapidly over
the sad details. We will confine ourselves to transcribing
two paragraphs published by the journals of that day, a few
months after the surprising events which had taken place at M. sur M.

These articles are rather summary. It must be remembered, that at
that epoch the Gazette des Tribunaux was not yet in existence.

We borrow the first from the Drapeau Blanc. It bears the date
of July 25, 1823.


An arrondissement of the Pas de Calais has just been the
theatre of an event quite out of the ordinary course. A man,
who was a stranger in the Department, and who bore the name of
M. Madeleine, had, thanks to the new methods, resuscitated some
years ago an ancient local industry, the manufacture of jet and of
black glass trinkets. He had made his fortune in the business,
and that of the arrondissement as well, we will admit. He had been
appointed mayor, in recognition of his services. The police discovered
that M. Madeleine was no other than an ex-convict who had broken
his ban, condemned in 1796 for theft, and named Jean Valjean.
Jean Valjean has been recommitted to prison. It appears that previous
to his arrest he had succeeded in withdrawing from the hands of
M. Laffitte, a sum of over half a million which he had lodged there,
and which he had, moreover, and by perfectly legitimate means,
acquired in his business. No one has been able to discover where Jean
Valjean has concealed this money since his return to prison at Toulon.


The second article, which enters a little more into detail,
is an extract from the Journal de Paris, of the same date.
A former convict, who had been liberated, named Jean Valjean,
has just appeared before the Court of Assizes of the Var,
under circumstances calculated to attract attention. This wretch
had succeeded in escaping the vigilance of the police, he had changed
his name, and had succeeded in getting himself appointed mayor
of one of our small northern towns; in this town he had established
a considerable commerce. He has at last been unmasked and arrested,
thanks to the indefatigable zeal of the public prosecutor.
He had for his concubine a woman of the town, who died of a shock
at the moment of his arrest. This scoundrel, who is endowed with
Herculean strength, found means to escape; but three or four days
after his flight the police laid their hands on him once more,
in Paris itself, at the very moment when he was entering one of
those little vehicles which run between the capital and the village
of Montfermeil (Seine-et-Oise). He is said to have profited
by this interval of three or four days of liberty, to withdraw a
considerable sum deposited by him with one of our leading bankers.
This sum has been estimated at six or seven hundred thousand francs.
If the indictment is to be trusted, he has hidden it in some place
known to himself alone, and it has not been possible to lay hands
on it. However that may be, the said Jean Valjean has just been
brought before the Assizes of the Department of the Var as accused
of highway robbery accompanied with violence, about eight years ago,
on the person of one of those honest children who, as the patriarch
of Ferney has said, in immortal verse,


". . . Arrive from Savoy every year,
And who, with gentle hands, do clear
Those long canals choked up with soot."


This bandit refused to defend himself. It was proved by the
skilful and eloquent representative of the public prosecutor,
that the theft was committed in complicity with others, and that
Jean Valjean was a member of a band of robbers in the south.
Jean Valjean was pronounced guilty and was condemned to the death
penalty in consequence. This criminal refused to lodge an appeal.
The king, in his inexhaustible clemency, has deigned to commute
his penalty to that of penal servitude for life. Jean Valjean was
immediately taken to the prison at Toulon.


The reader has not forgotten that Jean Valjean had religious
habits at M. sur M. Some papers, among others the Constitutional,
presented this commutation as a triumph of the priestly party.

Jean Valjean changed his number in the galleys. He was called 9,430.

However, and we will mention it at once in order that we may not be
obliged to recur to the subject, the prosperity of M. sur M. vanished
with M. Madeleine; all that he had foreseen during his night
of fever and hesitation was realized; lacking him, there actually
was a soul lacking. After this fall, there took place at M. sur
M. that egotistical division of great existences which have fallen,
that fatal dismemberment of flourishing things which is accomplished
every day, obscurely, in the human community, and which history has
noted only once, because it occurred after the death of Alexander.
Lieutenants are crowned kings; superintendents improvise manufacturers
out of themselves. Envious rivalries arose. M. Madeleine's vast
workshops were shut; his buildings fell to ruin, his workmen
were scattered. Some of them quitted the country, others abandoned
the trade. Thenceforth, everything was done on a small scale,
instead of on a grand scale; for lucre instead of the general good.
There was no longer a centre; everywhere there was competition
and animosity. M. Madeleine had reigned over all and directed all.
No sooner had he fallen, than each pulled things to himself;
the spirit of combat succeeded to the spirit of organization,
bitterness to cordiality, hatred of one another to the benevolence
of the founder towards all; the threads which M. Madeleine had set
were tangled and broken, the methods were adulterated, the products
were debased, confidence was killed; the market diminished,
for lack of orders; salaries were reduced, the workshops stood still,
bankruptcy arrived. And then there was nothing more for the poor.
All had vanished.

The state itself perceived that some one had been crushed somewhere.
Less than four years after the judgment of the Court of Assizes
establishing the identity of Jean Valjean and M. Madeleine,
for the benefit of the galleys, the cost of collecting taxes had
doubled in the arrondissement of M. sur M.; and M. de Villele called
attention to the fact in the rostrum, in the month of February, 1827.




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