You Have Strength of a Different Kind

This house was a two-storey villa, with two rooms on the ground floor, two bedrooms on the first floor, a kitchen downstairs, a dressing room upstairs, an attic under the roof, and in front of it all a garden with a big iron gate giving on to the street. This garden measured about an acre. This was all that could be seen by passers-by. But behind the villa was a narrow courtyard and at the far end of the courtyard a low two-roomed building with a cellar, a kind of contingency measure for keeping a child and a wet-nurse out of sight, if need be. This building connected from the rear, via a concealed door operated by a secret opening mechanism, with a long, narrow, winding passage. Paved, open to the sky, bounded by two high walls and hidden with extraordinary cunning, as if lost between the perimeter fencing of allotments and market-gardens whose every twist and turn it followed, this passage eventually led to another door, also with a secret lock, that opened some five hundred yards away almost in another neighbourhood, at the lonely end of Rue de Babylone.

Dang

That’s even more secret of an entrance than I’d anticipated

In the month of October 1829 an elderly man had turned up and rented the house, just as it was, including of course the building in the back yard and the passage that led to Rue de Babylone. He had the secret opening mechanisms of the two doors to this passage mended. The house, as we have just mentioned, was still more or less furnished with the judge’s old furniture. The new tenant ordered some repairs, added whatever was lacking here and there . . . and finally moved in with a young girl and an elderly maidservant, without any fuss, more like someone stealing in than a man entering his own home. This did not set the neighbours chattering, by reason of there being no neighbours.

Nice

This rather retiring tenant was Jean Valjean, the young girl was Cosette.

+100 TO VAL THEORY I KNEW IT I KNEW IT HA HA HA !!!!!!

He had rented the house under the name of Monsieur Fauchelevent

Wait that name is familiar hold on

YEAHH that’s the guy who fell under the cart that Val rescued

In the episode related earlier, the reader was probably even less slow than Thénardier to recognize Jean Valjean.

B) heck yeah, I had my suspicions juuust a bit prior

Why had Jean Valjean left the Petit-Picpus convent?

Oh he was in a convent? Honestly that tracks, that feels like the kind of place he’d like to be

Remember, Jean Valjean was happy in the convent, so happy that his conscience eventually became troubled.

Oh my stars this guy 🙄 He and Marius both need misery to feel good about themselves huh. 

He saw Cosette every day. He felt more and more a sense of paternity begin to grow and develop in him. He cherished that child. He told himself that she was his, that nothing could take her away from him, that it would be like this indefinitely.

🥺

🥺🥺

🥺🥺🥺

Wow I cannot wait to see how the heck he actually gets to her because he’s?? In Javert’s clutches right now?? (Right now in backread chapters, that is)

She would surely become a nun, being gently encouraged to do so every day; and, that being the case, the convent was now her universe, as it was his. He would grow old here and she would grow up here. She would grow old here and he would die here. In short – blissful expectation! – no separation was possible.

That uh. Yeah maybe ideal for him but like. (Gestures vaguely) For Cosette that seems kinda… (more gestures)

Reflecting on this resulted in his falling into a state of perplexity. He questioned himself. He wondered if all this happiness really belonged to him, if it was not made up of someone else’s happiness – this child’s happiness which he in his old age was confiscating and appropriating – and if this was not robbery. He told himself, this child had a right to experience life before renouncing it, that to deprive her in advance of all the joys of life, and to some extent without consulting her, under the pretext of sparing her from all its tribulations, to take advantage of her ignorance and her isolation in order to foster in her a spurious vocation, was to pervert the nature of a human being and to lie to God. 

I mean the God bit was not really in my mind but yeah robbing Cosette of life experience, that was more what I was trying to say.

And who knows if Cosette, understanding all this some day and wishing she had not become a nun, would not come to hate him? A last thought, this; almost selfish and less heroic than the others, but one that was intolerable to him. He decided to leave the convent.

Good idea, give Cosette a chance to experience the world and hopefully make some of her own decisions about her future

He had grown old, and everything had changed. Who would recognize him now? 

Probably Javert

And then, if the worst came to the worst, there was a danger only to himself, and he had no right to condemn Cosette to the cloister because he had been condemned to the prison hulks. 

I mean… she’s still an underage girl, right? If something did happen to him, then there kind of is some level of danger to her, because who will take care of her…?? (Cough "do what you want to me" he says to the Thénardiers, the idiot, cough)

Oh okay Fauchelevent died, that’s why he could assume the name

When he left he personally carried under his arm, and would entrust it to no one else, that little travelling-case to which he always had the key about him. This travelling-case intrigued Cosette because of the smell of preservative balms that wafted from it. Let us say straight away, from then on he never parted with this valise. He always kept it in his bedroom. It was the first and sometimes the only thing that he took with him whenever he moved house. Cosette would laugh about it and she called this travelling-case ‘the inseparable’, saying ‘I’m jealous of it.’

I think I’m probably meant to know what this is. You know what I think it is? I think it’s those candlesticks he couldn’t throw in the fire. His reminder of all that’s happened that he cannot let go of. 

Or at least, that’s what I’d like to think it is, but I’m not really sure if preservative balms would be used on something like that… is that something you apply to silver? I dunno.

He now called himself Ultime Fauchelevent.

That’s such a silly sounding first name to me. Probably normal and fine but. It’s making me think of the word “ultimate”.

At the same time he rented two other apartments in Paris so as to attract less attention than if he were to remain always in the same neighbourhood, to be able to make himself scarce if need be at the slightest misgiving and, in short, never again to find himself utterly defenceless as on the night when he had so miraculously eluded Javert.

Ooooooooo

But how did he get away from him in the first place…

Marius had put this five-franc coin in his pocket, and before taking it to the clerk’s office he had gone ‘for a little walk’, hoping this would help him settle down to work on his return. In fact, this was ever the way. As soon as he got up in the morning, he would sit down in front of a book and a sheet of paper to dash off some translation. . . . He would . . . read four lines, try to write one, not succeed, he would see a star that came asterisk-like between himself and the page, and he would rise from his chair, saying, ‘I’ll go out. That will get me started.’

Alright, I must amend my words from the previous chapter where I said Marius was not even trying. He is trying. Credit where credit is due. 

You can guess where he'd go.

And then, after the meadow...

He would come home, try to resume his work, and fail. Impossible to repair a single one of the broken threads in his brain. Then he would say to himself, ‘I shan’t go out tomorrow. It stops me working.’ And he would go out every day.

And at least he's somewhat self-aware of the issue

He lived more in Alouette’s Meadow than in Courfeyrac’s lodgings. His real address was Boulevard de la Santé, the seventh tree after Rue Croulebarbe.

I guess Éponine was kinda given his address after all ha ha

All of a sudden in the midst of his dejected ecstasy he heard a familiar voice saying, ‘Ah! Here he is!’ He looked up and recognized that poor child who had come to his room one morning, the elder of the Thénardier daughters, Éponine. He knew her name now. Strange to say, she looked poorer and prettier – developments that in both respects seemed impossible. She had made a twofold advance, towards the light and towards destitution. As on the day when she had so resolutely entered his room, she was barefoot and in rags; only, her rags were two months older now, the holes were larger, her tattered clothes filthier. It was the same husky voice, the same forehead, weatherbeaten and lined, the same free-ranging, distracted and unsettled gaze. There was in her face, more than there had been in the past, that indefinable fearfulness and pitifulness that time spent in prison adds to poverty. She had bits of straw and hay in her hair, not on account of being driven mad like Ophelia by the contagion of Hamlet’s madness, but because she had slept in some stable loft. And with all that, she was beautiful. What a morning star is youth!

Aside from the usual feeling bad for Éponine, I have no idea what to do with these paragraphs

He's depressed over a girl, why is he… like I know just because you like a person doesn't mean you won't notice physical changes and features about other people, but it feels so weird in this moment. I don't like Marius' obsession but actually for the first time ever perhaps I'd like him to stay in his current lane for a bit. 

I think he will, assuming Éponine is here for the reason I think she's here (found the address), but if she doesn't… and yet, at least we know Éponine has actually interacted with him and knows him a bit and still likes him despite all that 😞 if Cosette likes Marius at the moment, that could change once they get acquainted, if they ever actually get acquainted 

But also Éponine deserves better than this chump so I dunno

Probably not on the table anyway for the aforementioned "I think she's here with an address"

Meanwhile, she stood there before Marius with a hint of joy on her pallid face and something that resembled a smile. For several moments it was as if she were incapable of speech. ‘So I’ve found you!’ she said at last. ‘Père Mabeuf was right, it was on this boulevard! How I’ve looked for you! If you only knew! You know I’ve been inside? A fortnight! They let me go, seeing they had nothing on me, and besides I’m not old enough to be held criminally responsible. I’m two months shy of it. Oh! how I’ve looked for you! For the past six weeks! So you don’t live there any more?’ ‘No,’ said Marius.

Every time she does this little ramble thing I feel another piece of my heart get chipped away

‘Oh! I understand. Because of what happened. They’re nasty, those snatches. You moved out. Now why wear an old hat like that! A young man like you ought to have fine clothes. You know, Monsieur Marius, Père Mabeuf calls you Baron Marius something or other. You’re not a baron, are you? Barons are old folk, they go to the Luxembourg and sit in front of the château to get the most sun, and they read the Quotidienne that costs a sou. I once took a letter to a baron who was like that. He was more than a hundred years old. Tell me, where do you live now?’ Marius did not reply. ‘Ah,’ she went on, ‘you’ve got a hole in your shirt! I must mend it for you.’

She resumed with an expression that gradually clouded over, ‘You don’t look happy to see me.’

Marius said nothing. She too remained silent for a moment, then exclaimed, ‘But I could make you look happy if I wanted to!’ ‘What?’ said Marius. ‘What do you mean by that?’ ‘Ah! you used not to be so formal,’ she said. ‘Very well, what do you mean?’ he said.

Footnote says he starts out with the formal version of “you” (aka vous, which she also uses with him), but then he switches to the informal tu in that last one

She bit her lip. She seemed to hesitate, as though torn by some sort of inner conflict. Finally she appeared to come to a decision. ‘Never mind, it won’t make any difference. You look sad, I want you to be happy. Just promise to laugh. I want to see you laugh and hear you say, “Oh, now that’s good.” Poor Monsieur Marius! You know, you promised you’d give me whatever I wanted—’ ‘Yes! But go on, tell me!’

She looked Marius straight in the eye and said, ‘I’ve got the address.’ Marius turned pale. All the blood drained back to his heart. ‘What address?’ ‘The address you asked me for!’ She added, as if it were costing her some effort, ‘The address – you know the one?’

‘Yes!’ stammered Marius. ‘Of that young lady.’ Having said this, she sighed deeply. Marius leapt up from the parapet where he had been sitting and frantically grabbed her hand. ‘Oh! Well then? Show me the way! Tell me! Ask whatever you want of me! Where is it?’ ‘Come with me,’ she replied. ‘I don’t really know the street or the number. It’s way over in the other direction from here, but I certainly know which house it is, I’ll take you there.’

I have a feeling she does know but just wants to walk with him… (sound of pain)

She withdrew her hand and went on in a tone of voice that would have cut to the heart anyone watching – but Marius, now enraptured, in transports of delight, did not even notice – ‘Oh! how happy you are!’

Marius’s brow clouded. He seized Éponine by the arm. ‘Swear to me something!’ ‘Swear?’ she said. ‘What are you talking about? You want me to swear?’ And she laughed. ‘Your father! Promise me, Éponine! Swear to me you won’t tell your father this address!’ She turned to him with a look of amazement. ‘Éponine! How do you know my name’s Éponine?’ ‘Promise me what I said!’ But she seemed not to hear him. ‘Now, that’s lovely, that is! You called me Éponine!’

this is killing me she's so happy it's just her name and she's so happy

Marius held her by both arms. ‘For heaven’s sake, answer me! Listen to what I’m saying. Swear to me you won’t tell your father the address that you know!’ ‘My father?’ she said. ‘Ah yes, my father! You needn’t worry. He’s locked up. In any case, as if I care about my father!’ ‘But you haven’t promised!’ exclaimed Marius. ‘Now let go of me!’ she said with a burst of laughter. ‘You’re shaking me so hard! Yes! Yes! I promise! I swear! What’s it to me? I won’t tell my father the address. There! Satisfied? Is that what you wanted?’

DON’T SHAKE HER YOU NINCOMPOOP

‘Or anyone else!’ said Marius. ‘Or anyone else.’ ‘Now take me there,’ said Marius. ‘Right now?’ ‘Right now.’ ‘Come along. Oh! how happy he is!’ she said.

And demanding too >B( jerk

After a few steps she stopped. ‘You’re following me too closely, Monsieur Marius. Let me go on ahead, and you hang back so it doesn’t look as if you’re following me. A respectable young man like you shouldn’t be seen with a woman like me.’ No language could convey everything contained in that word ‘woman’, as spoken by that child.

She went on a dozen paces, then stopped again. Marius caught up with her. She spoke to him out of the corner of her mouth, without turning towards him. ‘By the way, you know you promised me something?’ Marius fumbled in his pocket. All he had in the world was the five francs intended for old Thénardier. He took them and put them in Éponine’s hand. She opened her fingers and let the coin fall to the ground. And gazing at him sombrely, she said, ‘I don’t want your money.’