You Have Strength of a Different Kind

The government of 1830 had a hard life from the outset. Born only yesterday, today it had to fight. No sooner was it installed than it already felt vague movements of traction in the July contrivance so recently established and still so insecure. Resistance was born the next day, perhaps it was even born the day before. Month by month the hostility increased, turning from latent to blatant.

And if he was in touch with the people, he’d have noticed and, you know, tried to do something to improve things, but, well, Hugo said it himself in the last chapter. For many things, he was kind of a man of inaction as far as making progress.

The old legitimist parties nonetheless attacked the 1830 Revolution with all the vehemence that springs from false reasoning. Fallacies make excellent projectiles. They struck shrewdly where it was vulnerable, finding its weak spot in its lack of logic: they attacked this revolution in its royalty. ‘Revolution,’ they cried, ‘why this king?’ Factions are blind, but their aim is true. The Republicans too voiced this cry. But coming from them, the cry was logical. What was blindness in the legitimists was clearsightedness in the democrats. 1830 failed to meet its obligations to the people. Outraged democracy censured it for this.

Yeahhh. We fought for No King and here we are With King. Not a very satisfactory conclusion.

Out of this muted hostility, always kept muzzled but always growling . . .

Just putting this here because I like it.

Meanwhile at home, poverty, the proletariat, wages, education, the penal system, prostitution, the condition of women, wealth, destitution, production, consumption, distribution, exchange, currency, credit, capital’s rights, labour’s rights – all these problems multiplied, looming grimly over society.

Hmmmmm almost like maybe he wasn’t doing a very good job then

Outside of the political parties properly speaking, another movement developed. In response to democratic ferment came philosophical ferment. The elite, like the masses, felt troubled – differently, but no less so. Thinkers meditated while the ground, that is to say the people, penetrated by revolutionary currents, shook beneath them with vague epileptic-like tremors. These dreamers . . . delved into social issues, peacefully but profoundly; impassive miners calmly extending their tunnels into the depths of a volcano, barely disturbed by the muffled shocks or by the glimpsed furnaces. This calmness was not the least edifying spectacle of this unsettled period. These men left to the political parties the question of rights; they occupied themselves with the question of happiness. The well-being of man, that was what they wanted to extract from society.

Back to the mining analogy. Once again, just a passage I really enjoy regarding how it was written.

They raised the importance of material issues – of agriculture, industry, commerce – almost to the status of religion. In the making of civilization, in a small way by God, largely by man, interests combine, amalgamate and compact to form really hard rock, according to a law of dynamics patiently studied by economists, those geologists of politics. These men who grouped together under various names but who may all be referred to by the generic term ‘socialists’ strove to pierce that rock and bring forth the living waters of human happiness.

Oh it just keeps being really good

To the rights of man, proclaimed by the French Revolution, they added the rights of woman and the rights of the child.

Heck yeah

Leaving aside cosmogonic visions, dreams and mysticism, all the problems the socialists considered can be reduced to two main problems. First problem: how to produce wealth. Second problem: how to share it out. The first problem contains the issue of work. The second contains the issue of wages. The first problem is about the use of resources. The second, about the distribution of benefits.Effective use of resources results in national strength. Fair distribution of benefits results in individual happiness. Fair distribution should be understood to mean not equal but equitable distribution. The fundamental equality is equity.

Gonna go find an old graphic I stumbled upon long ago if I can regarding the equality vs equity thing.

Found this one too while I was looking, which is nice:

England solves the first of these two problems. She creates wealth admirably, she shares it out badly. This solution, which is only partial, leads inevitably to these two extremes: monstrous wealth, monstrous penury. All the benefits going to a few, all the hardship to the rest, that is to say, the people. Privilege, distinction, monopoly, feudalism are actually the fruits of labour. A false and dangerous situation, which bases national strength on private misery, which roots the greatness of the state in the sufferings of the individual. A badly constituted grandeur consisting of all the material elements but no moral element.

(looks at camera) sounds familiar

The two problems need to be solved together if they are to be solved properly. The two solutions need to be combined to provide a single solution. Solve only the first of the two problems, and you will be Venice, or England. Like Venice, you will have artificial strength, or like England, material strength. You will be the villainous rich.

Okay honestly love the term “the villainous rich” HAHA so true so true

Solve the two problems, encourage the rich and protect the poor, eliminate destitution, put an end to the unjust exploitation of the weak by the strong; curb the iniquitous envy, in the one who is making his way up, of the one who has arrived; set the wages for a job fairly and in the spirit of fellowship, foster the development of childhood with free compulsory education and make knowledge the foundation of manliness, develop minds while keeping hands busy; be at once a powerful nation and a family of happy individuals; democratize property not by abolishing it but by making it universal, so that every citizen without exception may be a property owner, something easier to achieve than people think. In short, learn how to produce wealth and how to distribute it, and you will have both material greatness and moral greatness. And you will be worthy of calling yourself France.

The way I cracked up at the last sentence. Oh, Hugo, you Francophile you.

An accumulating darkness shrouded the horizon. A strange shadow, reaching nearer and nearer, gradually extended over men, things, ideas, a shadow arising out of anger and out of the way things were organized. Everything that had been hastily stifled was astir, in ferment.

Horizon, you say 👁️

Barely twenty months had passed since the July Revolution, the year 1832 had begun in an ominous atmosphere of impending doom.

And then he lists over a dozen things that happened in that time. Hardships and hunger, political turmoils in both France and elsewhere, the cholera issue, etc.

A good fellow and a good prince. . . . An admirable representative of the ‘middle class’, but surpassing it and in every way superior to it. . . . Long-winded in public, succinct in private. Alleged, but not proven, to be a miser. Basically, one of those thrifty types with a readiness to be unsparing when the fancy takes them or when it is expected of them. Well read, but with little feeling for literature. A gentleman but no cavalier. Unpretentious, calm, strong. Adored by his family and his household. An engaging conversationalist, a statesman with no illusions, inwardly cold, ruled by immediate priorities, governing always in the short term, incapable of resentment or of gratitude, ruthless in deploying superiority against mediocrity, clever at getting parliamentary majorities to condemn those mysterious unanimities grumbling darkly beneath thrones. . . . Eight times targeted by regicides, and always smiling. Brave as a grenadier, courageous as a thinker, anxious only at the prospect of European turmoil, and unsuited for great political adventures. Always ready to risk his life, never his work. Disguising his will as influence so as to be obeyed for what he thought rather than as king. With a gift for observation but not for anticipation. . . . Governing too much and not ruling enough. . . . Louis-Philippe will be classed among the eminent men of his age, and would be ranked among the most illustrious rulers in history if he had cared a little for glory, and if his sense of what was great had been equal to his sense of what was useful. . . . Not always winning the nation’s approval, but always the crowd’s. He was liked. He had that gift, charm. He lacked majesty. Although a king he wore no crown, and although elderly his hair was not white. He had the manners of the old regime and the habits of the new, a mixture of the aristocratic and the bourgeois that suited 1830. Louis-Philippe was the reign of transition.

So a decent enough person, with flaws, of course, as all humans are flawed. Maybe not the most kingly king, but a decent transitional type person for the period.

Louis-Philippe cannot be held responsible for all the charges history lays against him. For some of these charges royalty is to blame, for some, the reign, and for some, the king. . . . His great failing was this: he was modest in the name of France. What was the reason for this failing? We can explain it.

Hold on lemme get a snack.

Okay go for it.

Louis-Philippe was a king who let fatherhood get the better of him. This incubation of a family intended to develop into a dynasty is fearful of everything and has no wish to be disturbed. Hence the inordinate want of courage, offensive to a people who have the fourteenth of July in their civilian history and Austerlitz in their military history. Leaving aside those public duties that claim priority, it has to be said that his family deserved the deep affection Louis-Philippe had for them. They were an admirable bunch, the members of that family. Their virtues matched their talents.

Makes sense. Certainly not the worst reason.

To be Prince Equality, to carry within himself the contradiction between the Restoration and the Revolution, to have that disquieting revolutionary side that becomes reassuring in the man in power – this was Louis-Philippe’s good fortune in 1830. Never was there a man better suited to an event. One was instilled in the other, and the incarnation came about: Louis-Philippe is 1830 made man. Moreover, he had in his favour that great recommendation for the throne, exile. He was banished, homeless, poor. He had worked for his living.

So a man of the people, in some ways. With the right bloodline for the throne, but with the sorts of experiences a lot of people would appreciate their ruler having. Again, a "decent" transitional ruler (depending on your definition of decent).

And, having witnessed the French Revolution and all that took place during it, and being very affected by all that went on, well… I like how Hugo words it:

And lingering in his soul, a respectful dread of these immense dispensations of justice by the people, almost as impersonal as the justice of God.

Nice.

Louis-Philippe was a king of total transparency. While he reigned there was press freedom, parliamentary freedom, freedom of conscience and freedom of speech. The September laws are an open book. Although aware of the corrosive power of the light on privileges, he left his throne exposed to the light. History will recognize him for this honesty. Like all historical figures who have left the stage, Louis-Philippe now faces judgement before the human conscience. The trial is still in progress. For him, the hour has not yet struck when history speaks in its venerable and impartial voice. The moment has not yet come to deliver the final verdict on this king.

I wonder what the people of France think of him these days. How did the trial conclude? What is the general view of him now?

And in any case, from the vantage point that philosophy must occupy, our judgement of him now, as indicated above, would have to be subject to certain reservations in respect of the absolute democratic principle. In the eyes of the absolute, everything in disregard of these two rights – firstly the right of man, secondly the right of the people – is usurpation. But with these reservations, what we can say right now is that all in all, whichever way you look at him, Louis-Philippe, as a person and from the viewpoint of human kindness, will remain, to use the old language of an earlier history, one of the best princes who ever sat on a throne.

I really appreciate the relatively balanced view taken up here (at least it reads that way to me, someone who doesn't know much about the guy). Hugo is covering the goods and bads, pros and cons. (Though there could be bias in his words. I don't know the guy myself, so I'm not sure what others who knew him well might think of Hugo's take. They might be going "bro you are leaving out SO many cons").

It’s very “credit where credit is due”. Like this:

What has he against him? That throne. Take away Louis-Philippe the king, there remains the man. And the man is good. Sometimes good to the extent of being admirable. Often in the midst of the most serious difficulties, after a day of diplomatic conflict with the entire continent, he would return at night to his apartments and there, drained by exhaustion, shattered for want of sleep, what did he do? He picked up a file and spent the night reviewing a criminal case, believing it was one thing to stand up to Europe but a greater thing yet to save a man from the executioner. He would defy his minister of justice, dispute with the chief prosecutors – ‘those legal windbags’, as he called them – every inch of ground to which the guillotine laid claim. Sometimes heaps of files covered his table. He went through all of them.

Hugo apparently had strong feelings against the death penalty. I can see why he really liked this trait in him. Probably DID made him a bit more biased in a favorable way towards him haha, I'm sure that colors this chapter.

Louis-Philippe has been judged severely by some, perhaps harshly by others, and it is quite natural that a man, himself a phantom at present, who knew that king, should come and testify in his favour before history. This testimony, such as it is, is obviously and above all else completely disinterested. An epitaph written by a dead man is sincere. One shade may console another. Sharing the same darkness gives one sharer the right to praise his fellow sharer. And there is little fear it will ever be said of two tombs in exile: ‘This one flattered the other.’

The Revolution of 1830 quickly came to a halt. As soon as a revolution runs aground the astute break up the beached vessel. The astute in our century have conferred on themselves the title of statesmen, with the result that this word ‘statesmen’ has ended up becoming something of a slang word. After all, let us not forget that where there is only astuteness there is inevitably pettiness. To say ‘the astute’ is another way of saying ‘the mediocre’. Similarly, to say ‘statesmen’ is sometimes tantamount to saying ‘traitors’.

Ah

According to the astute, then, revolutions like the July Revolution are severed arteries. Prompt ligature is needed. Too grandly proclaimed, right destabilizes. So, once right has been asserted, the state must be strengthened. After freedom is secured, thoughts must turn to authority.

Ah

At this point the wise have not as yet parted company with the astute, but they are beginning to be wary. Authority, agreed. But firstly, what is authority? Secondly, where does it come from? The astute do not seem to hear this murmured objection, and press on with their scheme.

They said 🙉

According to those politicians expert at putting the mask of necessity on advantageous fictions, the first requirement of a nation after a revolution, when that nation belongs to a monarchic continent, is to acquire a dynasty. That way, they say, it can have peace after its revolution, in other words time to dress its wounds and rebuild its house. A dynasty hides the scaffolding and shields the ambulance.

I am just amazed at how well he writes on a topic that could easily feel boring and dull. This has all the potential to be stuffy, but he's dressed it up in words enjoyable to read without it being too complex.

If you put yourself – with all due reservations, of course – in the position of ‘statesmen’

HAHA

So the great art is this: to give success the ring of catastrophe so that those who profit by it may tremble also, to season with fear every step forward, to prolong the transition curve, thereby delaying progress, to dull the brightness of that dawn, to denounce and suppress the asperities of enthusiasm, to cut corners and trim claws, to stifle triumph and muffle right, to wrap the giant nation in flannel and very quickly put it to bed, to impose a diet on that exuberant health, to put Hercules on a convalescence regime, to dilute the event with expediency, to offer to spirits thirsting for the ideal that nectar diluted with tisane, to take precautions against undue success, to furnish the revolution with a sun-blind.

Sometimes Hugo lists a million different ways to say one thing in a single paragraph and it works so well. Concerns of redundancy fears this man.

1830 is a revolution stopped in mid-course. Semi-progress. Quasi-right. Well, logic takes absolutely no account of the more-or-less, as the sun takes no account of the candle. Who stops revolutions in mid-course? The bourgeoisie. Why? Because the bourgeoisie is satisfied self-interest. Yesterday it represented appetite, today it represents repletion, tomorrow it will represent surfeit.

Just like it has a surfeit of vowels

Some people have wanted wrongly to identify the bourgeoisie as a class. The bourgeoisie is simply the contented section of the people. The bourgeois is the man who now has time to sit down. A chair is not a caste.

🔥🔥🔥✍️

But the very progress of the human race may be halted because of a desire to sit down too soon. This has often been the failing of the bourgeoisie. A class is not made up of those with a failing. Selfishness is not one of the divisions of the social order.

🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥✍️

Can you imagine being bourgeois in the 19th century and reading this. Hugo just shoots you point blank.

Besides, we must be fair, even to selfishness: the state to which that part of the nation, the bourgeoisie, aspired after the upheaval of 1830 was not inertia, which involves indifference and laziness and includes a little shame. It was not sleep, which implies a momentary forgetfulness accessible to dreams. It was a state of pause – a halt. A halt is the restoration of strength. It is armed rest in a state of alert. It is the new reality that posts sentinels and remains on guard. A halt implies fighting yesterday and fighting tomorrow. It is the interval between 1830 and 1848. What we here call fighting may also be called progress.

And then he hands you a bandage and goes well, could have done worse. Could have done better, but also could have done worse.

So the bourgeoisie as well as the statesmen needed a man who would represent that word ‘halt’. An ‘although–because’. A composite individual, signifying both revolution and stability, in other words, consolidating the present through the obvious compatibility of the past with the future.

Footnote says: "although–because : For the left, Louis-Philippe, although a Bourbon, was an acceptable replacement as head of state; and because he was a Bourbon, he was also acceptable to the right."

The two hundred and twenty-one made Louis-Philippe king. Lafayette was responsible for the consecration. He called it ‘the best of republics’. Paris’s Hôtel de Ville replaced Reims cathedral. This substitution of a half-throne for the whole throne was ‘the achievement of 1830’.

Another interesting footnote here: "Lafayette : Gilbert de Motier, Marquis de Lafayette (1757–1834), made his name under George Washington fighting for the American Revolution, and successfully lobbied the French government to recognize the independence of the United States. In Revolutionary France he was a reformist in the National Constituent Assembly, but as an upholder of order he lost the support of the people and had to flee the country. Elected to the Chamber of Deputies during the Hundred Days in 1815, he presented the motion requiring Napoleon to abdicate after the defeat at Waterloo. Again as a deputy, he was a key player in the July Revolution: effectively head of the provisional government, the preferred candidate of some permanently to replace Charles X, he gave his public support at the Hôtel de Ville to Louis-Philippe, wrapping him in a tricolour flag and embracing him. In the words of Chateaubriand, ‘Le baiser républicain de La Fayette fit un roi’ (‘Lafayette’s Republican kiss created a king’; Mémoires d’Outre-Tombe , bk 32, ch. 15). Although Lafayette denied having said that Louis-Philippe was ‘la meilleure des républiques’ (‘the best of republics’), he was popularly believed by his contemporaries to have done so, as recorded for instance by the anarchist sociologist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809–65) in his Du Principe Fédératif (1863; published in English as The Principle of Federation ), pt I, ch. 4."

I guess his approval of Louis-Philippe made a big difference.

When the astute were done, the great iniquity of their solution became apparent. Absolute right was left out of the whole thing. Absolute right cried, ‘I protest!’ Then, ominously, it fell back into the shadows.

The two years immediately following the July Revolution – 1831 and 1832 – stand out as one of history’s most distinctive and striking moments. . . . The social masses, the very foundations of civilization, the solid grouping of overlapping and tenacious interests . . . keep appearing and disappearing through storm clouds of systems, passions and theories. These continual appearances and disappearances have been named ‘resistance’ and ‘movement’.

And the footnote says: "‘resistance’ and ‘movement’ : The terms used to refer to the two main political tendencies, the Resistance being the more conservative and right-wing, the Movement the more liberal. Louis-Philippe first entrusted his government to the banker Jacques Laffitte, leader of the Movement, but replaced him in February 1831 with Casimir Périer, leader of the Resistance. Périer died in the outbreak of cholera that swept through Paris in 1832."

History class has begun

The Restoration had been one of those transitional periods hard to define, when exhaustion . . . dormancy and tumult prevail, periods that are nothing other than a great nation coming to the end of one stage in its progress before embarking on the next. . . . At first the nation wants nothing but rest. Its only thirst is for peace, its only ambition, to be small. Which is a translation of ‘to keep quiet’. Of great events, great dangers, great adventures, great men, people have had enough, thank you very much, they have had more than enough.

I mean yeah I'd want some peace after all of that too, honestly. A breather from it all.

They have marched since daybreak, it is now evening after what has been for them a long, hard day; the first part of the way they went with Mirabeau, the second with Robespierre, the third with Bonaparte. They are worn out. Everybody is asking for a bed.

I like that analogy

Peace, tranquillity, leisure, are theirs. And they are happy. Yet at the same time certain realities surface, they present their credentials, and they too come knocking at the door. These realities are the result of revolutions and wars, they are, they exist, they are entitled to take their place in society, and they do. And most of the time these realities are just the quarter-masters and foragers sent in advance to make ready the accommodation of principles. . . . As weary men demand rest, new realities demand guarantees. Guarantees are to new realities what rest is to men. . . . These guarantees are a necessity of the times. They must be provided. Princes ‘grant’ them but in fact it is force of circumstance that supplies them. . . . The predestined family that returned to France when Napoleon fell had the fatal naivety to believe it was the family that was giving, and that what it had given it could take back again. That the House of Bourbon had divine right, France had nothing. And that the political right conceded in Louis XVIII’s Charter was no more than a branch of that divine right lopped off by the House of Bourbon and graciously bestowed on the people until the day when it might please the king to have his gift back again. Still, from the offence caused by the gift, the Bourbons should have sensed it was not theirs to give.

I'm thinking of the charter that Courfeyrac threw in the fire. To give the people a false satisfaction, to settle them down, to get them to settle for something less. To appease.

It thought it had power because the Empire had been swept away before it, like a stage set. It did not notice that it had itself been established in the same way. It did not see that it was the work of the same hand that had removed Napoleon. It thought it had roots because it identified itself with the past. It was wrong. It was part of the past, but the whole past was France. The roots of French society lay not in the Bourbons, but in the nation. These strong and hidden roots constituted not the right of a family but the history of a people. They were everywhere except beneath the throne. . . . People could do without the Bourbons. They had done without them for twenty-two years. There had been a break in continuity. Of this the Bourbons were oblivious.

I thought this would feel like a trudge but I quite like the way he's writing this actually

A great mistake, which led this family to withdraw the guarantees ‘granted’ in 1814, the ‘concessions’, as it called them. Deplorably, what it called its concessions were our conquests. What it called our infringements were our rights.

(The Charter of 1814, that is. I had to double check when everything was happening haha so if anyone out there is like me...)

When it thought the time was ripe, the Restoration, imagining itself to be victorious over Bonaparte and well rooted in the country – that is to say, believing itself to be strong and deeply entrenched – took a gamble and abruptly declared itself. One morning it confronted France and, raising its voice, contested the collective right of the nation to sovereignty and the individual right of the citizen to liberty. In other words, it denied to the nation what made it a nation and to the citizen what made him a citizen. This is the foundation of those famous decrees called the July Ordinances. The Restoration fell.

From Wikipedia:

The ordinances of 26 July: - Suspended the liberty of the press - Appointed new, reactionary Councillors of State - Dissolved the newly elected Chamber of Deputies of France - Reduced the number of deputies in future Chambers - Summoned new electoral colleges for September of that year - Withdrew the Deputies' right of amendment - Excluded the commercial middle-class from future elections They were intended to restore the previous political order. However, the ordinances had the opposite effect of angering the French citizens. Journalists gathered to protest at the headquarters of the National daily, founded in January 1830 by Adolphe Thiers, Armand Carrel, and others. The final result was the July Revolution and Charles X's abdication and exile.

Kinda crazy he just skipped over all that in the book. Where's the chapters of the Amis being part of all of that. Surely they would have been. Where are those chapters.

It deserved to fall. Yet, to tell the truth, it had not been totally hostile to all forms of progress. Great things had been accomplished with the Restoration standing by. Under the Restoration the nation had grown used to calm discussion, in which the Republic had been wanting, and to greatness in peace, in which the Empire had been wanting. A free and strong France had been an encouraging sight to the other peoples of Europe. The Revolution had spoken under Robespierre. The cannon had spoken under Bonaparte. Under Louis XVIII and Charles X came the turn of intelligence to speak. . . . For fifteen years these great principles . . . could be seen at work in full peacetime, in full public view: equality before the law, freedom of conscience, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, the accessibility of every office to all who had the capacity to hold it.

Let the people experience good stuff and then take it away lol yeah how did he expect anything but a revolution in the face of that 💀

The July Revolution is the triumph of right in the overthrow of reality. A splendid thing. Right overthrowing reality. Hence the magnitude of the 1830 Revolution, hence also its mildness. Right that triumphs has no need to be violent. Right is that which is just and true. Characteristic of what is right is to remain eternally beautiful and pure.

Fini rubbing off on me, now I'm thinking of Combeferre.

Reality, even the most apparently inexorable, even the best-accepted by its contemporaries, if it exists only as reality and contains but too little right or none at all, is surely destined to become in the course of time distorted, squalid, perhaps even monstrous. . . . This conflict between right and reality has been going on ever since societies came into being. To end this duel, to marry purity of concept with human actuality, to instil right in reality and reality in right, that is the work of the wise.

I'm still thinking of Combeferre haha

The day after these events took place

Are you telling me I don't get to see Javert dunk on Marius for never firing the gun??????? What a disappointment. No Marius realizing that if Leblanc's handkerchief is U.F., he's most likely been sniffing and sleeping with and showing off the old man's handkerchief and being embarrassed about it because he's too busy freaking out about Thénardier (maybe he would be too weird to even care in the first place), and now no getting made fun of for not being able to fire the gun like he said he would. Bummer.

Darkness had fallen. This child was pale, thin, dressed in rags, wearing cotton trousers in the month of February, and he was singing at the top of his voice.

orz

Another poor child underdressed for the cold urghh

At the corner of Rue du Petit-Banquier a bent old woman was rummaging in a pile of rubbish by the light of a street lantern. The child bumped into her as he went by, then backed away, crying out, ‘Hey! There was me thinking that was a huge, huge dog!’ He pronounced the word ‘huge’ the second time with a swell of his jeering voice that might be fairly well represented by capital letters: ‘a huge, HUGE dog’.

HAHAHA???? WHAT A BRAT

The old woman straightened up in a fury. ‘Cheeky brat!’ she grumbled. ‘If I hadn’t been bending over, I can tell you where you’d have felt the end of my foot.’ The boy was already some way off. ‘Kss! kss!’ he goaded her. ‘And you know what? Maybe I was right!’ Choking with indignation, the old woman drew herself up to her full height, and the red gleam of the lantern fell directly on her ghastly pale face, all sharp angles and wrinkles thrown into relief, crow’s-feet down to the corners of her mouth. Her body disappeared into the shadows and only her head was visible. She looked like a mask of Decrepitude carved out by a light in the dark. The boy considered her. ‘Madame’s is not my kind of beauty,’ he said.

Wow this kid is just fine actually, huh

Must be that healing Paris air. I think that Paris air should heal Éponine a bit more, and Azelma too. They seem all sad and messed up but this kid is having a grand ol' time. Maybe they need to get out of the house more and away from their dad. That might be the cure, actually

At the end of these three lines he paused. He had arrived outside number 50–52, and finding the door closed he began to kick it, delivering resounding and heroic kicks more indicative of the man’s shoes he wore than the child’s feet he had.

Wait isn't that The Place. The place we just left. The den of criminals.

The old woman was shouting herself hoarse. ‘Is that how buildings are treated these days?’ All of a sudden she stopped. She had recognized the lad. ‘Why, it’s that little devil!’ ‘Well, if it isn’t the old biddy,’ said the boy. ‘Good evening, Burgonmuche. I’ve come to see my kin.’

OH!!! Omg I forgot Éponine mentioned a brother

More proof that the cure is staying away from those parents...?

‘There’s no one here, ragamuffin.’ ‘Bah!’ retorted the boy. ‘Where’s my father, then?’ ‘At La Force.’ ‘You don’t say! And my mother?’ ‘At St-Lazare.’ ‘Oh well! And my sisters?’ ‘At Les Madelonnettes.’ The lad scratched behind his ear, stared at Mame Burgon and said, ‘Ah!’ Then he twirled on his heels, and a moment later the old woman, still standing on the doorstep, heard him singing in his clear young voice as he headed off under the elm trees, shivering in the winter wind.

WOW HE'S SO CHILL ABOUT IT?

How many times has this happened. Like is this a reoccurring event he's used to - his entire family being gone, that is - or is this the first and he's just so whatever about it anyway

Actually though where is Éponine

I suppose it's smart not to come back to the scene of the crime so to speak, but. But where is she. Where did she sleep last night.

Glad he said "screw it" and went in anyway because good grief these guys should not get away with this. Stupid Marius

Dismayed, the villains scrambled for the weapons they had abandoned all over the place in the interests of escape. In less than a second these seven men, dreadful to behold, had grouped together and adopted a defensive stance, one with his poleaxe, another with his key, another with his cudgel, the rest with shears, crowbars and hammers. Thénardier had his knife in his hand. The Thénardier woman took up an enormous paving-stone that stood in the corner by the window and served her daughters as a stool. 

1v9(?) (Not sure if Thénardier is being counted as part of the 7 or not, and I've lost track of how many there were)

Javert put his hat back on his head and took a couple of steps into the room, with his arms folded, his cane under one arm, his sword in its scabbard. 

1 sword and cane vs 9(?) Weapon Variety Pack

Good luck 🫡

‘Stop right there!’ he said. ‘You won’t exit by the window, you’ll exit by the door. It’s less dangerous that way. There are seven of you, there are fifteen of us. Let’s not descend to brawling like a bunch of Auvergne peasants. Let’s have some co-operation.’ 

Oh, Thénardier must count as part of the seven. And I guess the woman is of no concern to Javert, which is stupid. I think she could bash someone's head in.

Also love him trying to talk them down lol yeah I'm sure that'll work

Bigrenaille drew out a pistol he had concealed under his overall and placed it in Thénardier’s hand, whispering in his ear, ‘It’s Javert. I daren’t fire at that man. What about you?’  ‘God damn it!’ replied Thénardier.  ‘Well, you shoot then.’ 

HAHA dang, what kind of rep does this guy have to where he's scared to shoot at him?? Gun vs sword generally does not bode well for the sword side. 

Thénardier took the pistol and aimed at Javert.  Only three paces away, Javert gazed steadily at him and merely said, ‘Now then, don’t shoot. You’ll miss.’ 

THE CONFIDENCE IS ASTONISHING

Thénardier pulled the trigger. He missed.  ‘Didn’t I tell you!’ said Javert. 

THE CONFIDENCE IS WELL-PLACED???????????

Bigrenaille threw his bludgeon at Javert’s feet. ‘You’re the devil supreme! I surrender.’  ‘And the rest of you?’ Javert asked the other villains.  They responded, ‘Us too.’  Javert went on calmly, ‘That’s it, well done, as I said, we’re co-operating.’ 

I THOUGHT HE WAS INSANE TO TELL THEM TO COOPERATE BUT NO HE'S JUST-

Well maybe he is insane, so insane it scares them. Who has that kinda confidence. It's clearly not baseless look at that, absolutely buckwild. A devil supreme indeed.

‘I have just one request,’ said Bigrenaille, ‘that I won’t have to go without tobacco while I’m in solitary.’  ‘Granted,’ said Javert. 

Love the calm little negotiation here. This is all so funny

And he turned and called out behind him, ‘Come in now!’  A squad of police officers, swords in hand, and policemen armed with truncheons and clubs, poured in at Javert’s summons.

Dude had so many fellas with him and came charging in suavely with just himself. Incredible.

‘Handcuff the lot of them!’ shouted Javert.  ‘Just you try!’ yelled a voice, which was not the voice of a man, but no one would ever have been able to tell it was a woman’s. The Thénardier woman had entrenched herself in one of the corners by the window, and it was she who had just let out this bellow. The policemen and agents fell back. She had thrown off her shawl but kept her hat on. Her husband, crouching behind her, was almost hidden under the discarded shawl; she was shielding him with her body, the paving-stone raised above her head, poised like a giantess about to hurl a rock. 

LOL her husband hiding behind her under the shawl, crazy coward behavior

Everyone retreated towards the corridor. . . . Javert smiled and stepped forward into the empty space that the Thénardier woman kept under her smouldering gaze.  ‘Don’t come any closer,’ she shouted, ‘or I’ll flatten you.’  ‘What a fighter!’ said Javert. ‘You’ve got the beard of a man, missus, but I’ve got the claws of a woman.’  And he continued to advance on her. 

This dude is nuts, I kinda love it

Dishevelled and terrifying, the Thénardier woman . . . hurled the paving-stone at Javert’s head.  Javert ducked, the stone flew over him, struck the wall behind, knocked off a huge piece of plaster and, ricocheting from one corner to another across the luckily almost empty hovel, eventually came to rest at Javert’s heels. 

AMAZING

At the same moment Javert reached the Thénardier couple. One of his big hands clamped on the woman’s shoulder, the other on her husband’s head.  ‘Cuffs!’ he shouted.  The policemen crowded back in and within a few seconds Javert’s order had been carried out. 

The way the other cops dipped the second she made that threat. Like… are they cowards or do they know that Javert is a cryptid that can't be hurt, so they were just getting out of the way for him to do his thing

Defeated, the Thénardier woman stared at her shackled hands and at those of her husband, dropped to the floor and cried out, weeping, ‘My daughters!’  ‘They’re in the clink,’ said Javert. 

One of them is, which is kind of crazy; she's like, what, fifteen? And put up to this by her parents? Well. Javert wouldn't care, I guess.

‘Keep your masks on,’ said Javert.  And inspecting them . . . he said to the three ‘sweeps’, ‘Good evening, Bigrenaille! Good evening, Brujon! Good evening, Deux-Milliards!’  Then turning to the three masked men, he said to the man with the poleaxe, ‘Good evening, Gueulemer!’  And to the man with the cudgel, ‘Good evening, Babet!’  And to the ventriloquist, ‘Greetings, Claquesous!’ 

Yeah this guy is a cryptid, he is not of this world, he is a creature, not a man, he's. Crazy. This is fun.

At that moment he caught sight of the villains’ prisoner, who, keeping his head down, had not uttered a word since the police came in.  ‘Untie the gentleman!’ said Javert. ‘And no one’s to leave!’  That said, in the manner of one whose authority is beyond question he sat at the table . . . and began to write his report. When he had written the first lines, which were just the standard wording, he looked up.  ‘Bring forward the gentleman whom these gentlemen here had tied up.’  The policemen looked round.  ‘Well,’ said Javert, ‘where is he?’  The villains’ prisoner . . . had disappeared. The door was guarded, but not the window. As soon as he was left untied and while Javert was drawing up his report, he had taken advantage of the confusion . . . to make a dash for the window. An agent ran to the casement and looked out. There was no one to be seen outside. The rope ladder was still swaying.  ‘Damn it!’ Javert said to himself. ‘He must have been the real prize.’