well cut, badly sewed

On Christmas Day, Marius returned late from his daily wanderings to find a package on his bed.

There was no question of who it was for, as his name was on it, but there was no hint as to the sender. Slightly perturbed, Marius opened it. Inside was a thick scarf of blue wool, finely made and soft. This confused him even more. It was not hard to guess how the giver had gotten in, since he left his key in the door, but who would go out of their way to give him something? There were only a few people who knew where he lived. It was certainly not his grandfather, he could not imagine that it was Ma’am Bougon, and M. Mabeuf had never visited his home. And such a gift would not have been too cheap. Could it have been Her? His heart leapt at the thought, but it was impossible; she did not know his name, much less where he lived.

There was, however, one other person he could think of.

“…thought flowers good for nothing except to conceal the sword.”

On the French Republican calendar:

June 6th— poppies

9 Thermidor— blackberries

22 Prairial— camomile

Dawn, the sixth of June

Enjolras had left the barricade half an hour ago—more or less, time seemed to move differently between these walls, Combeferre thought.

He’d slipped out quietly after whispering to him and Courfeyrac that he intended to survey the area, assess the present situation. He had promised to return within half an hour. “Be careful,” Combeferre had murmured, but Enjolras had already disappeared, catlike, into the shadows.

Thinking about Enjolras, how he could be captured or shot and them never even knowing left an anxious pang in his chest, so Combeferre returned to tending to the wounded. There were no very serious injuries, and the wounded men were adamant about being well enough for the next fight.

“I would not miss it for the world,” a young Southerner insisted, gritting his teeth from the pain. “This will be a history-making battle, the whole of the city is alight. By this time tomorrow we shall have a Republic and I will not miss my chance to be a part of it by sitting around in here.”

Combeferre could not help but smile at his enthusiasm. “Then at least rest for now, the bleeding is not heavy but you may aggravate it if you move too much. There’s still time before the next fight.”

The boy conceded this, and Combeferre left the wine-shop to ask Joly for more bandages. The sky was lightening. It was difficult not to share in their high spirits; the situation was hopeful. The fortification was good, they had ammunition. Above all, the bell of Saint-Merry rang out, reminding them that they were not alone.

As he passed the rue Mondétour, a figure appeared from the darkness, and he started.

A glimpse of blond hair, and the figure gestured for him to come closer—it was Enjolras, evidently back from his reconnaissance. Combeferre ran into the rue Mondétour, and Enjolras pulled him back into the shadows. He was uninjured, he noted with relief.

“Well? What news?" Combeferre said, wiping his hands on his apron. "The men are in high spirits, the Saint-Merry tocsin has not ceased for a moment. They are saying by sunset it will be a revolution. And by daybreak tomorrow—" he broke off, but could not repress a small smile. "But first tell me what you've seen."

Enjolras held his gaze steadily for a moment, then lowered his eyes. He shook his head.

Combeferre’s smile faded.

“A full third of the army is headed in this direction. They are bringing cannons.”

Combeferre began to feel the heavy weight of dread sinking in his chest. But there were other barricades remaining, surely.

“And the National Guard,” Enjolras added.

This was a blow. “They will not join us?”

“No.” Enjolras raised his eyes in meditation. “We have, perhaps, an hour before the attack, by my estimation.”

“But the faubourg,” Combeferre said, grasping.

“—is silent. Windows and doors shuttered. Nothing.” He exhaled, and Combeferre heard the smallest quaver in his breath. “There is no one coming. By daybreak tomorrow we will be dead.”

Combeferre found it necessary to lean against the wall for support. His head felt light, and a terrible numbness began to spread throughout his body. He turned to look past the intersection where the insurgents were engaged in preparation for the coming fight. The light of the torches and the joyful chatter of the men lent the scene almost the air of a street carnival, and he shuddered to picture the horrors that would befall them in such a short time.

“I will need to tell them,” Enjolras said softly. “I—”

Combeferre turned to look at him again, and for a moment Enjolras seemed to falter under the weight of the grief and exhaustion.

To know their fate, and then to deliver that fatal blow to hope. It was an unspeakable burden. “You are the bravest man I will ever know,” Combeferre finished for him. He took his hands. “What you have done—you could not ask more from any man.” He pulled him into an embrace, and Enjolras lay his head against his shoulder wearily.

“In the rue du Cygne I saw a window with a light in it on the fifth floor,” Enjolras murmured. “It was an old woman with a candle. I thought to myself, she may have spent the night in waiting.”

It struck Combeferre peculiarly that this was something that Enjolras had noticed, that was not something Enjolras would have noticed years before.

He drew him close and pressed their foreheads together. A lifetime of dreams had passed through them. There was a certain finality to this gesture, as he knew he would likely not have another chance to speak to Enjolras in confidence before the end came. For the last time he traced the features he knew so intimately with his thumb: the line of his jaw, the curve of his lips, the softness of his cheek. Enjolras clung to him tightly, as though he feared falling.

“It will come,” Combeferre said, his voice tight, but it was a promise.

“Yes,” Enjolras breathed. He pulled away, and drew himself upright once more.

The sky was now painted with broad swaths of color, fresh and resplendent. Their last sunrise, Combeferre thought. Yet there would be many more sunrises.

He turned, and was surprised to see Enjolras also gazing upwards. “It is beautiful,” he commented, but Combeferre knew he was not seeing the sky.

Enjolras stepped back towards the barricade, but Combeferre grabbed his wrist. One moment more, he pleaded.

“You know I would not be parted from you,” he said, “in life or in death.”

Enjolras smiled. “Yes,” he said. He stopped, then closed his eyes, as though readying himself.

and every day is like a battle but every night with us is like a dream

Happy Ides of March and it is a lovely night to talk about the Caesar motif in Les Misérables, don't you think?

Caesar is not really important in his own right despite being regularly name dropped, the important thing is what he represents (arguably like Shakespeare's.) In this case, abstractly, glorious despotism, or specifically, Napoleon.

It was not a new comparison, and certainly not inherently derogatory, as it was frequently espoused by Napoleon's supporters—including his nephew Napoleon III, who later wrote a biography of Caesar in which he explicitly compared the two. Napoleon himself wrote commentaries on Caesar's battles, comparing himself and defending Caesar's dictatorship.

So the Caesar-Napoleon image was well formed in the French consciousness when Hugo published Les Mis. And Hugo plays along with it, and you'll find that comparison made in the Waterloo chapters and during Marius's "discovery" of Bonapartism—and, as is best remembered, in his speech to Les Amis.

You all know it (and Combeferre's response) and I've written about it before here.

The biggest thing to keep in mind is that Les Mis was published during the reign of Napoleon III while Hugo was in exile. He was in exile was for declaring the new Emperor a traitor to France, then published political pamphlets against him (one titled "Napoleon the Little") which were promptly banned, but smuggled into France.

Napoleon III himself was quite concerned with upholding his uncle's veneration in order to maintain the legitimacy of his own rule. So Combeferre and Marius's argument is not only about Napoleon's historical legacy, but highly relevant and provocative in the context the book was published.

This is only part of a broader dialogue about Caesar, though, partly narrated between Combeferre and Grantaire.

In fact Grantaire is the first to bring up Caesar in the chapter, as part of his first drunken ramble:

"Whom do you admire, the slain or the slayer, Caesar or Brutus? Generally men are in favor of the slayer. Long live Brutus, he has slain! There lies the virtue."

And again in "Preliminary Gaieties":

"Great accidents are the law; the order of things cannot do without them; and, judging from the apparition of comets, one would be tempted to think that Heaven itself finds actors needed for its performance. At the moment when one expects it the least, God placards a meteor on the wall of the firmament. Some queer star turns up, underlined by an enormous tail. And that causes the death of Caesar. Brutus deals him a blow with a knife, and God a blow with a comet. Crac, and behold an aurora borealis, behold a revolution, behold a great man; ’93 in big letters, Napoleon on guard, the comet of 1811 at the head of the poster."

In both cases he's being characteristically sarcastic, describing the inanity of these so-called great events, and as usual, the hypocrisy and wretchedness of the world.

On the other hand we have Combeferre, who is an interesting ideological objector here—first of all because he is the exact opposite of Grantaire with his utter belief in pure progress, but also because Combeferre is not necessarily the one you would expect to be a staunch defender of Caesar's assassination.

“Caesar,” said Combeferre, “fell justly. Cicero was severe towards Caesar, and he was right. That severity is not diatribe. When Zoïlus insults Homer, when Maevius insults Virgil, when Visé insults Molière, when Pope insults Shakespeare, when Frederic insults Voltaire, it is an old law of envy and hatred which is being carried out; genius attracts insult, great men are always more or less barked at. But Zoïlus and Cicero are two different persons. Cicero is an arbiter in thought, just as Brutus is an arbiter by the sword. For my own part, I blame that last justice, the blade; but, antiquity admitted it. Caesar, the violator of the Rubicon, conferring, as though they came from him, the dignities which emanated from the people, not rising at the entrance of the senate, committed the acts of a king and almost of a tyrant, regia ac pene tyrannica. He was a great man; so much the worse, or so much the better; the lesson is but the more exalted. His twenty-three wounds touch me less than the spitting in the face of Jesus Christ. Caesar is stabbed by the senators; Christ is cuffed by lackeys. One feels the God through the greater outrage.”

But there's his answer to Grantaire's first question. Combeferre, pacifist, lover of peaceful progress and frequently a mouthpiece for Hugo's own beliefs, thinks Caesar's assassination was justified. This lines up with a broader theme that starts all the way back with the Conventionist—that revolutions may be a necessary and justifiable part of progress, and that tyranny must not be tolerated despite the glories and greatness Marius points out, and despite the human costs of doing so. Combeferre himself is preparing to die on the barricade when he says this, so it feels like a justification for themselves and their actions.

All flocked around Marius. Courfeyrac flung himself on his neck.

“There you are!”

for @midasinc, who asked about food!

It's definitely not a dumb question! Sometimes the small details are the hardest to write and research, but they really add a lot of depth to your setting.

One of my primary motivations for learning French was because I HATE reading British sources on France from this period, which seemingly cannot go more than a few paragraphs without expounding on the superiority of British culture and civilization, and of course, complaining about the French. For example: French people are too happy. French women are too confident and converse with men too easily. French meat is too seasoned.

However, British travel guides are actually great resources for things like this, because they're actually meant to educate readers who aren't already familiar with 19th century Paris. So you can get lots of information about lodgings, culture, entertainment, and yes, food.

So what kinds of foods are we looking at? These are just a few examples of what you might find on Parisian menus in the 1820s-30s:

Meat and poultry: beef, mutton, ham, chicken, goose, duck, turkey, veal, partridge, quail, pigeon

Seafood: salmon, carp, turbot, mackerel, sole, oysters by the dozen

Vegetables: beans, potatoes, spinach, lettuce, asparagus, artichoke, celery, sorrel, cabbage

Fruits: lemon, pear, apple, apricot, cherry, plum, orange, grape, peach, strawberry, raspberry

Sauce: above British writer also complains that the French put sorrel sauce on everything.

And of course, bread, cheese, and wine. For actual meals, please refer to the menus.

One thing that struck me about the high-end fine dining establishments is the sheer size of the menus, which could have upwards of 100-250 dishes! I was originally going to post an actual menu, but that would make this post way too long, so you can just find them in my linked sources. For dinner at one of these restaurants, you might order a bottle or half-bottle of good quality wine, bread, a potage (thick soup), meat and fish, a vegetable entremet, dessert, and a small glass of liqueur. An English writer estimates the average cost of this meal at a fashionable restaurant to be about 9 francs, though one may be able to get a similar meal at other restaurants for 5-7 francs.

These prices, however, should not be considered the average cost of a meal in general, as it is noted that cheaper restaurants serve "four dishes, half-a-bottle of wine, a dessert, and as much bread as the guest chooses to eat, for 30 sous" (less than 2 francs.*) Meals could be bought at nearly any price point, from under 1 franc to over 10. At the low end of this range (though they varied widely), you could find traiteurs, eating houses where you could eat in or order food to be delivered to your house or apartment at a fixed time and price. You could also order cooked meats from a rotisseur, or apparently buy the meat yourself and send it to the rotisseur to have it seasoned and cooked.

An English writer notes of the people who live in Parisian apartments, “Many people living in this way keep no servant at all to themselves; they depend on the porter for taking any message which may come for them when they are not at home; they have their dinner sent by a traiteur at a fixed price by the day, and hire a woman by the week to come and make the beds and sweep the room.” This does sound very much like how Marius lives in the Gorbeau house, and Les Amis probably live similarly. Sometimes traiteurs would be attached to a certain lodging house or hotel, but even without it was sometimes possible to get your meals from wherever you lodged, cooked by the proprietress or her cook, as at the Thénardier inn.

It would of course be remiss to ignore the two locations most prominent in Les Mis—the Café Musain and the Corinthe cabaret. The word "cabaret" had not yet come into its modern usage and is typically translated into English as a public house, or pub. Cafés served coffee, liqueur, breakfast and lunch, with "sandwiches, chops, sausages, eggs, pates, with Burgundy, or some other excellent wine." It is noted that cafés do not usually serve dinner or supper.

Could they cook for themselves? Putting aside the question of should they cook, the answer is...it depends? A writer from the 1860s claims that nearly every apartment had a kitchen, albeit a very small one, basically a tiny room or alcove with a fourneau. But even if you don't have a kitchen, if you have a fire, you can theoretically cook. (And even if you don't, I guess—Marius doesn't have a fire but cooks his own meat, so presumably he uses Mme. Burgon's kitchen?)

Sorry for the long post, but we are talking about food…in France.

* 1 franc = 20 sous, 1 sou = 5 centimes

The New Picture of Paris, from the Latest Observations (includes menu for Grignion's)

Peter Hervé, 1829

A Narrative of Three Years' Residence in France, Principally in the Southern Departments, from the Year 1802 to 1805

Anne Plumptre, 1810

Bentley's Miscellany, Volume 54

1863

Tait's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 1

1834

The Student's Guide to the Hospitals and Medical Instituions of Paris

John Wiblin (M.R.C.S.), 1839

A Rough Sketch of Modern Paris

John Gustavus Lemaistre, 1803

A New Picture of Paris, Or, The Stranger's Guide to the French Metropolis (includes menu for Very's)

Edward Planta, 1831

Galignani's Picture of Paris, Being a Complete Guide to All the Public Buildings (includes menu for Brizzi's and Les Trois Frères Provençaux)

1818

for @sapphicfolch, who asked about school dates!

Since most of Les Amis are (ostensibly) students, it helps to have a grasp of what that actually looked like in 1820s/30s France. There weren’t a ton of choices for courses of study, so I'll only be talking about the law and medical schools here, because those are where we know at least some of the Amis are studying.

both schools have two months of vacation, 1 September to 1 November

possible days off: Sundays, 1st of the year, fête du roi (November 4 for Charles X, May 3 for Louis-Philippe,) Easter Monday, Whit Monday, Shrove Monday and Shrove Tuesday, feast day of Saint-Louis, presumably Christmas?*

*these are the days off for the colléges royaux, not the universities, but since they're mostly religious holidays, I think it's reasonable to assume that at least some of them would be the same?

law school

students must be at least 16 years old at registration

3 years of courses to be a licentiate, plus one optional year to obtain a doctorate

year 1, 1st trimester: natural law, international law, general public law. 2nd trimester: first course in the French Civil Code. 3rd trimester: history of Roman law and French law

year 2, 1st trimester: institutes of Roman law. 2nd trimester: second course in Civil Code. 3rd trimester: course in civil procedure

year 3, 1st trimester: third course in Civil Code. 2nd trimester: course in commercial law. 3rd trimester: course in administrative law.

however, it was completely possible that this process could take more than three years due to failing examinations, losing inscriptions, etc.

what happened to Bossuet was a real thing. Professors had to do a roll call twice a month. If a student answered for another student, they lost their inscription. If they failed to answer twice in three months, they lost their inscription.

medical school

two sessions, winter (1st Monday of November - 31 March) and summer (first Monday of April - 31 October) (vacation occurs during summer session)

dissections limited to the winter session, for obvious reasons

two weeks off for Christmas and between sessions

four years of courses with 16 terms, plus one year for examinations and thesis

year 1, winter session: anatomy, physiology, chemistry. summer session: medical pathology or hygiene, external pathology, botany.

year 2, winter: anatomy, physiology, practical medicine. summer: hygiene, pharmacy, external pathology, external clinics.

year 3, winter: practical medicine, external clinics. summer: materia medica, internal clinics.

year 4, winter: internal clinics, history of medicine, internal pathology. summer: legal medicine, clinique de perfectionnement, midwifery.

Some notes on the internat, since we know Combeferre was an interne:

In order to get hands-on hospital experience, students could take the highly competitive examinations for the externat and internat in November. Internes were lodged in the hospital, monitored patients, did night duties, assisted surgeons and physicians, and could act in their place in case of emergency. They received a stipend of 500 francs a year. Externes were not lodged in the hospital and performed more minor tasks, and were not paid.

must be at least 18 and provide proof of enrollment to take the exam to be an externe

internes are chosen from the existing pool of externes in a separate examination

must have at least one year of service as an externe to take the exam to be an interne

role of externes lasted two years, role of internes lasted 4 years

internes moved around to different hospitals to learn the different specialties and experience in both medicine and surgery

about 100 externes, 20-40 internes appointed each year. Selection of internes was highly competitive and political, aspiring students sought support from professors and doctors to gain an advantage.

I strongly recommend all of these sources to anyone hoping to go into more detail on this topic, they're a wealth of information and I couldn't put everything into this post.

Medical Students in England and France, 1815-1858

Florent Palluault, 2003

Code universitaire, ou Lois, statuts et règlemens de l'Université royale de France

Ambroise Rendu, 1835

A General View of the Present System of Public Education in France

David Johnston, 1827

Medical Guide to Paris: A description of the principal Hospitals of Paris