Their faces almost touched. Javert’s look was terrible.

❤️ Georges Pontmercy/Abbé Mabeuf❤️

Be honest now: did you remember that Mabeuf had a brother?

Abbé Mabeuf was the curé of Vernon, where Georges lived. He was also the only person Georges saw regularly, and they seemed close. When the colonel died, the only people by his side were his servant and the curé - Marius sees him sobbing over the dead body.

If you think calling this a ship is a stretch, consider the fragment below:

This caused the curé to regard him with veneration and tenderness, and the colonel, on his side, became fond of the curé. And moreover, when both are sincere and good, no men so penetrate each other, and so amalgamate with each other, as an old priest and an old soldier. At bottom, the man is the same. [3.3.2]

:)

❤️ Georges Pontmercy/Mabeuf ❤️

That man, who had so manly an air, yet who was weeping like a woman, had struck the warden. That face had clung to his mind. [3.3.2]

Monsieur Mabeuf was a warden in the church of Saint-Sulpice, where he met a peculiar man - one who attended the mass to watch his son from afar. By chance, they met again later in Vernon. There, Mabeuf came to know his entire story.

When he made Pontmercy’s acquaintance, this sympathy had existed between the colonel and himself—that what the colonel did for flowers, he did for fruits. [3.5.4]

In a way, they traded deaths: the old soldier died alone among his flowers. The botanist, perhaps inspired by a certain veteran, perished on the battlefield.

In a better world, they shared a garden and the custody of Marius.

Henry Lloyd-Hughes as Georges Pontmercy