Nintendo Switch friends with Denny's (Yes, the restaurant. Yes, I have photo evidence. Possibly my greatest accomplishment.)
Got an ongoing "#word of the week" told in story format. Each word of the week creates a new addition to the ridiculous tale I'm slowly spinning. I'll try to get around to making a master post or something at some point so people can start at the beginning more easily if they want. If I ever do, I'll drop it here.
Currently doing a blind read-through of Les Mis. I am reading two places in the book at once, so be cautious with what you mention if you interact with my ongoing posts. Please avoid spoilers. I started simultaneously in volume 3 and 1, and have not only made it through 1.2 in the front half so far. Yes, it's a strange and backwards way to read. Yes, I'm doing it anyway. Tag for this adventure is #a brick to the head
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Omg I love this piece. Grace the hanging man, content with his life but cannot avoid the changes coming; the ship his noose, the rope that binds him to his fate; the blood red stars beside him, Olesya and YĂĄo the angels haunting him in the background. Eva Stratt, the one who holds it all on her back, the world is literally on her shoulders, the Petrova line on her neck. She will not falter, cannot afford to move, and yet still she glares at us. Eva challenges us, daring us to ask if we could do better, if we could hold her burden for even a fraction of the time.
Eve, the mother of sin, who held the world in her hands and was cursed for not knowing.
Eva, director of the task force, who now holds the world, and still must curse man to save it.
In the end, it always falls on a woman. I could never hate you Eva Stratt
Chapter title (sigh) shows we are back to Marius: "Looking for a Girl in a Hat, Marius Encounters a Man in a Cap"
Am I allowed to hope the Patron-Minette just... Takes him out.
Winter came. Neither Monsieur Leblanc nor the girl had set foot again in the Luxembourg Gardens. . . . He kept searching, he searched everywhere. He found nothing. He was no longer Marius the impassioned dreamer, the man of resolve, ardent and steadfast, the bold challenger of destiny, the future-building intellectual, the youthful mind with so many plans, projects, ideas, so much pride and determination. He was a stray dog. He fell into a dark dejection. It was all over. Work was tedious to him, walking tired him.
He was still a thinker, for he could not be otherwise, but he no longer took pleasure in his thoughts. To all their incessant whispered suggestions he replied gloomily, âWhatâs the use?â
Marius falls into depression. No one to blame but yourself there, bud. Also when was he ever a future-building intellectual with plans and projects. Wasn't he always just wandering around, dreaming and content with poorness???
Why did I follow her? I was so happy just to see her! She looked at me. Wasnât that wonderful? She appeared to love me. Wasnât that everything? What more did I want? After that, thereâs nothing else. Iâve been absurd. Itâs my faultâ, et cetera, et cetera.
Oh good he actually realized it for himself!
Courfeyrac, in whom he confided nothing (that was his nature) but who more or less guessed everything (and that was his nature), began by congratulating him on being in love â to Courfeyracâs great astonishment, it has to be said. Then, seeing Marius in this melancholy, he eventually said to him, âI see that you are after all only human. Look, come to La Chaumière.â
HAHAHA oh Courfeyrac, once again making these chapters tolerable, if only for a moment.
Once, . . . Marius allowed himself to be taken along by Courfeyrac, Bossuet and Grantaire to the public dance at Sceaux, hoping â what a pipe dream! â that he might perhaps find her there. He did not, of course, see the girl he was looking for. âYet this is the place where all lost women are to be found,â Grantaire grumbled privately. Marius left his friends at the dance and walked home alone, weary, feverish, his eyes blurred and sad in the dark;
This boy catches fevers over emotions like none other
He reverted to living more and more alone, distraught, disconsolate, totally obsessed with his inner anguish, pacing back and forth in his pain like a wolf in a trap, looking everywhere for the girl who was gone, besotted with love.
Oh no he's obsessed with being depressed now. This guy can't do anything without throwing himself obsessively into it, not even being sad, can he?
Another time, he had a chance encounter that made a curious impression on him. . . . he passed a man dressed as a worker, in a long-peaked cap with locks of very white hair showing beneath it. Marius was struck by the magnificence of this white hair . . . Strange to say, he thought he recognized Monsieur Leblanc. It was the same hair, the same profile in so as far as it could be seen under the cap, the same bearing, only sadder. But why these working manâs clothes? What did this mean? What did this disguise signify? Marius was very surprised. When he recovered, his first impulse was to follow the man. . . . But he thought of this too late, the man was not there any more. . . . This encounter preoccupied him for several days, then faded from his mind. âAfter all,â he said to himself, âit was probably just someone who looked like him.â
It's either, yeah, someone who looks similar, or heck, maybe this guy IS secretly a working man to give his daughter a better life, but he doesn't want the social stigma.
Plus đ¤ if this dude IS ThĂŠnardier according to one of my new theories, he struggles with money and has a criminal history, so it could be related to that...? Except I doubt it is ThĂŠnardier because the guy sucks WAY too much to actually be going to a garden regularly with his daughter.
Oh yeah I was so caught up in being upset about that I forgot to revise my guess. I mean, I suppose it's not entirely off the table but... like, Madame ThĂŠnardier dotes on her daughters, sure, but is her husband?? I haven't read of it yet. Unless something happens that changes him. Hm. Guess I'll have to wait and see... as usual.
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. . . shedding their personalities as another would remove a false nose at a masked ball, sometimes so shrinking themselves as to be one sole individual, sometimes so multiplying themselves that Coco-Lacour himself mistook them for a throng.
These four men were not four men. They were a kind of mysterious four-headed robber operating all over Paris. They were the monstrous polyp of evil dwelling in societyâs crypt.
Thanks to their widespread coverage and their underlying network of contacts, Babet, Gueulemer, Claquesous and Montparnasse held the exclusive contract for premeditated attacks in the dĂŠpartement of the Seine. . . . The men of nocturnal imagination who dreamed up these schemes came to them to have them carried out, supplying the four ruffians with a skeleton plot, which the latter took charge of staging. They worked from a synopsis. They were always in a position to provide the right personnel for any crime in need of a helping hand â and sufficiently lucrative. If there was some villainy afoot seeking manpower they would subcontract their accomplices to it. They had a troupe of shady actors available for every underworld drama.
Once again loving the analogies. Becoming whoever they need to be, seeming as though they're one person or an entire legion, with no one knowing for sure the number, they end up turning into some sort of multi-headed creature.
So they're crooks for hire. When everyone is coming to you because you're so good at what you do, you can demand a pretty big cut. They've got themselves set up pretty well.
Once again thinking of Count Olaf's theater troupe.
Boulatruelle, the road-mender who has already made a brief appearance.
Uhhhhhhhhhhh not an alias I've come across yet HAHA guess I'll get there eventually
Extremely curious if anyone has a list of any possible meanings behind the many aliases listed here.
What has become of these men? They still exist. They have always existed. . . . And as long as society is what it is, they will be what they are. Under the dark roof of their cellars they are forever being reborn of societyâs oozing slime. They keep returning, these ever identical spectres, only they no longer have the same name and are no longer inside the same skin.
They seem to be not men, but forms made of living mist. They look as if they are usually at one with the shadows, are indistinct from them, have no other soul but the gloom, and it is only momentarily, for the purpose of living a monstrous life for a few minutes, that they have broken out of the darkness.
What is needed to make these noxious spirits disappear? Light. Floods of light. No bat withstands the dawn. Illuminate societyâs underside.
Ughhhhhh Hugo your writing is just so good sometimes. Sometimes you got me wanting to pull your hair outâ
I meant to say mine. But you know what. Sure.
âand then other times you write something like this, and I am just delighted by it.
I know you like Sailor Moon, but what other mahou shoujo anime have you watched? Have you seen Madoka?
Oh absolutely I have. Homura is my girl đ
Let's see... A good number of these I haven't seen in years so I don't remember them superbly well, but: Saint Tail, Tokyo Mew Mew, Shugo Chara, Princess Tutu, Cardcaptor Sakura, uhh boy there's definitely some others I tried out on a bored afternoon but I can't remember names now.
I've dabbled in Mermaid Melody and Pretty Cure, can't remember why I never continued either of them. Might've just picked the wrong Precure to start with, I've heard some are a lot better than others. Really oughta get around to trying Heartcatch or Splash Star or something, maybe those would be better than whichever one I tried.
The skeevy vibes got worse immediately with the chapter title: First Sketch of Two Shady Characters
It was a very poor mouse that had been caught, but the cat is happy even with a scraggy mouse.
Who were these ThĂŠnardiers?
Let us say a few words about them right now. We will complete the sketch later.
A few words = at least one chapter of several pages long minimum
Complete the sketch later = also at least one chapter of several pages long minimum
These individuals belonged to that bastard class between the so-called middle class and the so-called lower class, which is made up of crass people who have come up in the world and clever people who have gone down, and combines some of the faults of the latter with nearly all the vices of the former without having the generous impulse of the working man or the law-abiding decency of the solid citizen.
Alright that probably says everything we need to set things uâ
They were of that stunted nature that easily turns monstrous if some dark passion is by chance kindled in them. There was in the woman the essence of a bully and in the man the makings of a scoundrel. Both were most highly susceptible to the sort of hideous progress that occurs in the development of evil. There are souls like lobsters, continually retreating into the shadows, retrogressing rather than advancing through life, using experience to add to their monstrosity, becoming ever more wicked and ever more imbued with an intensifying foulness. This man and this woman were such souls.
Okay so they're actually Worseâ˘, and that's probably enough to set up their charaâ
[2 pages later]
[okay rewinding though I need to read those]
If he was to be believed, this fellow ThĂŠnardier had been a soldier, a sergeant, he said. He had probably taken part in the campaign of 1815, and had even acquitted himself quite bravely, it would seem. We shall see later what the truth of this was.
𤨠Now hold on. Now hold on a second. This skeevy guy is said to have saved Georges Pontmercy, BY Georges Pontmercy. He had to have like... Been there? Somehow? For Georges to even know his name...??? Oh boy.
for he knew how to do a little of everything, badly.
HAHA
Later, when her Romantically cascading hair began to turn grey, when out of Pamela emerged Megaera, the ThĂŠnardier woman was just a nasty fat woman with a taste for silly novels.
(spritzing Hugo with water) BAD HUGO. STOP THAT.
Ăponine and Azelma... If I'm understanding this text right, it sounds like Hugo is saying that M ThĂŠnardier is so lost in her romance(?) novels or whatever that she named her kids something kind of over the top fictional? Like kids getting named Khaleesi or Anakin.
I personally think they're both nice names, but I am not French and not from the early 19th century. Though Ăponine reminds me of Epona. Is there horse origins in that name? Azelma reminds me of a flower. Probably because Azalea.
Anyway, footnote says Ăponine is inspired by the name Eponina, aka "a woman famed for her heroic devotion to her husband Julius Sabinus, a Gaul who led a rebellion against the Romans in AD 69." There was no actual note on the name Azelma though, just the author implied to have had to do with where ThĂŠnardier got the name, so if someone has a bit more background on the character or person Azelma was taken from, I'd be kinda curious.
So Cosette or Ăponine... shall either of them be our Lanoire? I wonder... But I guess I'll find out one day.
1.4.3
Just being wicked is not enough to prosper.
Well yeah. There's a whole song about that.
The following month they were again in need of money. The woman took Cosetteâs clothes to Paris and pawned them for sixty francs. Once that sum was spent, the ThĂŠnardiers came to regard the little girl as no more than a child they had taken in out of charity, and treated her accordingly. As she no longer had any clothes of her own they dressed her in the little ThĂŠnardier girlsâ cast-off petticoats and chemises, that is to say, in rags. They fed her on everyoneâs scraps â a little better than the dog, a little worse than the cat. In fact the cat and the dog were her habitual dining companions. Cosette ate with them under the table, from a wooden bowl like theirs.
I'M????
Bro what the heck
At the end of the first six months the mother sent seven francs for the seventh month, and continued sending her payments quite punctually month by month. Before the year was over ThĂŠnardier said, âA fine favour sheâs doing us! How does she expect us to manage on her seven francs?â And he wrote demanding twelve francs. Led by them to believe that her child was happy âand doing wellâ, the mother submitted to the demand and sent the twelve francs.
Reloading the cannon. New target on the hit list.
Certain natures are incapable of loving on the one hand without hating on the other. Madame ThĂŠnardier loved her two daughters passionately, which meant she hated the outsider. . . . Cosette could not make a single move that did not bring down on her a hailstorm of violent and undeserved punishments. Sweet defenceless creature, to whom this world and God must have been a complete mystery, incessantly punished, scolded, ill-used and beaten, seeing beside her two little creatures just like her who lived within the glow of a kindly light!
Madame ThĂŠnardier was cruel to Cosette. Ăponine and Azelma were cruel. Children at that age are simply copies of their mother. They come in a smaller size, that is all.
Hoping they grow hoping they change hoping they improve đđđđđđđđđđđ
Meanwhile, having learned by who knows what obscure channels that the child was probably illegitimate and that the mother could not acknowledge her as her own, ThĂŠnardier demanded fifteen francs a month, saying âthe creatureâ was growing up and â eating â, and threatening to turn her out. âSheâd better not give me any trouble!â he shouted. âIâll send her brat back to her and her little secrets will blow up in her face. I must have more.â
Die Faster.
before she was even five, she became the household servant.
LEAVE HER ALOOOONE
If this mother had returned to Montfermeil at the end of those three years, she would not have recognized her child. So pretty and fresh when she first came to that house, Cosette was now thin and pale. She had an indefinably anxious look. âSly,â said the ThĂŠnardiers.
Injustice had made her resentful and misery had made her ugly. All that was left of her prettiness were those lovely eyes that were pitiful to behold because, huge as they were, the sadness that was visible in them appeared so much the greater.
Stop....
It was a heart-breaking thing to see in winter, this poor child, not yet six years old, shivering in her tattered old rags of coarse cloth, sweeping the street before daylight with an enormous broom in her tiny red hands and a teardrop in those big eyes.
Locally, they called her Alouette.* The common people, who like figurative images, had chosen to give this name to this tiny creature, no bigger than a bird, trembling, frightened and shivering, the first one awake every morning, in the house and in the village, always out on the street or in the fields before daybreak.
Only, poor Alouette never sang.
* âLâalouetteâ is the morning bird âthe larkâ.
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Why is almost every description of a woman in this book so far that isn't praising her up and down for being an angel like:
"From a distance, one might have thought they were viewing a hippo. Up close, one might have become certain they were viewing a hippo. And if they stood there for a few minutes in observation, they'd realize the truth was even worse: it was a woman. A woman who was more worthless than a cow, for at least a cow could be milked and butchered."
and
"She looked like a corpse; a corpse that would have taken up the spaces of three grave sites to bury. And if excavator vehicles had been invented at this point, the grave diggers would have been begging for one in order to make it easier to dig the 15-foot-deep hole required."
and
"It was a hideous, chain smoking old man, withered like a single tall grass pushed down by brutal sun in a waterless land, except it was actually the most disgusting woman one may have ever seen."
I'm beginning to think Hugo might have invented Yo Mama jokes. Good grief.
New book! "Entrusting Sometimes Means Giving Away", with the chapter title being "One Mother Meets Another".
I would like to believe this means Fantine will meet a fellow mother who can take her under her wing, but that is probably wishful thinking.
Thénardier 𫵠the name that keeps haunting the narrative later down the line once Marius is in the picture, him and his stupid debt
Seems like it's time to finally meet them.
Hugo: There's a massive front segment of a timber-transporting trailer sitting out front, blocking the road, covered in mud and rust.
Hugo:
Why was that trailer front section standing there in the street? First, to block the street. Then, also, to rust away completely.
HAHAHA
The centre of the chain hung quite close to the ground beneath the axle, and on that particular evening, sitting coupled in the curve of it, as on the rope of a swing, were two little girls exquisitely entwined, one about two and a half years old, the other eighteen months, the younger in the arms of the elder. A cleverly knotted neckerchief prevented them from falling off. A mother had seen this dreadful chain and said, âNow, thereâs something for my children to play on.â
Well, she's clever and savvy. Maybe she can teach Fantine a thing or two <- still hoping against all hopes
One had chestnut hair, the other, brown.
Wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait
Hold on (rapidly flipping virtual pages)
LANOIRE HAS CHESTNUT HAIR. WHAT YEAR IS THIS AGAIN?
Hugo went on about 1817, the trailer is from 1818, so somewhere around this time, presumably?? If we're moving on shortly after previous events, 18-19, maybe, so... let's see, Lanoire turned 15 in 1831.... 1816 ish birth year.. and... One of these girls is about 2.5 years old.
LANOIRE IS THAT YOU????
Wait wait no way hold on has Leblanc been this ThĂŠnardier guy this whole time???????? Right under Marius' nose? Did something happen to the mother? And what about her sister? Are they hiding out from something?? Marius hasn't been able to find a speck of info about em, maybe they're on the run? Undercover? Oh I have so many questions.
It's a miracle anything stuck with me from those chapters, but I remember reading chestnut hair and thinking about how I always imagine a lighter brown for some reason when it's more of a rich brown with a strong reddish tone to it.
The setting sun commingled with this joy, and there was nothing to match the charm of this capriccio of chance that had made a cherubimâs swing of a Titanâs chain.
Such funny imagery
Oh, this description.... B(
As for the mother, she was a poor and sorry sight. She was dressed like a seamstress reverting to peasant again. She was young. Was she beautiful? Maybe, but the way she was dressed it was hard to tell. Her hair looked very thick but was austerely hidden under an ugly, thick-woven, close-fitting coif tied under the chin, with one blonde lock escaping. Laughter shows off beautiful teeth if you have them, but she did not laugh. Her eyes looked as if they had not been dry for a very long time. She was pale. She seemed very weary and a little unwell. . . . A large blue handkerchief, such as war veterans use for blowing their noses, folded into a fichu, unflatteringly concealed her figure. She had weathered hands all covered with freckles, a forefinger hardened and roughened by the needle, a cloak of coarse brown woollen stuff, a calico gown and heavy shoes. It was Fantine.
I just gotta put it side by side with one of her original descriptions.
As for Fantine, she was the essence of joy. Her splendid teeth had evidently been provided by God for a purpose â laughter. She preferred to carry in her hand her little straw hat with its long white ribbons, rather than wear it on her head. Her thick blonde hair, inclined to fan out and easily falling loose, and which she had to keep pinning up again, seemed made for Galateaâs flight under the willows. . . . There was something ineffably charming and resplendent about her entire outfit. . . Fantineâs canezou, with its transparencies, its suggestiveness and its modesty, at once concealing and revealing, seemed an alluring contrivance of decency . . . Stunning to look at, with a delicate profile, eyes of deep blue, fleshy eyelids, small arched feet, beautifully turned wrists and ankles, a white complexion showing here and there the azure-tinted branching of the veins, fresh young cheeks . . . Fantine was beautiful without really being aware of it.
The way they both start with "as for" is killing me a little bit.
Ten months had elapsed since the âgreat larkâ.
What had happened in those ten months? We can guess.
After abandonment came hardship. Fantine had immediately lost contact with Favourite, ZĂŠphine and Dahlia. The bond, once broken on the menâs side, unravelled between the women. They would have been greatly astonished a fortnight later had anyone said they were friends. There was no reason to be any more.
I mean, I'm not sure they were really any good for her in the first place...
. . . she found herself totally isolated, minus the habit of work and plus the taste for pleasure. Led by her relationship with Tholomyès to disdain the modest trade she knew, she had neglected any openings. They were now closed to her. Nothing to fall back on. Fantine could hardly read and could not write. She had been taught as a child only to sign her name. She got a public letter-writer to write to Tholomyès, a first letter, then a second, then a third. Tholomyès had not replied to any of them.
One day Fantine heard some gossiping women say, while looking at her daughter, âDoes anyone take these children seriously! Everyone shrugs their shoulders at such children!â Then she thought of Tholomyès who shrugged off his child and did not take this innocent creature seriously. And her feelings darkened towards that man. But what was she to do? She was at a loss to know who to turn to now.
I need to consciously relax my jaw. I am gritting my teeth. I need to stop doing that.
Wait, if she's going back to her hometown and feels like she needs to conceal her "wrong-doing" (having a kid with no husband), then...
Looking at the book title again....
I have A Feeling about this.
We shall have no further occasion to speak of Monsieur FÊlix Tholomyès.
You liar. 3.4 says otherwise.
All we wish to say is that twenty years later, under King Louis-Philippe, he was a well established provincial lawyer, wealthy and influential, a sound voter and a very severe magistrate; still a man of pleasure.
WHY DO YOU WISH TO SAY THAT? I DO NOT WISH TO KNOW OF HIS SUCCESS. ONLY HIS FAILURE AND DEMISE AND IF THAT DOES NOT EXIST, TELL ME NOTHING SO I MAY DREAM.
Being very tall and built like a walking colossus such as you might expect to find in a fairground, this woman, who was squatting down, had she stood upright might perhaps have scared the traveller from the outset, undermined her trustfulness and forestalled what we have to relate. Someone sitting instead of standing â destinies hang on this.
(looks at the camera flatly)
Hugo be normal about the appearance of a woman if her appearance is at all described challenge: impossible
What the grave-digger does becomes amusing when done by a child.
HAHA he just says the most off the wall things sometimes.
Squints. Cosette is the same age as the eldest ThĂŠnardier.... What color is her hair... Hey what color was Lanoire's eyes....
(more page flipping)
BLUE
Okay now we've got two contenders, two girls, both of the right age group to be Marius' Lanoire, one with the matching blue eyes description, one with the matching chestnut hair description. I wonder if I'll find out of either of them has The Other Telling Trait (though perhaps Hugo just likes blue-eyed, chestnut-haired characters. Lanoire could be unrelated even still.)
Oh, here it is....
. . . And then it wonât be long before I return. Will you look after my child for me?â
Why do I feel like she's going to go off and die and leave Cosette motherless. And what are these folk supposed to do if she can't pay em every month anymore?? I mean, they're not Myriel. I'm not going to expect them to keep paying for an extra mouth. Urghhh in the words of Star Wars [insert character here], I have a bad feeling about this.
Dang Madame ThÊnardier is good at mental math. And her husband is good at increasing the price 𤨠I suppose that's why she's good at math. Has to keep calculating new prices all the time.
Iâll earn some money there, and as soon as I have a little Iâll come back to fetch my little angel.â
She might as well just start wearing her hair in a side braid. Forget it. Death flags everywhere. (head in hands)
. . . and set out the following morning, intending to return soon.
STOP!! STOP REMARKING UPON HOW SHE INTENDS TO RETURN SOON!!! She's already doomed leave her alooooone
When Cosetteâs mother had gone the man said to the woman, âThatâll pay off my debt for a hundred and ten francs that falls due tomorrow. I was fifty francs short. You know, Iâd have had the bailiff on to me with a warrant? That was a clever mouse-trap you laid there with your babes.â
âWithout realizing it,â said the woman.
From 1830 to 1835 a gang of four ruffians, Claquesous, Gueulemer, Babet and Montparnasse, ruled Parisâs third level down.
Here we meet our new cast. Gonna be fun trying to remember these new names.
Being of such a sculptural build, Gueulemer might have subdued monsters â but had found it more expedient to be one.
HAHA oh man. Hugo and his clever lines.
[Babet] had been a clown with Bobèche and a mountebank with Bobino.
Hey @littleblueclown
He was a man with designs, a fine talker, who underlined his smiles and put quotation marks around his gestures.
I'm not 100% sure what meaning Hugo intended hereâmy guess is that he got people to focus on his charms ("a fine talker, who underlined his smiles") but... the quotation marks thing is what throws me.... Maybe it's just about exaggerating his gestures? I'm going to phone a friend with multiple translations. Hold on.
"He was an affected man, a great talker, who italicized his smiles, and quoted his gestures." - Wilbour
"He was a man of purpose, a fine talker, who underlined his smiles and accentuated his gestures." - Hapgood
I'll settle for exaggeratedly charming. Which, for somebody who was a clown and then later a vaudeville actor, it's no wonder he's got that theater kid in him.
He had been married and had children. He did not know what had become of his wife and offspring. He had lost them the way a person loses a handkerchief.
Hugo sure has a way with analogies.
What was Claquesous? He was night. He would wait until the sky had painted itself black before making an appearance.
Okay Marius' green coat
In the pitch dark, he spoke to his accomplices only with his back turned to them. Was his name Claquesous? No. He would say, âMy name is Not-at-all.â If a candle was produced he put on a mask. He was a ventriloquist. Babet used to say, âClaquesous is a nocturne for two voices.â
What a fascinating character. A fascinating cast in general so far. Something about them all is reminding me of Count Olaf's squad. The bizarre, dark, and criminal combined.
Montparnasse was a child, not twenty years of age, with an attractive face, lips like cherries, splendid black hair, the brightness of spring in his eyes. . . . He was good-looking, effeminate, graceful, strong, languid, ferocious.
Ah, an evil Enjolras
Montparnasse was a fashion-plate, living in poverty and committing murder. The cause of all this adolescentâs crimes was the desire to be well dressed.
Or perhaps an evil Courfeyrac
Few prowlers were so dreaded as Montparnasse. At eighteen he already had several killings behind him.
Yikes
Curled, pomaded, nipped in at the waist, with a womanâs hips, the chest and shoulders of a Prussian officer, murmured admiration from the boulevard trollops around him, cravat deftly knotted, a cudgel in his pocket, a flower in his buttonhole â such was this death-dealing dandy.
An evil ThĂŠoduleâ (Kidding. Just thinking about ThĂŠo's "girl's waist" and this guy's "woman's hips")
I am probably more charmed by the description of a death-dealing dandy than I should be. I've always enjoyed alliteration, but it's also fun to have two things combined that don't quite suit each other too.
I'm quite charmed in general by this entire group. Character-wise, they sound like an interesting bunch to explore.
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Back to my savior, "The Lowest Depths". It's nice being able to enjoy some pros about the sewers of society after having to endure everything with Marius and Tholomyès. I don't know how long it will last but I'm determined to enjoy it while I can.
They are brutally voracious, that is to say, ravenous, not tyrant-like but tiger-like.
This is a really neat comparison. Tyrants are in positions of power, or else there's nothing for them to be a tyrant over. They are noticeable, and they are often times aware of the law, but above the law because of the power they wield. Tigers, well, there is no law to a tiger. You can try to catch a tiger that's roaming a city and lock it up because it's a danger to others, but the tiger has no sense of right and wrong. No morals. A tiger is a tiger and it will attack and eat whenever it feels like it. And you certainly won't know there's a tiger stalking you down until it's already upon you. No overt, controlling power being exercised, just a silent threat that could come at you at any given moment if you're in the wrong place at the wrong time.
We have just seen, in Book Four, one of the chambers of the upper mine, of the great political, revolutionary and philosophical tunnel. There, as we have just said, everything is noble, honourable, admirable, honest. There, certainly, mistakes might be made, mistakes are made, but so much heroism is involved, any erring is to be respected. All the work done there has a name: Progress.
The moment has come to take a glimpse at other depths, hideous depths.
Ooh are we about to get the antithesis to the Amis?
I wonder for what reason we have departed from Marius and are going to investigate the criminal underworld. It is probably going to be a surprise tool that will help us later so to speak, but I wonder for what. I feel like it would be odd for us not to return to Marius and his love story after we're done here, even though I would love to hope otherwise, so I'm assuming this relates back to that in some way. Unless we go to the Amis after this, and then circle back to Marius after that? Since those in this third level, so to speak, have been pretty much directly compared to the Amis as being their opposites, this could be setting the stage for some sort of conflict between the two groups. Alternatively, since Marius had his dealings with the Amis, perhaps he'll next have his dealings with the antithesis group. He sort of rejected the Amis... I can't really foresee him accepting the offerings of terrible criminals, but also... He's dumb sometimes. He might get tricked by them or something. Or maybe Lanoire gets accosted by bad guys, and the idiot stops lurking around and does something and that's how they actually properly come to interact.
There's a variety of ways this could go. Could very well be a secret nth option I'm not even aware of.
Someone stick a sock in his mouth. Who named this chapter "Tholomyès Wisdom"?? I'm not sure that second word is completely applicable.
âO ZĂŠphine, O JosĂŠphine, with your more than unconventional prettiness youâd be attractive if you werenât crumpled. You look like a pretty face that someone has sat on by mistake.
This was so uncalled for
sugar is a salt
O wise one, yes this is. So very most definitely true. Definitely.
Gentlemen, make conquests. Steal your darlings from each other without remorse. Change partners. There are no friends in matters of love. Wherever thereâs a pretty woman thereâs open hostility. No quarter given, all-out war! A pretty woman is a casus belli. A pretty woman is flagrant provocation. All the invasions of history have been brought about by petticoats. Woman is manâs entitlement.
x100
Kiss me, Fantine!â He got the wrong girl, and kissed Favourite.
I cannot stand this man I cannot stand this man I cannot stand this man I cannot stand this man
1.3.8
Horse mention 𫵠"Death of a Horse" maybe this is the horse that haunts me
Fantine, I plead with you to leave this man behind. Why are you in love with him when he talks about other women all the time.
Why.... Why do I feel like these guys all just left. Like. Permanently. "Here's the surprise! It's a disappearing act."
1.3.9
Can everyone stop dragging Fantine for being naive please, guys, c'mon. I don't think they actually like her that much, with how they keep making jokes at her expense.
The waiter replied, âItâs a note those gentlemen left for you ladies.â
âWhy didnât you bring it straight away?â
âBecause,â said the waiter, âthe gentlemen told me not to deliver it to you ladies before an hour had gone by.â
Oh boy
O loving mistresses!
We would have you know that we have parents. Parents are not something you are very familiar with. In the civil code for respectable children, they are called fathers and mothers.
I've had it up to (my hand raises up into the sun) here with these guys
Now, these parents are complaining, these old folk are appealing to us, these good men and women are calling us prodigal sons, they want us to come home, and are offering to kill calves for us. Being dutiful, we are obeying them. By the time you read this, five spirited horses will be taking us back to our papas and mamas. We are decamping, as Bossuet puts it. We are leaving. We have left. We are fleeing in the arms of Laffitte and on the wings of Caillard. The Toulouse stage-coach wrests us from the abyss, and the abyss is you, O our beautiful darlings! We are returning to order, to duty, to society, at a brisk pace, at the speed of eight miles an hour. It is important for the country that like everyone else we should be prefects, family men, rural police officers and state councillors. Respect us. We are sacrificing ourselves. Lament us briefly and replace us rapidly. If this letter distresses you, tear it to pieces. Farewell.
For nearly two years we have made you happy. Do not hold it against us.
Signed:
Blachevelle.
Fameuil.
Listolier.
FÊlix Tholomyès.
P.S. The meal is paid for.
This is worse than breaking up with someone over a text. And since it was Tholomyès idea specifically, the man who is so into Spanishâ
Favourite was the first to break the silence. âWell, anyway,â she exclaimed, âitâs a good joke!â
Guys... no..........
Fantine laughed with them.
An hour later, back in her room, she wept. He was, as we said, her first love â she had given herself to this Tholomyès as to a husband. And the poor girl had a child.
