#3.8.17

The opposing teams set up their respective sides of the board.

Marius isn’t afraid but he’s saddled with chronic existential anxiety. It’s quite a potent combination of moral outrage and self doubt he’s working with. He works like he’s been waiting for a situation like this all his life, the whole time wracked with the uncertainty of the aftermath.

“The mouse-trap is open. The cats are ready.” The amusing thing here is that Thenardier is still expecting it to be a mouse walking into his trap. We’ve been tearing through animal comparisons at quite a pace these last couple of chapters, birds of prey, dogs, wolves, rats, cats, mice. Thenardier is certainly the predator he claims he is, but he’s never met his match before.

Marius peers into the mouse trap. “All this would have made one, who had known nothing of what was going forward, waver between a very sinister idea and a very simple idea.” Either someone is setting up an amateur smithy in their wooden room or there’s an extortion plot in the works. We’ll have to keep an eye on the lighting design in this scene. The demon in the red light of the hearth and the moonlight just barely peeking in through the window.

We learn that none of the Thenardier woman can see even five feet in front of them. This really is unbelievable. Marius has stolen all of Bossuet’s good fortune from him for this night alone. He’s crouched on his dresser like—

Hugo is going full on with the symbolism here, with Thenardier being compared to a demon with a red and blue light shining from the brazier. Moonlight and the air are called the heavenly symbols, so it feels like the moonlight might help against the criminals but in the next moment the moonlight is aiding Madame Thenardier to see without a candle, so I’m not sure if that is what Hugo is going for. Perhaps the moonlight is only looking down as a neutral character as in Waterloo. I like the descriptions of the moonlight with the red light making the Thenardier place look like Hell.

An old lantern of a Diogenes turned Cartouche was placed there. Diogenes gets another mention after the mines chapter. This time with Cartouche who was a criminal. Diogenes’ whole thing was using a lantern as an allegory of his search for an honest man but instead here he has found Cartouche. That’s a very nice turn of phrase Hugo.   But also, that that lantern is being used for evil purposes. Light becomes sinister when used by people who would only employ it for those purposes. 

The moonlight is enough to obscure Marius in his hiding place but also shows Madame Thenardier the way. The candle also illuminates the angles in Thenardier’s face making him look even more sinister. This light magnifies Thenardiers and their evil.  Marius also learns that they bought some items with his five francs, which include some tools that he is not sure about and some rope ladder.

3.8.18

The dark lantern and the light is really working as a signal between Madame Thenardier and Thenardier. The light falls on her while making sure that the benefactor cannot see the signals. Light is being used for evil purposes here it seems to me. The red light in the streets also confirms the fact that this is one of the circles of Hell that they are in.

The whole atmosphere is pretty eerie and gothic. The white snow and the moonlight, the red glow inside, the light from a single candle throwing darkness everywhere inside the rooms. The Gorbeau house itself having a deserted barren look. Jondrette with his sinister smile and Madame Jondrette compared to a she-wolf. Jondrettes have been compared to wolves quite a lot. The stage is set for something which will go very wrong, especially since the Jondrettes also stole Marius’ chairs. But Marius is waiting hidden behind the partition hoping for information about his sweetheart somehow in the middle of a robbery/serious crime in the desolate landscape of the Gorbeau tenement. Marius always has his priorities right.

3.8.19

Madame Thenardier reveals Jondrette’s name, which probably alerts the Monsieur Leblanc but then Jondrette tries to cover up the slip up. They are not particularly good actors though. M Leblanc notices the criminals slipping quietly inside the house even though Fabantou pretends they are friends who are chimney sweeps. Monsieur Leblanc obviously suspects that is not the case, but he is still sitting very composed. Thenardier tries to sell him a terrible painting, the inn sign of Waterloo, which is pretty much worthless. Thenardier’s art is still of the superficial nature.  

Thenardier also renounces Revolution/anarchism. Donougher has anarchism but Hapgood has Bousingot which was associated with Romantics, especially Petit Cenacle who called themselves Jeunes-France and were called Bousingots, or rabble rousers by the public, O’Neddy wrote a letter explaining this. Bousingot for Thenardier would roughly mean a young revolutionary in 1830s.  So Thenardier is rejecting both Romanticism and Revolutionary fervour in favour of classicism in his art.  That still doesn’t stop Jondrette from asking for three thousand francs outrightly.

He talks about the box trade, fourteen hours to only earn four sous seems like a valid complaint to make, except Thenardier never had any intention to work and he dragged his family into his activities, and this is just filler conversation (although it is interesting to note that gifts were only exchanged on New Years and not on Christmas), till Thenardier asks whether Monsieur Leblanc recognises him.