Les miserables (Abridged) - Victor Hugo [13]
Thénardier’s moral decline criss-crosses Jean Valjean’s progressive moral redemption. Potentially law-abiding in prosperity, in poverty Thénardier becomes increasingly vicious. He plans to kidnap and torture Jean Valjean, force him to reveal where Cosette is staying, and then kidnap her to force Valjean to pay a huge ransom. Meanwhile, he becomes increasingly indifferent toward his own children. He uses Eponine as a spy and lookout for his burglaries and callously risks her life. He makes no effort to find his son Gavroche when the little boy becomes separated from his family, and he deliberately abandons Gavroche’s two younger brothers.
By yet another coincidence of many in the novel, Marius has moved into a cheap room next door to the Thénardiers. Listening and watching through a hole in the wall, he learns of their plans to kidnap Cosette. Marius denounces them to Javert, but then learns that Thénardier had “saved his father’s life” (had inadvertently revived him by rifling though his clothes after he had fallen at the Battle of Waterloo). His father’s dying wish had been that his son find and reward Thénardier.
Eponine has fallen in love with Marius. Now her former relationship with Cosette is reversed. Cosette is wealthy, privileged, and beloved, while Eponine, formerly coddled, must choose between her father’s beatings and sleeping in ditches. The two girls do not recognize each other. Hopelessly devoted, Eponine helps Marius find Cosette again: Marius and Cosette fall in love, meeting in Cosette’s garden at night for a chaste but passionate romance. When Thénardier’s gang has staked out Valjean’s isolated new residence for a burglary, without realizing that it belongs to their former intended extortion victim, Eponine drives them away with false warnings about the police, and anonymously advises Valjean to move. He plans to flee to England. By accident, Cosette is prevented from communicating with Marius.
Knowing that Marius cares only for Cosette, Eponine despairs and writes an anonymous note summoning him to join his friends fighting on the barricades of the worker-student insurrection of 1832. She hopes he will die there; but she wants to die first, by his side. In despair at not finding Cosette at home, Marius seeks death on the barricades. There, a sudden political illumination makes his commitment to his friends’ republican cause authentic. Eponine, disguised as a young worker, saves Marius by throwing herself in front of a bullet aimed at him.
Meanwhile, Valjean has discovered the imprint of Cosette’s desperate note to Marius on her blotter. Her adoptive father is taking her away; she does not know where. Valjean hates Marius for threatening to deprive him of the only person he has ever loved. He struggles to overcome his possessiveness, and despite his rage, he goes to the barricades to protect Marius. Behind the barricade, Javert has been unmasked as a police spy. Valjean asks permission to execute him, but secretly sets him free. As the barricade falls to the government troops, Marius collapses, wounded and unconscious. Valjean escapes through the sewers, carrying the young man through the foul muck on his shoulders for four miles.
At the locked exit by the Seine, Valjean meets Thénardier, who has hidden there from Javert. Thénardier does not recognize Valjean. He thinks Valjean has killed Marius for his money, and demands all Valjean’s cash in exchange for opening the gate with his skeleton key so that Valjean can escape. He hopes to divert the waiting Javert by offering him a substitute fugitive. Javert does indeed arrest Valjean, but feels morally obligated to release him, because he owes the convict his life. Then, torn by an insoluble conflict between religious and legal duty, Javert drowns himself. Marius’s repentant grandfather nurses Marius back to health and marries him to Cosette. Valjean has given her all his fortune. The novel reaches its moral climax on the wedding night. Should Valjean confess that he is an escaped convict, and renounce all contact with Cosette to spare the