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ax

To say “the Emperor” instead of “Buonaparte” (in four syllables) betrays that M. Madeleine admires or at least respects Napoléon, rather than considers him a foreign usurper, illegitimate and born in Corsica before that island had become French.

ay

“This denoted” again reflects Balzac’s influence in seeing details of a person’s features or clothing as revealing deep-seated traits of their personality. The episodic observer (one who knew Javert thoroughly) is used again.

az

Jean Valjean refers to the dead Fantine, again revealing his faith in immortality.

ba

... Who come from Savoy every year, / And whose hand deftly wipes out / Those long channels choked up with soot.

bb

The newspaper stories at the beginning and end of this book illustrate what Georges May called “the bad conscience of the novel,” the desire to be taken seriously that leads it to invent “real” sources (Le Dilemme du roman français au XVllle siècle, 1963).

bc

Hugo knew English and English literature fairly well; one of his sons translated all of Shakespeare’s plays into English. Here he alludes to Hamlet’s comparison of human life to “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

bd

This wailing baby will reappear as Gavroche. Mme Thénardier’s monstrous nature appears in her total indifference to her three sons. Her cruelty gives the lie to her husband’s scruples, the next morning, about giving up Cosette.

be

Hugo puns by calling Thénardier a filou-sophe instead of philosophe. Filou means “crook”; the whole invented word implies “someone who knows and loves crime.”

bf

Here and in many other places, Hugo portrays himself as an investigative reporter who researches documents and questions witnesses.

bg

The garrulous Thénardier, always lying, contrasts dramatically with the taciturn, invariably truthful Jean Valjean.

bh

In this scene, frequent notations of posture, gesture, and voice quality reflect Hugo’s keen sensitivity to theater.

bi

As Cosette proceeds farther into the darkness, her fear (“there were perhaps ghosts”) acquires a hallucinatory intensity (“she distinctly saw the ghosts”).

bj

Hugo, typically, contrasts and dramatizes the microcosm (the “atom,” the human scale) and the macrocosm (the cosmos, the infinite).

bk

A thousand crowns is 3,000 francs, double the amount agreed on.

bl

Hugo suggests that Fauchelevent has been transformed by divine grace.

bm

In French, c‘est là le bon écrou: that [death] is the best lock-up.

bn

The Communion of Saints has transferred merit from both the nuns and M. Madeleine to Fauchelevent.

bo

Fauchelevent mishears surnoms as surtouts.

bp

Cemeteries are locked at night to prevent grave robbing, desecration of tombs, and the sale of cadavers for dissection.

bq

Le Bon Coing in French; puns with Le Bon Coin, meaning the cozy comer.

br

In French, il le coiffait—literally, “he did his hair”; figuratively it means “he seduced him [into drinking] by putting the idea in his head.”

bs

Le Prytanée was a military academy.

bt

Idiom for “he didn’t say who was going to pay.”

bu

“Dead and Buried” translates the idiom [être cloué] entre quatre planches, “to be nailed up inside four planks” (four sometimes is an indefinite number in French).

bv

They who were sleeping in the dust of the earth, shall awake; some into the life eternal, and others into disgrace, that they shall see forever.

bw

Hugo characteristically introduces an episodic observer here, but this time not an expert one. Such figures anchor the story in a social nexus, a human community, that connects readers and characters.

bx

Catharine was Cosette’s magnificent doll, purchased by Jean Valjean. This paragraph again explains the origins of the girl’s timid, self-effacing character.

by

As he does in dozens of other places in the novel, Hugo strongly implies that Providence has intervened to help redeem Jean Valjean.

bz

the spiral is a common image in nineteenth-century French literature to signal the presence and effects of altered