Les miserables (Abridged) - Victor Hugo [481]
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The French faire la noce is a pun also meaning “have an orgy.” Thénardier, dis guised as a Spaniard in the Mardi Gras procession, makes the same pun when he sees Cosette and Marius’ wedding carriage pass: “We’re the real ‘noce.”’
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The hydra was a huge legendary serpent with seven heads; when you cut off one, several grew back. The image refers to Jean Valjean’s temptation by angry, selfish thoughts.
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For the remainder of this paragraph and the next, and intermittently throughout the rest of the chapter, Hugo renders Marius’ inner questioning with free indirect discourse, to make him more vividly, intimately present to us.
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The métaphore maxima conveys the supernatural mysteries that underlie Jean Valjean’s extraordinary behavior.
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Marius is at the beginning of his moral progress, and Jean Valjean at the end of his.
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“Begone, Satan”—Christ’s final reply to the Devil’s three temptations in the Bible, Matthew 4:10.