For a time, he hosted and paid for a weekly meal for fifty people. Finally, Parisian nightlife was replaced, between 1853 and 1855, by evening seances during which Hugo believed that he and his family and friends could communicate with the spirits of both the living and the dead. He summoned the soul of the sleeping Napoleon III, to harangue and intimidate him; he advised Shakespeare on how to correct errors in his prosody; and he dia logued with Jesus Christ as well as dozens of other notables.

The Story

Hugo already had composed a version of his masterpiece, first entitled Les Misères, between 1845 and 1848, during the height of his activity in the House of Peers. During fourteen months of intense activity between 1860 and 1862, Hugo expanded this original version by 60 percent. Les Misérables embeds the story of a poor workman in a vast mythic-historical context. It tells of the fall and redemption of Jean Valjean, a young tree pruner in the region of Paris, the sole support of his widowed sister and her seven children. One winter, unemployed and desperate to feed his dependents, he breaks a bakery window at night to steal a loaf of bread. He is arrested and sentenced to five years’ hard labor in the galleys of Toulon. Four escapes, attempted instinctively and unreasoningly, lead only to additional sentences, which finally total nineteen years. The harsh punishment embitters him against society, and after his release this attitude is reinforced by the scorn and rejection he experiences whenever he must show his convict’s yellow passport. But a saintly Catholic Bishop, Monseigneur Myriel, treats Jean Valjean respectfully, feeds him, and gives him lodging for the night. Despite this kindness, Valjean cannot resist stealing the bishop’s last remaining luxuries—for the cleric has given everything else to the poor—his silver place settings. When the gendarmes bring Valjean back, the bishop saves him from further imprisonment by saying he had given the place settings to Valjean. And the bishop adds the two silver candlesticks that his guest had “forgotten.” As Valjean sets off again, the bishop whispers that he has purchased the ex-convict’s soul with his gifts, that Valjean has promised him to live a virtuous life henceforth.

On the road north, a last flicker of brute instinct takes over: the convict cannot resist the temptation to steal a coin dropped by a little itinerant chimney sweep. Then he repents and resolves to lead a virtuous life, guided by an inner voice inspired by the bishop’s kindness to him. (Hugo identifies our conscience with God.) He manages to conceal his identity, educate himself, and transform himself into the benevolent “Monsieur Madeleine” (an allusion to the penitent prostitute Mary Magdalene in the Gospels). By inventing a superior method for making glassware, he ensures the prosperity of an entire village enriched through the “trickle-down” theory of economics. The grateful townspeople elect him mayor in a town where the rigid, self-righteous Javert, overcompensating for having been born in prison as the illegitimate son of a fortune-teller, serves as chief of police.

Meanwhile, Fantine, a young working woman in Paris, has been seduced, impregnated, and cynically abandoned by her lover. Once her baby, Cosette, is born, she innocently leaves her in the care of the evil Thénardier couple, dishonest innkeepers, and goes to her native village, where Jean Valjean has settled. She finds work there in the glassware factory, but is fired by a self-righteous female foreman who discovers that she has an illegitimate child. The Thénardiers have been starving Cosette, dressing her in rags, and forcing her to do hard labor, while sending Fantine exorbitant, fraudulent medical bills. She must turn to prostitution to support her daughter. At the same time, the Thénardier daughters Eponine and Azelma are pampered, creating a Cinderella-like situation.

“Monsieur Madeleine” finally learns of this situation when Fantine has been unjustly accused of assault against a wealthy idler who had assaulted her first. He overrules Javert, who is blinded by social prejudice, and orders her release. He promises to care for her and to reunite her with her baby. But his defense of a social outcast alienates Javert and intensifies his suspicions, which derive from his preconscious memories of having seen Jean Valjean as a galley slave at Toulon twenty years earlier, when he served as assistant warden there. His suspicions intensify when the mayor demonstrates enormous strength by lifting a heavily loaded cart to free a man being crushed beneath it. Only the former convict Jean Valjean, nicknamed “Jean le Cric” (Jack the jack), still sought for having robbed the chimney sweep, would have been capable of this feat, Javert believes. Events soon confirm the policeman’s intuition. An innocent, inarticulate vagrant, Champmathieu, has been falsely accused of stealing apples (a third offense, leading to life imprisonment).