Les Misérables

by Victor Hugo (1862)

Translated from the original French version by Isabel F Hapgood, Les Misérables is one of the most well known 19^th century novels.

Cosette in the Thénardiers' inn,
depicted by Émile Bayard (1837-1891)

Index

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• Brief plot synopsis
• Volume I - Fantine
  • Book First - A Just Man
    • Chapter 1 : M. Myriel
    • Chapter 2 : M. Myriel becomes M. Welcome
    • Chapter 3 : A Hard Bishopric for a Good Bishop
    • Chapter 4 : Works corresponding to Words
    • Chapter 5 : Monseigneur Bienvenu made his Cassocks last too long
    • Chapter 6 : Who guarded his House for him
    • Chapter 7 : Cravatte
    • Chapter 8 : Philosophy after Drinking
    • Chapter 9 : The Brother as depicted by the Sister
    • Chapter 10 : The Bishop in the Presence of an Unknown Light
    • Chapter 11 : A Restriction
    • Chapter 12 : The Solitude of Monseigneur Welcome
    • Chapter 13 : What he believed
    • Chapter 14 : What he thought
  • Book Second - The Fall
    • Chapter 1: The Evening of a Day of Walking
    • Chapter 2: Prudence Counselled to Wisdom
    • Chapter 3: The Heroism of Passive Obedience
    • Chapter 4: Details concerning the Cheese-Dairies of Pontarlier
    • Chapter 5: Tranquillity
    • Chapter 6: Jean Valjean
    • Chapter 7: The Interior of Despair
    • Chapter 8: Billows and Shadows
    • Chapter 9: New Troubles
    • Chapter 10: The Man Aroused
    • Chapter 11: What He Does
    • Chapter 12: The Bishop Works
    • Chapter 13: Little Gervais
  • Book Third - In the Year 1817
    • Chapter 1: In the Year 1817
    • Chapter 2: A Double Quartette
    • Chapter 3: Four and Four
    • Chapter 4: Tholomyes is so Merry that he sings a Spanish Ditty
    • Chapter 5: At Bombardas
    • Chapter 6: A Chapter in which They Adore Each Other
    • Chapter 7: The Wisdom of Tholomyes
    • Chapter 8: The Death of a Horse
    • Chapter 9: A Merry End to Mirth
  • Book Fourth - To Confide is Sometimes to Deliver into a Person's Power
    • Chapter 1: One Mother Meets Another Mother
    • Chapter 2: First Sketch of Two Unprepossessing Figures
    • Chapter 3: The Lark
  • Book Fifth - The Descent
    • Chapter 1: The History of a Progress in Black Glass Trinkets
    • Chapter 2: Madeleine
    • Chapter 3: Sums Deposited with Laffitte
    • Chapter 4: M. Madeleine in Mourning
    • Chapter 5: Vague Flashes on the Horizon
    • Chapter 6: Father Fauchelevent
    • Chapter 7: Fauchelevent becomes a Gardener in Paris
    • Chapter 8: Madame Victurnien expends Thirty Francs on Morality
    • Chapter 9: Madame Victurnien's Success
    • Chapter 10: Result of the Success
    • Chapter 11: Christus nos Liberavit
    • Chapter 12: M. Bamatabois's Inactivity
    • Chapter 13: The Solution of Some Questions connected with the Municipal Police
  • Book Sixth - Javert
    • Chapter 1: The Beginning of Repose
    • Chapter 2: How Jean may become Champ
  • Book Seventh - The Champmathieu Affair
    • Chapter 1: Sister Simplice
    • Chapter 2: The Perspicacity of Master Scaufflaire
    • Chapter 3: A Tempest in a Skull
    • Chapter 4: Forms assumed by Suffering during Sleep
    • Chapter 5: Hindrances
    • Chapter 6: Sister Simplice put to the Proof
    • Chapter 7: The Traveller on his Arrival takes Precautions for Departure
    • Chapter 8: An Entrance by Favor
    • Chapter 9: A Place where Convictions are in Process of Formation
    • Chapter 10: A System of Denials
    • Chapter 11: Champmathieu more and more Astonished
  • Book Eighth - A Counter-Blow
    • Chapter 1: In what Mirror M. Madeleine contemplates his Hair
    • Chapter 2: Fantine Happy
    • Chapter 3: Javert Satisfied
    • Chapter 4: Authority reasserts its Rights
    • Chapter 5: A Suitable Tomb
• Volume II - Cosette
  • Book First - Waterloo
    • Chapter 1: What is met with on the Way from Nivelles
    • Chapter 2: Hougomont
    • Chapter 3: The Eighteenth of June, 1815
    • Chapter 4: A
    • Chapter 5: The Quid Obscurum of Battles
    • Chapter 6: Four o'clock in the Afternoon
    • Chapter 7: Napoleon in a Good Humor
    • Chapter 8: The Emperor puts a Question to the Guide Lacoste
    • Chapter 9: The Unexpected
    • Chapter 10: The Plateau of Mont-Saint-Jean
    • Chapter 11: A Bad Guide to Napoleon; a Good Guide to Bulow
    • Chapter 12: The Guard
    • Chapter 13: The Catastrophe
    • Chapter 14: The Last Square
    • Chapter 15: Cambronne
    • Chapter 16: Quot Libras in Duce?
    • Chapter 17: Is Waterloo to be considered Good?
    • Chapter 18: A Recrudescence of Divine Right
    • Chapter 19: The Battle-Field at Night
  • Book Second - The Ship Orion
    • Chapter 1: Number 24,601 becomes number 9,430
    • Chapter 2: In which the reader will peruse Two Verses which are of the Devil's Composition possibly
    • Chapter 3: The Ankle-Chain must have undergone a Certain Preparatory Manipulation to be thus broken with a Blow from a Hammer
  • Book Third - Accomplishment of the Promise Made to a Dead Woman
    • Chapter 1: The Water Question at Montfermeil
    • Chapter 2: Two Complete Portraits
    • Chapter 3: Men must have Wine, and Horses must have Water
    • Chapter 4: Entrance on the Scene of a Doll
    • Chapter 5: The Little One All Alone
    • Chapter 6: Which possibly proves Boulatruelle's Intelligence
    • Chapter 7: Cosette Side by Side with the Stranger in the Dark
    • Chapter 8: The Unpleasantness of receiving into Ones House a Poor Man who may be a Rich Man
    • Chapter 9: Thenardier at his Manoeuvres
    • Chapter 10: He who seeks to better himself may render his Situation Worse
    • Chapter 11: Number 9,430 reappears, and Cosette wins it in the Lottery
  • Book Fourth - The Gorbeau Hovel
    • Chapter 1: Master Gorbeau
    • Chapter 2: A Nest for Owl and a Warbler
    • Chapter 3: Two Misfortunes make One Piece of Good Fortune
    • Chapter 4: The Remarks of the Principal Tenant
    • Chapter 5: A Five-Franc Piece falls on the Ground and produces a Tumult
  • Book Fifth - For a Black Hunt, a Mute Pack
    • Chapter 1: The Zigzags of Strategy
    • Chapter 2: It is Lucky that the Pont d'Austerlitz bears Carriages
    • Chapter 3: To Wit, the Plan of Paris in 1727
    • Chapter 4: The Gropings of Flight
    • Chapter 5: Which would be Impossible with Gas Lanterns
    • Chapter 6: The Beginning of an Enigma
    • Chapter 7: Continuation of the Enigma
    • Chapter 8: The Enigma becomes Doubly Mysterious
    • Chapter 9: The Man with the Bell
    • Chapter 10: Which explains how Javert got on the Scent
  • Book Sixth - Le Petit-Picpus
    • Chapter 1: Number 62 Rue Petit-Picpus
    • Chapter 2: The Obedience of Martin Verga
    • Chapter 3: Austerities
    • Chapter 4: Gayeties
    • Chapter 5: Distractions
    • Chapter 6: The Little Convent
    • Chapter 7: Some Silhouettes of this Darkness
    • Chapter 8: Post Corda Lapides
    • Chapter 9: A Century under a Guimpe
    • Chapter 10: Origin of the Perpetual Adoration
    • Chapter 11: End of the Petit-Picpus
  • Book Seventh - Parenthesis
    • Chapter 1: The Convent as an Abstract Idea
    • Chapter 2: The Convent as an Historical Fact
    • Chapter 3: On What Conditions One can respect the Past
    • Chapter 4: The Convent from the Point of View of Principles
    • Chapter 5: Prayer
    • Chapter 6: The Absolute Goodness of Prayer
    • Chapter 7: Precautions to be observed in Blame
    • Chapter 8: Faith, Law
  • Book Eighth - Cemetaries Take That Which is Commited Them
    • Chapter 1: Which treats of the Manner of entering a Convent
    • Chapter 2: Fauchelevent in the Presence of a Difficulty
    • Chapter 3: Mother Innocente
    • Chapter 4: In which Jean Valjean has quite the Air of having read Austin Castillejo
    • Chapter 5: It is not Necessary to be Drunk in order to be Immortal
    • Chapter 6: Between Four Planks
    • Chapter 7: In which will be found the Origin of the Saying
    • Chapter 8: A Successful Interrogatory
    • Chapter 9: Cloistered
• Volume III - Marius
  • Book First - Paris Studied in Its Atom
    • Chapter 1: Parvulus
    • Chapter 2: Some of his Particular Characteristics
    • Chapter 3: He is Agreeable
    • Chapter 4: He may be of Use
    • Chapter 5: His Frontiers
    • Chapter 6: A Bit of History
    • Chapter 7: The Gamin should have his Place in the Classifications of India
    • Chapter 8: In which the Reader will find a Charming Saying of the Last King
    • Chapter 9: The Old Soul of Gaul
    • Chapter 10: Ecce Paris, ecce Homo
    • Chapter 11: To Scoff, to Reign
    • Chapter 12: The Future Latent in the People
    • Chapter 13: Little Gavroche
  • Book Second - The Great Bourgeois
    • Chapter 1: Ninety Years and Thirty-two Teeth
    • Chapter 2: Like Master, Like House
    • Chapter 3: Luc-Esprit
    • Chapter 4: A Centenarian Aspirant
    • Chapter 5: Basque and Nicolette
    • Chapter 6: In which Magnon and her Two Children are seen
    • Chapter 7: Rule
    • Chapter 8: Two do not make a Pair
  • Book Third - The Grandfather and the Grandson
    • Chapter 1: An Ancient Salon
    • Chapter 2: One of the Red Spectres of that Epoch
    • Chapter 3: Requiescant
    • Chapter 4: End of the Brigand
    • Chapter 5: The Utility of going to Mass, in order to become Revolutionist
    • Chapter 6: The Consequences of having met a Warden
    • Chapter 7: Some Petticoat
    • Chapter 8: Marble against Granite
  • Book Fourth - The Friends of the ABC
    • Chapter 1: A Group which barely missed becoming Historic
    • Chapter 2: Blondeau's Funeral Oration by Bossuet
    • Chapter 3: Marius' Astonishments
    • Chapter 4: The Back Room of the Cafe Musain
    • Chapter 5: Enlargement of Horizon
    • Chapter 6: Res Angusta
  • Book Fifth - The Excellence of Misfortune
    • Chapter 1: Marius Indigent
    • Chapter 2: Marius Poor
    • Chapter 3: Marius Grown Up
    • Chapter 4: M. Mabeuf
    • Chapter 5: Poverty a Good Neighbor for Misery
    • Chapter 6: The Substitute
  • Book Sixth - The Conjunction of Two Stars
    • Chapter 1: The Sobriquet; Mode of Formation of Family Names
    • Chapter 2: Lux Facta Est
    • Chapter 3: Effect of the Spring
    • Chapter 4: Beginning of a Great Malady
    • Chapter 5: Divers Claps of Thunder fall on Ma'am Bougon
    • Chapter 6: Taken Prisoner
    • Chapter 7: Adventures of the Letter U delivered over to Conjectures
    • Chapter 8: The Veterans themselves can be Happy
    • Chapter 9: Eclipse
  • Book Seventh - Patron Minette
    • Chapter 1: Mines and Miners
    • Chapter 2: The Lowest Depths
    • Chapter 3: Babet, Gueulemer, Claquesous, and Montparnasse
    • Chapter 4: Composition of the Troupe
  • Book Eighth - The Wicked Poor Man
    • Chapter 1: Marius, while seeking a Girl in a Bonnet encounters a Man in a Cap
    • Chapter 2: Treasure Trove
    • Chapter 3: Quadrifrons
    • Chapter 4: A Rose in Misery
    • Chapter 5: A Providential Peep-Hole
    • Chapter 6: The Wild Man in his Lair
    • Chapter 7: Strategy and Tactics
    • Chapter 8: The Ray of Light in the Hovel
    • Chapter 9: Jondrette comes near Weeping
    • Chapter 10: Tariff of Licensed Cabs, Two Francs an Hour
    • Chapter 11: Offers of Service from Misery to Wretchedness
    • Chapter 12: The Use made of M. Leblanc's Five-Franc Piece
    • Chapter 13: Solus cum Solo, in Loco Remoto, non cogitabuntur orare Pater Noster
    • Chapter 14: In which a Police Agent bestows Two Fistfuls on a Lawyer
    • Chapter 15: Jondrette makes his Purchases
    • Chapter 16: In which will be found the Words to an English Air which was in Fashion in 1832
    • Chapter 17: The Use made of Marius' Five-Franc Piece
    • Chapter 18: Marius' Two Chairs form a Vis-a-Vis
    • Chapter 19: Occupying Ones Self with Obscure Depths
    • Chapter 20: The Trap
    • Chapter 21: One should always begin by arresting the Victims
    • Chapter 22: The Little One who was crying in Volume Two
• Volume IV - Saint Denis
  • Book First - A Few Pages of History
    • Chapter 1: Well Cut
    • Chapter 2: Badly Sewed
    • Chapter 3: Louis Philippe
    • Chapter 4: Cracks beneath the Foundation
    • Chapter 5: Facts whence History springs and which History ignores
    • Chapter 6: Enjolras and his Lieutenants
  • Book Second - Eponine
    • Chapter 1: The Lark's Meadow
    • Chapter 2: Embryonic Formation of Crimes in the Incubation of Prisons
    • Chapter 3: Apparition to Father Mabeuf
    • Chapter 4: An Apparition to Marius
  • Book Third - The House in the Rue Plumet
    • Chapter 1: The House with a Secret
    • Chapter 2: Jean Valjean as a National Guard
    • Chapter 3: Foliis ac Frondibus
    • Chapter 4: Change of Gate
    • Chapter 5: The Rose perceives that it is an Engine of War
    • Chapter 6: The Battle Begun
    • Chapter 7: To One Sadness oppose a Sadness and a Half
    • Chapter 8: The Chain-Gang
  • Book Fourth - Succor From Below May Turn Out To Be Succor From On High
    • Chapter 1: A Wound without, Healing within
    • Chapter 2: Mother Plutarque finds no Difficulty in explaining a Phenomenon
  • Book Fifth - The End of Which does not Resemble the Beginning
    • Chapter 1: Solitude and Barracks Combined
    • Chapter 2: Cosette's Apprehensions
    • Chapter 3: Enriched with Commentaries by Toussaint
    • Chapter 4: A Heart beneath a Stone
    • Chapter 5: Cosette after the Letter
    • Chapter 6: Old People are made to go out opportunely
  • Book Sixth - Little Gavroche
    • Chapter 1: The Malicious Playfulness of the Wind
    • Chapter 2: In which Little Gavroche extracts Profit from Napoleon the Great
    • Chapter 3: The Vicissitudes of Flight
  • Book Seventh - Slang
    • Chapter 1: Origin
    • Chapter 2: Roots
    • Chapter 3: Slang which weeps and Slang which laughs
    • Chapter 4: The Two Duties
  • Book Eighth - Enchantments and Desolations
    • Chapter 1: Full Light
    • Chapter 2: The Bewilderment of Perfect Happiness
    • Chapter 3: The Beginning of Shadow
    • Chapter 4: A Cab runs in English and barks in Slang
    • Chapter 5: Things of the Night
    • Chapter 6: Marius becomes Practical once more to the Extent of Giving Cosette his Address
    • Chapter 7: The Old Heart and the Young Heart in the Presence of Each Other
  • Book Ninth - Whither are They Going?
    • Chapter 1: Jean Valjean
    • Chapter 2: Marius
    • Chapter 3: M. Mabeuf
  • Book Tenth - The 5th of June, 1832
    • Chapter 1: The Surface of the Question
    • Chapter 2: The Root of the Matter
    • Chapter 3: A Burial; an Occasion to be born again
    • Chapter 4: The Ebullitions of Former Days
    • Chapter 5: Originality of Paris
  • Book Eleventh - The Atom Fraternizes with the Hurricane
    • Chapter 1: Some Explanations with Regard to the Origin of Gavroche's Poetry. The Influence of an Academician on this Poetry
    • Chapter 2: Gavroche on the March
    • Chapter 3: Just Indignation of a Hair-dresser
    • Chapter 4: The Child is amazed at the Old Man
    • Chapter 5: The Old Man
    • Chapter 6: Recruits
  • Book Twelfth - Corinthe
    • Chapter 1: History of Corinthe from its Foundation
    • Chapter 2: Preliminary Gayeties
    • Chapter 3: Night begins to descend upon Grantaire
    • Chapter 4: An Attempt to console the Widow Hucheloup
    • Chapter 5: Preparations
    • Chapter 6: Waiting
    • Chapter 7: The Man recruited in the Rue des Billettes
    • Chapter 8: Many Interrogation Points with Regard to a Certain Le Cabuc, whose Name may not have been Le Cabuc
  • Book Thirteenth - Marius Enters the Shadow
    • Chapter 1: From the Rue Plumet to the Quartier Saint-Denis
    • Chapter 2: An Owl's View of Paris
    • Chapter 3: The Extreme Edge
  • Book Fourteenth - The Grandeurs of Despair
    • Chapter 1: The Flag
    • Chapter 2: The Flag
    • Chapter 3: Gavroche would have done better to accept Enjolras' Carbine
    • Chapter 4: The Barrel of Powder
    • Chapter 5: End of the Verses of Jean Prouvaire
    • Chapter 6: The Agony of Death after the Agony of Life
    • Chapter 7: Gavroche as a Profound Calculator of Distances
  • Book Fifteenth - The Rue de L'Homme Arme
    • Chapter 1: A Drinker is a Babbler
    • Chapter 2: The Street Urchin an Enemy of Light
    • Chapter 3: While Cosette and Toussaint are Asleep
    • Chapter 4: Gavroche's Excess of Zeal
• Volume V - Jean Valjean
  • Book First - The War Between Four Walls
    • Chapter 1: The Charybdis of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine and the Scylla of the Faubourg du Temple
    • Chapter 2: What Is to Be Done in the Abyss if One Does Not Converse
    • Chapter 3: Light and Shadow
    • Chapter 4: Minus Five, Plus One
    • Chapter 5: The Horizon Which One Beholds from the Summit of a Barricade
    • Chapter 6: Marius Haggard, Javert Laconic
    • Chapter 7: The Situation Becomes Aggravated
    • Chapter 8: The Artillery-men Compel People to Take Them Seriously
    • Chapter 9: Employment of the Old Talents of a Poacher and That Infallible Marksmanship Which Influenced the Condemnation of 1796
    • Chapter 10: Dawn
    • Chapter 11: The Shot Which Misses Nothing and Kills No One
    • Chapter 12: Disorder a Partisan of Order
    • Chapter 13: Passing Gleams
    • Chapter 14: Wherein Will Appear the Name of Enjolras' Mistress
    • Chapter 15: Gavroche Outside
    • Chapter 16: How from a Brother One Becomes a Father
    • Chapter 17: Mortuus Pater Filium Moriturum Expectat
    • Chapter 18: The Vulture Becomes Prey
    • Chapter 19: Jean Valjean Takes His Revenge
    • Chapter 20: The Dead Are in the Right and the Living Are Not in the Wrong
    • Chapter 21: The Heroes
    • Chapter 22: Foot to Foot
    • Chapter 23: Orestes Fasting and Pylades Drunk
    • Chapter 24: Prisoner
  • Book Second - The Intestine of the Leviathan
    • Chapter 1: The Land Impoverished by the Sea
    • Chapter 2: Ancient History of the Sewer
    • Chapter 3: Bruneseau
    • Chapter 4: (Unnamed)
    • Chapter 5: Present Progress
    • Chapter 6: Future Progress
  • Book Third - Mud But the Soul
    • Chapter 1: The Sewer and Its Surprises
    • Chapter 2: Explanation
    • Chapter 3: The "Spun" Man
    • Chapter 4: He Also Bears His Cross
    • Chapter 5: In the Case of Sand, as in That of Woman, There Is a Fineness Which Is Treacherous
    • Chapter 6: The Fontis
    • Chapter 7: One Sometimes Runs Aground When One Fancies That One Is Disembarking
    • Chapter 8: The Torn Coat-Tail
    • Chapter 9: Marius Produces on Some One Who Is a Judge of the Matter, the Effect of Being Dead
    • Chapter 10: Return of the Son Who Was Prodigal of His Life
    • Chapter 11: Concussion in the Absolute
    • Chapter 12: The Grandfather
  • Book Fourth - Javert Derailed
    • Chapter 1: (Unnamed)
  • Book Fifth - Grandson and Grandfather
    • Chapter 1: In Which the Tree with the Zinc Plaster Appears Again
    • Chapter 2: Marius, Emerging from Civil War, Makes Ready for Domestic War
    • Chapter 3: Marius Attacked
    • Chapter 4: Mademoiselle Gillenormand Ends by No Longer Thinking It a Bad Thing That M. Fauchelevent Should Have Entered With Something Under His Arm
    • Chapter 5: Deposit Your Money in a Forest Rather than with a Notary
    • Chapter 6: The Two Old Men Do Everything, Each One After His Own Fashion, to Render Cosette Happy
    • Chapter 7: The Effects of Dreams Mingled with Happiness
    • Chapter 8: Two Men Impossible to Find
  • Book Sixth - The Sleepless Night
    • Chapter 1: The 16th of February, 1833
    • Chapter 2: Jean Valjean Still Wears His Arm in a Sling
    • Chapter 3: The Inseparable
    • Chapter 4: The Immortal Liver
  • Book Seventh - The Last Draught from the Cup
    • Chapter 1: The Seventh Circle and the Eighth Heaven
    • Chapter 2: The Obscurities Which a Revelation Can Contain
  • Book Eighth - Fading away of the Twilight
    • Chapter 1: The Lower Chamber
    • Chapter 2: Another Step Backwards
    • Chapter 3: They Recall the Garden of the Rue Plumet
    • Chapter 4: Attraction and Extinction
  • Book Ninth - Supreme Shadow, Supreme Dawn
    • Chapter 1: Pity for the Unhappy, but Indulgence for the Happy
    • Chapter 2: Last Flickerings of a Lamp Without Oil
    • Chapter 3: A Pen Is Heavy to the Man Who Lifted the Fauchelevent's Cart
    • Chapter 4: A Bottle of Ink Which Only Succeeded in Whitening
    • Chapter 5: A Night Behind Which There Is Day
    • Chapter 6: The Grass Covers and the Rain Effaces