Hello everyone and welcome to the latest discussion of Les Misérables by Victor Hugo, which brings us into the final part of the book! Today we are discussing 4.14.7 [called Gavroche, Great Calculator of Distances in my edition] to 5.1.15 [Gavroche Outside]. Please do not spoil anything beyond that point. While many of us already know the story, there are also many of us who do not. If you are unsure what constitutes a spoiler, please see our spoiler policy.

Section summary

Part Four, Book Fourteen: The Grandeurs of Despair 7

Marius kisses Éponine’s forehead. He wants to read the letter, so he lays her body down on the ground and leaves. The letter is from Cosette, saying she and her father are leaving asap for England but will be staying briefly at Rue de l’Homme-Armé.

We find out that Éponine was responsible for everything - she wanted to thwart her father and the gang, and to keep Marius and Cosette apart. She dressed as a man, warned Jean Valjean to move house, and took Cosette’s hastily written letter. On the 5th she went to Courfeyrac’s to see Marius, who wasn’t there, and they said they were going to the barricades. She got the idea to have her and Marius both die there. She met him at Rue Plumet, and appealed to him to join his friends at the barricade.

Marius is glad that Cosette loves him but thinks their fate can’t be changed. He writes a letter to Cosette telling her he will die on the barricades and bidding her farewell, and leaves a note in his note case that his body should be taken to his grandfather. He asks Gavroche to leave the barricade now and deliver the letter to Cosette the next morning.

Part Four, Book Fifteen: Rue de l’Homme-Armé 1-4

Jean Valjean is filled with turmoil. On the evening of the 4th, he moved himself, Cosette and Toussaint to Rue de l’Homme-Armé. He only brought the perfumed valise with him, as trunks would mean porters and therefore witnesses for where they had gone. Toussaint packed some linen and clothes. Cosette only took her writing case and blotter. As they didn’t leave until dusk, she had time to write the letter to Marius first and give it to Éponine.

The next day, Jean Valjean feels better but Cosette stays in her room all day. That evening, Toussaint mentions fighting in Paris but he doesn’t really pay attention. Later, he sees the reflection of Cosette’s blotter in a mirror, and is able to read her letter. He is devastated, feeling that the light of the world has been eclipsed forever. He realises the letter just have been for Marius, although he doesn’t know his name. He asks Toussaint where the fighting is happening, and he goes outside to sit (without a hat) on the boundary post at the entrance to the building.

The street is mostly deserted. Jean Valjean hears some blasts from the barricades. Not long afterwards, he hears footsteps as Gavroche approaches. Jean Valjean speaks to him, and Gavroche says he is hungry and then smashes the street lamp with a stone. Jean Valjean gives him a five franc coin, but he tries to gives it back. However Jean Valjean tells him to give it to his mother, and Gavroche’s confidence is inspired because Jean Valjean is not wearing a hat. Jean Valjean asks if he’s delivering the letter to Cosette that he is expecting, and Gavroche makes a joke about her name when he gives it to him. He says the letter is from the Rue de La Chanvrerie barricade, and leaves. He smashes another lamp on the way.

Jean Valjean goes inside and reads the letter, and is initially joyful that Marius is going to die without his involvement, solving the whole problem. And Cosette will never know. However, he wakes the porter, and an hour later he goes out again wearing his National Guard uniform and carrying a loaded rifle and a pouch of cartridges. He heads towards Les Halles.

Gavroche decides to sing on his travels, and part of it seems to be an early draft of Mambo No 5 but my footnotes explain nothing. He spots an Auvergnat asleep in a handcart in a carriage entranceway, and he thinks the cart will be good for the barricade, so he tips the Auvergnat out and leaves a receipt on behalf of the republic.

As he runs off with the cart, he is intercepted at a guard post at the royal printing works. A sergeant questions Gavroche, who is evasive and then insults the man, leading to a bayonet being brandished at him. The man attacks, and Gavroche yeets the cart at him then runs. The men fire for 15 minutes, breaking some windows, but Gavroche escapes. He makes a superlative gesture - raising his left hand to nose level and making three forward chopping movements, while slapping the back of his head with his right hand (I was having trouble picturing this so attempted to recreate the gesture myself, but I’m not convinced that I did it right) - then takes an indirect route back towards the barricade. He starts singing again where he left off – he likes Angela, Pamela, Sandra and Rita, and as he continues, you know they gettin' sweeter. The guards impound the handcart, and charge the Auvergnat as an accessory to the crime.

Part Five, Book One: The War Within Four Walls 1-15

We’re in the fifth and final part of the book! Victor Hugo tells us that the two most memorable barricades were not from 1832 at all, but rose up from the earth at the time of the fateful insurrection of June 1848 which Hugo calls the greatest street battle history has ever seen. He asks permission to detain the reader’s attention for a moment or two (LOL classic Victor Hugo, as if he cares whether we mind his digressions or not) to contemplate the 1848 barricades (to be fair, as his digressions go, this isn’t too bad). One barricade blocked the entrance to Faubourg St-Antoine and the other made Faubourg du Temple inaccessible.

The Faubourg St-Antoine barricade was three storeys high and 700ft wide, blocking three streets, and there were 19 barricades in the streets behind the main one. He lists some of the things it was built of - from the destruction of three six-storey houses, a bunch of other things including cabbage stalks for some reason, and an omnibus thrown on top.

The Faubourg du Temple barricade was half a mile away, and was like a wall between the houses reaching the second storey, built of cobblestones (I found a daguerreotype of this barricade and it doesn’t look as impressive as Hugo described it). If anyone crossed the road in front of the barricade they were shot at. On the fourth day, the attackers went through the houses and over the rooftops, taking the barricade that way (here it is the next day after it was destroyed). The architects of the barricades both survived, and one later killed the other in a duel in London.

Compared to the 1848 barricades, Hugo says the 1832 barricades were primitive. During the night, Enjolras got the insurgents to rebuild the barricade and make it larger. They heaped the dead bodies in an alleyway under their control, and put aside the uniforms from four National Guardsmen. He tells everyone to get a couple of hours’ sleep but only a few follow his advice. They attach Mabeuf’s bullet-riddled coat to the omnibus shaft as a flag. The food has run out and the men are hungry. Since there is no food, Enjolras bans drinking. There are still 37 of them left at the barricade.

The insurgents are filled with hope as they have repelled the night attack, and they think help is going to come. They hear the tolling of St-Merry’s, proof that the other main barricade is still holding out. Enjolras undertakes a reconnaissance sortie, and reports that the whole Paris army is out and that a third of the army is coming towards their barricade to attack in an hour. After a pause of despair, someone’s voice speaks out to get them all cheering again.

Enjolras says that 30 men is enough, so some men should leave before the attack using the four National Guard uniforms as a disguise. He urges the revolutionaries who have wives and children to return to their families. There are five such men, but only four uniforms. They ask Marius to choose which man should stay behind, but the thought of selecting a man to die is awful. Suddenly, a fifth uniform drops down as if from heaven (deus ex uniform!) – Jean Valjean has arrived. Marius recognises “Monsieur Fauchelevent” and vouches for him.

Enjolras expresses regret at taking lives, but he is willing to kill for his beliefs. He monologues a bit about how he chooses violence, and says that the while the nineteenth century is a great century, the twentieth century will be a happy one (… yeah nah that wasn’t a very accurate prediction, sorry Enj). He uses my favourite simile in a long time when he says there will be no reason to fear “a conflict between two religions coming up against each other, like two goats of darkness on the bridge of infinity.”

Marius is still in despair so doesn’t even wonder why Monsieur Fauchelevent has popped up at the barricade. Jean Valjean doesn’t speak to him or even look at him. Enjolras gives Javert some water, and agrees to move him from the pillar to a more comfortable position tied onto a table. Valjean and Javert recognise each other.

Some mysterious movement approaches the barricade, and a ration of brandy is distributed to all the rebels. They all choose a position for the upcoming attack. They see a cannon being positioned, and they fire but none of the artillerymen are hit. As the first cannonball hits the barricade, Gavroche reappears, and his impact on the barricade is greater.

Marius is horrified that Gavroche has returned, and Gavroche confirms that he delivered the letter, although he says he gave it to the porter. Marius wonders if this is connected to Monsieur Fauchelevent’s appearance at the barricade, but Gavroche doesn’t recognise him as he’d only seen him in the dark. He tells the group that the barricade is surrounded. The next cannon shot hits the barricade and kills two people, but Enjolras aims at the chief gunner. A tear trickled slowly down Enjolras’ marble cheek as he kills the man.

They need a buffer to protect the barricade and Enjolras suggests a mattress, but they are all being used by wounded men. Jean Valjean helpfully shoots down a nearby mattress and retrieves it from where it falls in the street, then plugs it into the barricade’s gap.

Back at the Rue de l’Homme-Armé, Cosette wakes up. She doesn’t know anything about the rebellion, and had dreamed of Marius. She hopes he will find a way of reaching her, perhaps that day, so she gets up in case she has to receive him. There’s a bit of a creepy part where Hugo says he can’t possibly talk about what happens in a young virgin’s room, “the retreat of a still-unopened flower” (ugh), but still talks about her exquisite flusters of movement etc while she gets dressed… and I would like to go back to talking about violence please, this is unbearable. Cosette can’t see anything out the window and cries. She hears the dull thuds of the cannonballs in the distance, and wonders who is opening and shutting carriage gates so early.

The firing on the barricade continues. Jean Valjean shoots at some lookouts, hitting their helmets to scare them off without killing them. Captain Fannicot, a bold and impatient bourgeois in the National Guard, sends his men against the barricade and gets most of them killed, including himself. Enjolras is annoyed that their ammunition is being used up for nothing as unlike large armies, insurrectionists must count their cartridge-boxes.

The Chanvrerie barricade is briefly filled with hope that Paris is rousing itself and that insurrection is breaking out across the city. However, the National Guard stamps it out in less than half an hour.

The guns continue to fire on the barricade, and Enjolras orders them to shoot the artillerymen. However, he says that the barricade will shortly run out of cartridges. Gavroche overhears, and slips out onto the street with a basket to collect the cartridges of the dead National Guardsmen. He is small enough that he can stay beneath the gunfire and is obscured by the smoke. He gets quite far down the street without being seen, and the men on the barricade don’t call out in case they attract attention to him. As he reaches an area where the smoke is thinning, the sharpshooters spot him and begin to fire. He starts singing again as he collects the cartridges, dodging the shots as the National Guardsmen laugh. Eventually, a bullet hits him and he staggers, as the men on the barricade cry out. He stands again and continues to sing, but a second bullet hits him and he falls to the ground.

Bookclub Bingo 2023 categories: Gutenberg, Translated (blue), Big Read (blue), Historical Fiction (green)

Other potentially useful links:

• Discussion schedule
• Marginalia
• Victor Hugo on Wikipedia

The discussion questions are in the comments below.

Join us for the next discussion on Sunday 17th September, when u/eeksqueak will lead a discussion on the chapters 5.1.16 - 5.3.8.