July 2013 Archives

Time for a break from Marius and his crazy pants for an: Actual Bad Guys Alert! This is actually all this short chapter is about. First, a long explanation comparing mines to the strata of society. Here's a list of people from the top going down to the bottom of this mine analogy: Jan Hus > Luther > Descartes > Voltaire > Condorcet > Robespierre > Marat > Babeuf

Way down at the bottom is a black hole of evil and crime, and that is where we find the next giant list of characters that are going to be introduced to us. A quartet of bandits were ruling the night around Paris in the early 1830's, and we are going to learn about them now!

First up is Gueulemer. He's the big dumb lazy brawn of the group. He's described as having "a colossus's body and bird's skull." So now I'm imaging he looks like a goomba from that live-action Super Mario Brothers movie. Good luck removing that image from your head. You're welcome! He could have used his brute power for good by capturing bad guys, but chose to become a bad guy instead.

Babet is the opposite of Gueulemer. He's a thin shrewd man who doesn't give away any of his secrets. He sells plaster busts of "The head of the Government," as well as being one of those street tooth-pulling guys.

Babet had been a family man and a traveled with them once upon a time. He read the papers, which is a rare thing in the circles he runs in and bemoaned the fact that his wife never gave birth to a child with a goat face. This didn't come out of nowhere. It wasn't like he was yearning for a goat-faced child. He'd just read about such an event once, and that could have made them a lot of money. He left his family so he could take on Paris.

Claquesous is the most mysterious of the group. Nobody knows where he lives, nobody knows his name (Claquesous is a nickname.) Nobody knows what he looks like, he either wears a mask or lurks in the darkness. He only talks to people with his back turned.

Montparnasse is the youngest and I get the impression most deadly of the bunch. Not even twenty, he's a fresh faced kid, bringing the pretty to the underworld party. By eighteen he had a stack of bodies in his wake already. Daaaamn, boyfriend. He is a gamin turned assassin, and his reason for being a murdering marauder is simply this: He wants to be the best dressed dude in Paris. (What? Is he disposing of the competish? Or is he stealing their finery? Or just stealing their money so he can buy new clothes? All of the above? What is your game, Montparnasse!?)

Even though his coat is a bit threadbare, Montparnasse is the fashion plate of the group. He wears his hat at a jaunty angle so he can show off a lock of hair as is the fashion. He keeps a flower in his buttonhole. He was "gentle, effeminate, graceful, robust, weak and ferocious."

Does anybody else want to see some sort of dandy-off between Bamatabois, Bahorel, and Montparnasse? Fierce Mustache vs. Rash Waistcoat vs. Deadly Dandy. One of the events can be waistcoat layering! Bonus points for each extraneous fob watch chain!

About: Dak reads Les Misérables and recaps it here, so that she may better retain the information. Things not to expect: deep literary analysis. Things to expect: Spoilers. All the spoilers 

Marius: Book 6; Crazy in Love

Guess what? Now that we've spent five entire chapters learning everything we could ever possibly want to know about Marius and his Pontmercy ways right down to his toast eating habits, it is time to describe what he actually looks like! This might have come in handy before the mental picture already distilled in our brains, but oh well.

Our boy, Marius, has grown into a fine handsome looking fellow with jet black hair, a refined but not too chiseled jawline and passionate nostrils. Great. Now I'm imagining he looks like a young Judd Nelson. Thanks, book!

Marius is still having problems in the area of human interactions. He dares not even glance at a woman, because he think's they're all just having a good laugh at him when they look his way because of his old worn out poor people clothes. This isn't really the case though, he's just a certified hottie. Let me just take a moment to profess my love for book Marius and his introverted, socially awkward ways.

Well, being an observant BFF, Courfeyrac notices the way he acts about women (directly in opposition to the way Courfeyrac is by the by. Let's just say he gets around.) He tries to hook Marius up, pokes fun at the kid for his lady troubles, and sometimes calls him Abbé. You know, because clergymen are supposed to be celibate and have no impure thoughts, I'm assuming is the joke here. Of course, Marius takes Courfeyrac's words to heart instead of laughing it off as he probably should. Whenever this happens it makes him shrink even further into himself, avoiding women even more than usual and also Courfeyrac. Especially Courfeyrac.

There are only two girls in the entirety of Paris that Marius isn't terrified of. One of them is the old bearded landlady/housekeeper who sweeps his floor. This gives Courfeyrac opportunity to poke more fun by saying she wears a beard so Marius doesn't have to. The other is a girl of around thirteen or fourteen or so that he stumbled upon in a remote corner of the Luxembourg Gardens when he first started his garden strolling. She was there every day sitting on a bench with a man presumed to be her father.

Marius might have thought the father was a former military man by the way he carried himself. This man was around sixty, white hair, always wore a new hat and had a kind expression, but not one that would invite people to talk to them. As for the girl, she was small and homely and wore the uniform of a person who lives at a convent. Gee, I wonder who these mysterious people could be. Let us stroke our chins and ponder.

Marius always observed them on his walks even though they paid him no attention. The girl always was the one talking; the dad not so much. Marius began an unconscious routine of passing by this bench on his walks at least six times a walk, five or six times a week. Of course, he never spoke to them.  Perhaps because these two seemed to be trying to avoid attention. Marius isn't the only one strolling around Luxembourg though. The father and daughter, by sitting there all the time, had attracted the attentions of a couple roving packs of students, Courfeyrac included.

Courfeyrac didn't think much of the girl, but to give her the nickname of Mlle. Lanoir and the dad M. Leblanc. (Miss Black and Mr. White on account of her dress and his hair.) This nickname stuck. Marius developed a liking for M. Leblanc, but he doesn't think much about the girl. 

After two years of the same routine, every day walks at the Luxembourg passing by the father and daughter team, Marius stops going there. There's no reason for this.  He just takes a break and doesn't return for six entire months. When he does, this homely girl has grown up into a beautiful young lady. Brown hair with golden highlights, blushing skin, blue eyes. Marius can't believe it's the same girl. He wouldn't if she wasn't sitting there with M. Leblanc as usual.

They regard each other with complete indifference, and Marius resumes his laps around the gardens because that is his habit.

One fateful day they actually managed to make eye contact on one of these walks of his, and that's it. It's all over from there. He goes home that night and realizes just how worn down and unpresentable his clothes are. Really? Just now? I thought his raggedy old duds were already an ongoing contributor to his crippling insecurity. The next morning Marius puts on his good suit. He runs into Courfeyrac on his way to the Luxembourg and has the good sense to avoid him. He's spotted anyway, and gets made fun of again behind his back. Courfeyrac thinks Marius's new look is "Idiotic" and he must be going to some really important exam dressed like that. Why are these two friends again? They are totally an odd couple. Hah! I'd imagine that Marius would be closest in temperament to Jean Prouvaire. They could totally just hang out quietly and avoid looking at women together.

Anyway, this new wardrobe is the start of...I don't even know what Marius is trying to accomplish here. Well, I do, but he's going about it the most awkward and creepy way possible. He approaches the bench in slow motion on that first day, but can't bring himself to walk past it. He walks halfway there then retreats, then tries it again over and over, fretting about how he looks in his fancy suit even though he's too far away to be noticed, until he's finally able to will himself into passing by the bench.

Instead of going around and around six times like he usually does, this great feat of strutting past this girl in his Sunday best has apparently taken it out of him. On the way back he just sits down in the middle of the path and starts scratching at the ground with a stick he has somehow acquired. At first I was confused as to whether or not he just plopped his ass down right in the gravel. Since he's already worked himself into a fine bundle of nerves over this girl, it wouldn't have surprised me if he just collapsed. But that would be totally unbecoming of a gentleman! He's actually seated himself on a different bench. I still have no idea where Marius got a stick though. If it came from one of the garden trees, he should be careful. He could probably get arrested for that.

This is his new routine. Every day he gets dressed up in his best suit, heads out to the garden, Courfeyrac provides witty commentary, and Marius sits on his own bench rather than doing laps around Mlle. Lanoir and M. Leblanc. Sometimes he has a book that he pretends to read whilst worrying about whether or not she's noticing him. This is probably how things would have continued until they died of old age if not for the day the father and daughter rose from their bench and walked in Marius's direction.

As they pass by, the girl makes deliberate eye contact with him. Marius is already besotted, so this is just putting him over the moon and making him even more of a basket case. He has still never uttered a word to these people, but that doesn't seem to matter. She definitely noticed him. He rants and raves around the Luxembourg for a minute and then follows them but loses them out on the street. He frets about whether or not she noticed his dusty old boots. Marius is fully in love with her now.

Later, Marius stumbles into Courfeyrac, because Courfeyrac is everywhere. This time Marius doesn't even attempt to avoid his friend and the inevitable jokes at his expense. Instead he invites Courfeyrac out on a man-date to dinner and the theatre. That is how great of a mood he's in. Well, this girl from the garden has Marius in quite a state. He doesn't even look at a hat girl's garter as she passes by them on their way out of the theatre, and he's even offended at Courfeyrac making comments about adding her to his "collection". I actually wouldn't be all that surprised if there are already a bunch of little Courfeyracs running around Paris come to think of it.

They meet a few friends at the usual place for lunch the next day, and Marius is particularly jolly. I'm assuming this gaiety is wildly out of character for a usual somber Marius. Courfeyrac thinks Marius is being totally hilarious. Jean Prouvaire, on the other hand, being the sensitive soul that he is, is the one that realizes the gravity of the situation. Jehan knows Marius's twitterpation is serious business.

Serious business it is too, because Marius is about to go full stalker mode on this girl. I'm not even joking. He feels like he might be attracting too much attention sitting on his bench or walking around them in a circle, so he's taken to hiding behind statues and bushes and things. Now that he's got it bad for the girl, he doesn't want to attract the father's attentions. I'm not sure why he thinks this is a better tactic, since he's been orbiting them for almost every day for nearly three years already, and they didn't seem to mind.

Stealth is not something Marius is very good at though, because it absolutely doesn't go unnoticed by M. Leblanc that this once innocuous student is being a total creeper now. Leblanc hatches his own plot to move around and take up residence on a new bench just to see if Marius really is following them around or if this is all just a massive coincidence.

Marius isn't savvy enough to catch on and falls for the trap. Now M. Leblanc knows for sure that some stranger is following them around. Marius remains completely oblivious.

One day he has the good fortune to find a handkerchief left behind on the bench with the initials U.F. on it. Should we even pretend we don't already know that this stands for "Ultimus Fauchelevent" aka Jean Valjean? The hankie belongs to the old man.

Marius assumes it belongs to the girl and immediately jumps to the conclusion that her name must be Ursula, because that is the only girl's name he can think of that begins with "U" I guess. He carries it with him everywhere, kisses it, sleeps with it, smells the perfume on it. Please stop, Marius. I'm begging you! Also, never ever tell Courfeyrac about this. You'll never live it down.

He makes sure the girl sees him kiss the handkerchief and place it over his heart every day they "meet", which totally confounds her of course, because it's not hers and she doesn't know what this crazy man is doing. Marius just thinks she's being modest about the token of affection she'd left for him.

 One day a strong gust of wind blows the girl's skirt up enough to glimpse a little bit of skin. This drives Marius absolutely wild with jealousy even though there isn't even anybody around to see it. He's jealous of his shadow. He's jealous of an old veteran who winks conspiratorially at Marius as he passes by several minutes after it happens. This vet hadn't been there to observe the gust of wind. He's just Captain Winks-a-lot, I guess. Marius gives the girl angry eyes afterward because she let this happen. She gives him WTF is wrong with this dude eyes, because WTF is wrong with this dude? This is their first argument. 

And the last and final thread in Marius's unraveling  is when he decides it would be a good idea to follow this "Ursula" home. He's not content just knowing where she lives now either. He's bold enough to question the doorman. He learns that M. Leblanc is an old retired man who lives with his daughter. He doesn't get much further than that because the doorman is suspicious.

M. Leblanc and his daughter only visit the Luxembourg once after that. They don't show up again, and Marius is beside himself. He goes to their house and their light isn't on. After a few more days of waiting for them he finally asks the doorman what happened. The couple has moved! Marius is devastated. This is what happens when you try to woo people by being a creepy stalker, Marius. Seriously, dude. You really might want to reconsider your strategy for meeting girls!

About: Dak reads Les Misérables and recaps it here, so that she may better retain the information. Things not to expect: deep literary analysis. Things to expect: Spoilers. All the spoilers 

Marius: Book 5; Forever Alone (but not really)

Hey! You remember way back in the beginning of Marius's book when we were talking about the gamins and Gavroche and the Jondrettes: his terrible family who live in Gorbeau house next door to this mysterious man of mystery and no money named M. Marius?

I know, it's been a while. That was one heck of a flashback. Well, we have arrived back at that point. Marius has disembarked from his schmancy hotel room next door to his buddy Courfeyrac and somehow landed himself at Gorbeau house in a closet sized room with only the bare necessities. He has three shirts, and two suits, and eats one egg and a slice of bread for breakfast. This part really goes into great detail about how he parses out the little money he does have.

The point is Marius is poor now, and the only thing he has left is his pride and his bootstraps, which he has taken a couple years (I surmise because he's twenty now and the last time we were given his age he was only eighteen) to successfully pull himself up by to the point where he is not living in a cardboard box or dying of starvation in the street or aimlessly riding around in a cab with no idea about what to do. Hell, he's even loaned Courfeyrac some money at this point. He's learned English and German and has his translating job for his coin, and by the way, Marius is a lawyer now. He has apparently completed his schooling on the subject. I still have to wonder how he managed to pay for school since he's so adamant about not taking money from his grandpa. Did Grandpa G. just foot the bill anyway? Did you only have to pay once back then and take the classes then you were a lawyer? I guess I could research how law school at this time actually functioned, but... maybe later.

Anyway, Marius in his mule-like stubbornness is dead set still against taking money from Grandpa G....which still occasionally appears at his doorstep. How does this keep happening? I can't imagine Marius left them a forwarding address at any point, so how does his aunt keep finding him when he doesn't even know where he's going half the time? She's like the alumni association at my former school. I swear, I could have an unlisted, untraceable phone that I only use once to make outgoing calls before tossing it out for a new one and they would still find me. I only wish they were trying to give me money instead of asking for it.

Marius even refuses to run up any debt at all. Unheard of in the land of studentry! Good job, Marius. If it comes down to a choice between skipping a meal or taking out credit to eat, he's going to go hungry that day. He doesn't have much, but he's making it work. I was totally wrong about this kid. He's functioning just fine on his own. Let's just hope he doesn't get distracted into not paying rent again since Gorbeau house is apparently the only run down tenement in all of Paris.

Still he is Marius, and we know he takes things very seriously once he manages to get focused. (He still seems unapproachable because he doesn't talk much and this serious demeanor of his.) He's still in mourning for his dad. Is two entire years far past the appropriate mourning period for this time, or is it just me? Because that seems extreme. He won't even go out in his dark green suit unless it's nighttime, because it's not black enough. He only has two suits, so I guess he doesn't venture out in the daytime much. Maybe somewhere up in heaven Georges is looking down saying: I love you Marius, but that's enough, son.

Well, if there's one thing we can learn about Marius, it's that there is literally nothing he can't get obsessed over, including being poor. He's a lawyer, but he doesn't take any cases. He squeaks by translating things and not eating, and stops just short of doing enough work to make a decent living. He'd rather be free to while away his days thinking about stuff instead of being chained to a desk for the rest of his life being a slave to the wage.

That's not the only thing he's being obsessive about these days. He's also desperate to find the Thénardiers, and he's traveling all over France in a bid to accomplish this. Yes, he wants to find the man who saved his father from the battlefield that day and do whatever he can to help the guy just as it said in his father's will. It is really killing me that Marius is so earnest and determined about this, knowing who and what Thénardier is. He even feels bad about the hard times these people have fallen upon since they lost their inn. He wonders how it is possible he can't find this Thénardier anywhere in France when Thénardier was able to find his dad in the midst of bullets flying and people dying everywhere at Waterloo. It surprises me too considering how often the characters in this book keep stumbling into each other in the unlikeliest of places. If only he knew. If only he knew a couple things actually.

As for Les Amis and Enjolras, they get another mention as still being friendly with Marius, so he hasn't completely cut ties with them to become a hermit. However, a couple sentences later we are being told that his friends are Courfeyrac and Mabeuf, so I guess these two are higher up on the friend chain than the rest of them, and Mabeuf ranks higher than Courfeyrac as far as who Marius would rather hang out with if he has to hang out with other people.

It is really not surprising that Marius prefers being around people decades older than he is though, is it? (especially ones that knew his father)

We have reached year three of Marius's estrangement from his grandfather now. Neither one of them is willing to make an overture. Marius seems to be perfectly content in his solitary life as a pauper/lawyer and just assumes that Grandpa G. hates him and never wants to see him again. Grandpa G. has done absolutely nothing to make him think otherwise. If the text wasn't telling me that all his cane waving angry talk was his crotchety old man way of loving his dear grandson then I'd think the guy hated him too. He misses Marius a lot, but is still unwilling to admit that to anybody.

Well, at least somebody does. The Elder has no thoughts about her nephew at all, but we all know who her fave "nephew" is, and it isn't poor old (at heart) Marius. We will learn the extent of just how much of a non-entity Marius is to her later on in this chapter, but now...

Let us embark on another interlude and learn all about our favorite Church Warden, Mabeuf!

Mabeuf, we come to find, is a great fan of plants and a devoted book lover. He's not really here for all this political biz. He doesn't understand why men spend time hating each other over things like charters and monarchies and democracies, etc and so forth. There are too many plants to admire and books to read to be fussed with that stuff. If we are to describe him as any "ist" (because everybody is an ist of some sort), he is a Bookist. Bookist!? Where do I sign up for this party? He doesn't want to be a useless old man, so he reads as much as he collects books, and admiring plants doesn't stop him gardening, something he and Georges bonded over. Of course they did! It's officially reached the point where all this good guy gardening hardly comes as a surprise anymore. He even combined his two passions and wrote a book about plants. He owns the plates himself, so up until the July Revolution in 1830, he had made quite a tidy living selling these books in addition to being a church warden. Turns out people aren't too fond of spending their hard earned cash on things like flower books when there's a revolt on.

A few more tidbits about Mabeuf, he's a little gouty, a little arthritic, doesn't like swords or guns, has a curé brother, white hair, and rather looks like an old sheep. His dream is to naturalize the indigo plant to France, and he doesn't have friends aside from an old bookseller and the kid. He lets Marius hang around because young people are like a sunny day to help to warm up an old guy's soul. (I never imagined being around Marius would ever be compared to a sunny day, but there you have it!)

As for Mabeuf's personal life, well... He likes his books the way Grandpa G. loves the ladies. He has a housekeeper whom he calls Mother Plutarch. She's an old cat lady who spends her free time collecting white caps and admiring her linens. Her cat's name is Sultan. They have matching whiskers.

His brother, the curé, had died in 1830, and Mabeuf had fallen on hard times due to that whole revolution business. He had to move into a smaller place where the only people allowed to visit were Marius and the bookseller friend. How does the cat have a name, but not this book guy? Can I name him Gui de Books from now on? (My spell check thinks I'm trying to spell guidebooks! Wow, pun not intended!)

As for Marius, we learn he likes Courfeyrac well enough, but he goes out of his way to visit Mabeuf. Only once or twice a month though. I guess Marius might turn into a pumpkin if he has too much human contact. (Hey, if that happens, he can wear one of those melon jackets!)  Most of the time he just walks around alone and admires gardens. Once, he spent half an entire hour in a vegetable patch...looking at cabbages and chickens and a manure pile or some such. I was wondering when Marius was going to start his transition into an old man with a garden. This is how it begins!

He has mellowed out with his political opinions during this time, so I guess he isn't going to be climbing up on his soapbox and extolling the virtues of Napoleon in front of unreceptive audiences anymore? We also learn that Marius did have a reason for choosing the Gorbeau house, a place he stumbled upon during one of his walks. He likes the solitude and the price. Somehow, despite having a limited amount of friends and preferring to hang out with himself forever alone, staring at plants, he does get invited to parties with old military friends of his father's that he's met around town. He only goes out when the ground his frozen, though, because he can't go out to these fancy parties with dirty shoes (scandal!) and he can't afford the cab to keep his feet out of the mud. That's really got to limit his social engagements, doesn't it? He only goes out at night when the ground is frozen?

One more incident regarding Marius before we move on. One day he came home to his room at the Gorbeau house and the landlady/housekeeper person tells him that she's going to kick the Jondrettes out of the house because they're two months behind on rent. Marius hardly pays attention to these people to even know who they are, but he he pays for their rent + five extra francs with almost his entire cache of rainy day money anyway with the provision that they never know it was him that did the good deed. You are being far too kind, Marius. Really.

Meanwhile, at the Gillenormand pad, the Elder is hatching her own nefarious plot. What could she be planning? Well, guess who's regiment is now stationed in Paris? You should be guessing Théodule because he's the only military man we know that's still alive. Stationed in Paris? I have a sinking feeling about this turn of events. As for the Elder and her grand scheme, she thinks if she can get Grandpa G. and his nephew together then maybe Théodule could take the place of Marius in the household or something. She wants to exchange the Lawyer for the Lieutenant. Man, is it just me, or does Mlle. here have quite a thing for her distant relative? Of course, he is the only dude that's ever kissed her apparently, and he has the shiniest of mustaches, so I guess I can see the attraction. You don't just replace Marius, though! C'mon, lady! Clearly he is a special boy that cannot be replicated.

As for Grandpa G. he doesn't even know who Théodule is. Does he just not care to know, or is he having a senior moment? He's got to be a hundred years old by now, so who knows. The Elder reminds him and then coaches Théodule for the imminent meeting by telling him to just agree with everything that comes out of the old man's mouth.

Grandpa G. spends the entire meeting ranting and raving about those damn kids on his lawn. His Royalist leaning newspaper has told him that the students are preparing to have a debate about the National Guard artillery, but he doesn't think it's something to be debated. The King's military can do no wrong, so there's no need to discuss it. How dare they! He presumes Marius is going to be there, since he's a student; and in addition to being generally irritated with kids these days, he's particularly perturbed by that ungrateful grandson of his going off to be a republican.

Théodule dutifully agrees with Grandpa G.'s every crazy old man opinion, and gets called a fool for his efforts. Can anybody win with Grandpa G.?  The magic 8 ball says: Very Doubtful.