Les Mis notes up to the end of Fantine
The weekend was not conductive to clearing backlogs, except for the limerick backlog.
Les Mis got really exciting for a few moments!
F Seventh IX
OK, this is fucking scary (Jean sees his double): "He thought he was looking at himself, grown old; not absolutely the same in face, of course, but exactly similar in attitude and aspect, with his bristling hair, with that wild and uneasy eye, with that blouse, just as it was on the day when he entered D--, full of hatred, concealing his soul in that hideous mass of frightful thoughts which he had spent nineteen years in collecting on the floor of the prison.
He said to himself with a shudder, “Good God! shall I become like that again?”
This creature seemed to be at least sixty; there was something indescribably coarse, stupid, and frightened about him."
Shit. "Judges, clerks, gendarmes, a throng of cruelly curious heads, all these he had already beheld once, in days gone by, twenty-seven years before;.. he beheld the monstrous aspects of his past reappear and live once more around him, with all that there is formidable in reality."
"Under his very eyes, unheard-of vision, he had a sort of representation of the most horrible moment of his life, enacted by his spectre.
Everything was there; the apparatus was the same, the hour of the night, the faces of the judges, of soldiers, and of spectators; all were the same, only above the President’s head there hung a crucifix, something which the courts had lacked at the time of his condemnation: God had been absent when he had been judged."
1. Fuck. 2. God is present as Valjean's conscience, which can save Champmathieu.
"M. Bamatabois was one of the jurors." Fuck you and all you stand for (this is the low-budget dandy that Fantine attacked)
District-attorney: "Having exhausted these considerations, he passed on to Jean Valjean himself. Who was this Jean Valjean? Description of Jean Valjean: a monster spewed forth, etc. The model for this sort of description is contained in the tale of Théramène, which is not useful to tragedy, but which every day renders great services to judicial eloquence. The audience and the jury “shuddered.”"
"While the district-attorney was speaking, the accused listened to him open-mouthed, with a sort of amazement in which some admiration was assuredly blended."
X
"The President, an attentive and benevolent man" the judge is good
This was really exciting! (C. lost the trial, and Valjean spoke at the last possible moment.)
XI
"M. Madeleine.. had advanced towards the witnesses Cochepaille, Brevet, and Chenildieu.
“Do you not recognize me?” said he.
All three remained speechless, and indicated by a sign of the head that they did not know him. Cochepaille, who was intimidated, made a military salute." Perfect!
"“Gentlemen of the jury, order the prisoner to be released! Mr. President, have me arrested. He is not the man whom you are in search of; it is I: I am Jean Valjean.”
(..) the President.. asked in accents which all understood:-
“Is there a physician present?”"
Flawless
"M. Madeleine did not allow the district-attorney to finish; he interrupted him in accents full of suavity and authority." WILL HE SUCCEED
"the galleys make the convict what he is"
"He turned to the three convicts, and said:-
“Well, I recognize you; do you remember, Brevet?”
He paused, hesitated for an instant, and said:-
“Do you remember the knitted suspenders with a checked pattern which you wore in the galleys?”"
Looking hopeful!
"It was a smile of triumph; it was also a smile of despair.
“You see plainly,” he said, “that I am Jean Valjean.”
In that chamber there were no longer either judges, accusers, nor gendarmes; there was nothing but staring eyes and sympathizing hearts. No one recalled any longer the part that each might be called upon to play; the district-attorney forgot he was there for the purpose of prosecuting, the President that he was there to preside, the counsel for the defence that he was there to defend."
Wow! He stunned everyone and walked out.
*claps*
Victor is applauding, too: magnificent, sublime, "At that moment there was about him that divine something which causes multitudes to stand aside and make way for a man."
BUT WHAT WILL JAVERT SAY
F Eigth I
"Sister Simplice had no mirror." Ofc she didn't, bc personal grooming is evil
Fantine dying: "Her pallor had become whiteness; her cheeks were crimson; her long golden lashes, the only beauty of her youth and her virginity which remained to her, palpitated, though they remained closed and drooping. Her whole person was trembling with an indescribable unfolding of wings.."
II
"I was asleep, but I saw you. I have seen you for a long, long time. I have been following you with my eyes all night long. You were in a glory, and you had around you all sorts of celestial forms.”
"He made some mechanical reply which he was never afterwards able to recall." Option for writing dialogue. Would get old soon. :D
III
"Javert Satisfied": decent fic idea
"Javert was a complete character, who never had a wrinkle in his duty or in his uniform; methodical with malefactors, rigid with the buttons of his coat."
"The instant that Madeleine’s glance encountered Javert’s glance, Javert, without stirring, without moving from his post, without approaching him, became terrible. No human sentiment can be as terrible as joy.
It was the visage of a demon who has just found his damned soul." is that so
"he, Javert, personified justice, light, and truth in their celestial function of crushing out evil" like a really dumb angel
CALLED IT! Victor's words, not mine: "Erect, haughty, brilliant, he flaunted abroad in open day the superhuman bestiality of a ferocious archangel. The terrible shadow of the action which he was accomplishing caused the vague flash of the social sword to be visible in his clenched fist; happy and indignant, he held his heel upon crime, vice, rebellion, perdition, hell; he was radiant, he exterminated, he smiled, and there was an incontestable grandeur in this monstrous Saint Michael."
"the superhuman bestiality of a ferocious archangel" this is so good, tho. And reminds me of the finale of Necessary Evils iirc. :)
"Probity, sincerity, candor, conviction, the sense of duty, are things which may become hideous when wrongly directed; but which, even when hideous, remain grand: their majesty, the majesty peculiar to the human conscience, clings to them in the midst of horror; they are virtues which have one vice,-error. The honest, pitiless joy of a fanatic in the full flood of his atrocity preserves a certain lugubriously venerable radiance. Without himself suspecting the fact, Javert in his formidable happiness was to be pitied, as is every ignorant man who triumphs. Nothing could be so poignant and so terrible as this face, wherein was displayed all that may be designated as the evil of the good."
IV
"Then he addressed Javert, and said:-
“I know what you want.”
Javert replied:-
“Be quick about it!”
There lay in the inflection of voice which accompanied these words something indescribably fierce and frenzied."
*giggles*
"he hurled at Jean Valjean a glance which he threw out like a grappling-hook, and with which he was accustomed to draw wretches violently to him" wow
"“Javert-”
Javert interrupted him: “Call me Mr. Inspector.”"
*snerk*
V
"“Well! I suspected as much. That man was too good, too perfect, too affected." :C
Valjean broke out of prison. Why am I even surprised :D He doesn't follow the law for the law's sake, and it's no longer a question of saving an innocent man.
"The peculiar feature of the violences of destiny is, that however polished or cool we may be, they wring human nature from our very bowels, and force it to reappear on the surface. The emotions of that day had turned the nun into a woman once more. She had wept, and she was trembling."
Women have emotions, unlike... very religious people?
Sister Simplice lied to protect Valjean. :c
"An hour later, a man, marching amid trees and mists, was rapidly departing from M. sur M. in the direction of Paris. That man was Jean Valjean." I want to march amid trees and mists.
"The curé thought that he was doing right, and perhaps he really was, in reserving as much money as possible from what Jean Valjean had left for the poor. (..) That is why he had a very simple funeral for Fantine, and reduced it to that strictly necessary form known as the pauper’s grave."
Yes! Fantine doesn't need money anymore and isn't in a position to appreciate fancy parties. Well, okay, if he knew she had a daughter, he should have made the grave findable. Depends on how much he listens to gossip.
The defence of so-called Champmathieu
was pathetic, although not untrue.
"But I am not Jean!
I've never been Jean!":
this rhetoric, not hard to outdo.
There once was a cop called Javert
who thought the law can't be unfair.
Say, was the man dense
or just really tense,
in need of some t. loving care?
There was a young seamstress Fantine
with hair of a fairytale queen.
Disgrace ate her whole,
hair, teeth, bones and all,
'cuz having a baby? Obscene!
Les Mis got really exciting for a few moments!
F Seventh IX
OK, this is fucking scary (Jean sees his double): "He thought he was looking at himself, grown old; not absolutely the same in face, of course, but exactly similar in attitude and aspect, with his bristling hair, with that wild and uneasy eye, with that blouse, just as it was on the day when he entered D--, full of hatred, concealing his soul in that hideous mass of frightful thoughts which he had spent nineteen years in collecting on the floor of the prison.
He said to himself with a shudder, “Good God! shall I become like that again?”
This creature seemed to be at least sixty; there was something indescribably coarse, stupid, and frightened about him."
Shit. "Judges, clerks, gendarmes, a throng of cruelly curious heads, all these he had already beheld once, in days gone by, twenty-seven years before;.. he beheld the monstrous aspects of his past reappear and live once more around him, with all that there is formidable in reality."
"Under his very eyes, unheard-of vision, he had a sort of representation of the most horrible moment of his life, enacted by his spectre.
Everything was there; the apparatus was the same, the hour of the night, the faces of the judges, of soldiers, and of spectators; all were the same, only above the President’s head there hung a crucifix, something which the courts had lacked at the time of his condemnation: God had been absent when he had been judged."
1. Fuck. 2. God is present as Valjean's conscience, which can save Champmathieu.
"M. Bamatabois was one of the jurors." Fuck you and all you stand for (this is the low-budget dandy that Fantine attacked)
District-attorney: "Having exhausted these considerations, he passed on to Jean Valjean himself. Who was this Jean Valjean? Description of Jean Valjean: a monster spewed forth, etc. The model for this sort of description is contained in the tale of Théramène, which is not useful to tragedy, but which every day renders great services to judicial eloquence. The audience and the jury “shuddered.”"
"While the district-attorney was speaking, the accused listened to him open-mouthed, with a sort of amazement in which some admiration was assuredly blended."
X
"The President, an attentive and benevolent man" the judge is good
This was really exciting! (C. lost the trial, and Valjean spoke at the last possible moment.)
XI
"M. Madeleine.. had advanced towards the witnesses Cochepaille, Brevet, and Chenildieu.
“Do you not recognize me?” said he.
All three remained speechless, and indicated by a sign of the head that they did not know him. Cochepaille, who was intimidated, made a military salute." Perfect!
"“Gentlemen of the jury, order the prisoner to be released! Mr. President, have me arrested. He is not the man whom you are in search of; it is I: I am Jean Valjean.”
(..) the President.. asked in accents which all understood:-
“Is there a physician present?”"
Flawless
"M. Madeleine did not allow the district-attorney to finish; he interrupted him in accents full of suavity and authority." WILL HE SUCCEED
"the galleys make the convict what he is"
"He turned to the three convicts, and said:-
“Well, I recognize you; do you remember, Brevet?”
He paused, hesitated for an instant, and said:-
“Do you remember the knitted suspenders with a checked pattern which you wore in the galleys?”"
Looking hopeful!
"It was a smile of triumph; it was also a smile of despair.
“You see plainly,” he said, “that I am Jean Valjean.”
In that chamber there were no longer either judges, accusers, nor gendarmes; there was nothing but staring eyes and sympathizing hearts. No one recalled any longer the part that each might be called upon to play; the district-attorney forgot he was there for the purpose of prosecuting, the President that he was there to preside, the counsel for the defence that he was there to defend."
Wow! He stunned everyone and walked out.
*claps*
Victor is applauding, too: magnificent, sublime, "At that moment there was about him that divine something which causes multitudes to stand aside and make way for a man."
BUT WHAT WILL JAVERT SAY
F Eigth I
"Sister Simplice had no mirror." Ofc she didn't, bc personal grooming is evil
Fantine dying: "Her pallor had become whiteness; her cheeks were crimson; her long golden lashes, the only beauty of her youth and her virginity which remained to her, palpitated, though they remained closed and drooping. Her whole person was trembling with an indescribable unfolding of wings.."
II
"I was asleep, but I saw you. I have seen you for a long, long time. I have been following you with my eyes all night long. You were in a glory, and you had around you all sorts of celestial forms.”
"He made some mechanical reply which he was never afterwards able to recall." Option for writing dialogue. Would get old soon. :D
III
"Javert Satisfied": decent fic idea
"Javert was a complete character, who never had a wrinkle in his duty or in his uniform; methodical with malefactors, rigid with the buttons of his coat."
"The instant that Madeleine’s glance encountered Javert’s glance, Javert, without stirring, without moving from his post, without approaching him, became terrible. No human sentiment can be as terrible as joy.
It was the visage of a demon who has just found his damned soul." is that so
"he, Javert, personified justice, light, and truth in their celestial function of crushing out evil" like a really dumb angel
CALLED IT! Victor's words, not mine: "Erect, haughty, brilliant, he flaunted abroad in open day the superhuman bestiality of a ferocious archangel. The terrible shadow of the action which he was accomplishing caused the vague flash of the social sword to be visible in his clenched fist; happy and indignant, he held his heel upon crime, vice, rebellion, perdition, hell; he was radiant, he exterminated, he smiled, and there was an incontestable grandeur in this monstrous Saint Michael."
"the superhuman bestiality of a ferocious archangel" this is so good, tho. And reminds me of the finale of Necessary Evils iirc. :)
"Probity, sincerity, candor, conviction, the sense of duty, are things which may become hideous when wrongly directed; but which, even when hideous, remain grand: their majesty, the majesty peculiar to the human conscience, clings to them in the midst of horror; they are virtues which have one vice,-error. The honest, pitiless joy of a fanatic in the full flood of his atrocity preserves a certain lugubriously venerable radiance. Without himself suspecting the fact, Javert in his formidable happiness was to be pitied, as is every ignorant man who triumphs. Nothing could be so poignant and so terrible as this face, wherein was displayed all that may be designated as the evil of the good."
IV
"Then he addressed Javert, and said:-
“I know what you want.”
Javert replied:-
“Be quick about it!”
There lay in the inflection of voice which accompanied these words something indescribably fierce and frenzied."
*giggles*
"he hurled at Jean Valjean a glance which he threw out like a grappling-hook, and with which he was accustomed to draw wretches violently to him" wow
"“Javert-”
Javert interrupted him: “Call me Mr. Inspector.”"
*snerk*
V
"“Well! I suspected as much. That man was too good, too perfect, too affected." :C
Valjean broke out of prison. Why am I even surprised :D He doesn't follow the law for the law's sake, and it's no longer a question of saving an innocent man.
"The peculiar feature of the violences of destiny is, that however polished or cool we may be, they wring human nature from our very bowels, and force it to reappear on the surface. The emotions of that day had turned the nun into a woman once more. She had wept, and she was trembling."
Women have emotions, unlike... very religious people?
Sister Simplice lied to protect Valjean. :c
"An hour later, a man, marching amid trees and mists, was rapidly departing from M. sur M. in the direction of Paris. That man was Jean Valjean." I want to march amid trees and mists.
"The curé thought that he was doing right, and perhaps he really was, in reserving as much money as possible from what Jean Valjean had left for the poor. (..) That is why he had a very simple funeral for Fantine, and reduced it to that strictly necessary form known as the pauper’s grave."
Yes! Fantine doesn't need money anymore and isn't in a position to appreciate fancy parties. Well, okay, if he knew she had a daughter, he should have made the grave findable. Depends on how much he listens to gossip.
The defence of so-called Champmathieu
was pathetic, although not untrue.
"But I am not Jean!
I've never been Jean!":
this rhetoric, not hard to outdo.
There once was a cop called Javert
who thought the law can't be unfair.
Say, was the man dense
or just really tense,
in need of some t. loving care?
There was a young seamstress Fantine
with hair of a fairytale queen.
Disgrace ate her whole,
hair, teeth, bones and all,
'cuz having a baby? Obscene!