Fragments

Some names from the first drafts:

Jean Valjean: Jean Tréjean
Fantine: Marguerite Louet
Cosette: Anna Louet (whence Alouette, "lark")
Thomas Telbon
Gavroche: Chavaroche, Grimebodin
Eponine: Palmyre
Azelma: Malvina

—

Another character trait of M. Gillenormand, according to a note found in Victor Hugo's papers:
"He had a very learned cousin, an entomologist, the Abbé Gillenormand, whom the emperor Alexander had wanted to see, and at whose home His Imperial Majesty had arrived too late--they were burying the Abbé, who had died of a fever he caught two days before the day when His Majesty had judged it best to come. He was furious with this cousin because of that. He had never forgiven him for having died before receiving the visit of the emperor of Russia."

—

Another of Hugo's notes:
"There was a series of Nicolettes. They would say in the house:
The new Nicolette.
The former Nicolette.
The Nicolette of the Directory.
The Nicolette from the time of Buonaparte."

—

His daughter was a child whom we will speak of shortly, the only person in his family who had survived; she was an old virtue, an incombustible prude, one of the most pointed noses and one of the most obtuse spirits one could ever see. ...A certain bigoted devotion. Bigotry is nothing else but the castration of the intelligence. The virtues that result from it resemble the chastity of a eunuch, and have just as much merit.

—

In an abandoned version, Victor Hugo, instead of revealing to Gillenormand the contents of Marius' little box, revealed to Marius the contents of the pockets of one of Gillenormand's frock coats.
One day he [Marius] saw in the house a servant looking for M. Gillenormand.
"What do you want with him?" asked Thomas. [Marius had at first been named Thomas.]
"Monsieur has given me one of his old coats," answered the servant. "He did not remember that there were some papers in the pockets, and I'm looking for him to give them back to him."
"Give them to me," said Thomas, "I'll return them." The servant gave him the papers; Thomas threw them negligently into a drawer. At the moment when he was about to close the drawer, his gaze fell on these old papers and he recognized his father's handwriting.
They were his father's letters, the same ones that he had seen so many times M. Gillenormand put in his pocket without reading them. Curiosity overtook him, and another instinct perhaps drove him.
"Let's see what they are," he said, and he unfolded one and read it.

—

[...he asked Cosette, "Aren't you going to put on your dress and your hat, you know the ones?"
This happened in Cosette's room. Cosette turned towards the wardrobe where her schoolgirl clothes were hanging.
"That disguise!" she said. "Father, what do you want me to do with that? Oh, the idea! No, I'll never put on those horrors again. With that machine on my head, I look like Madame Mad-Dog."]
"Well," said Jean Tréjean, "give them to me."
"Oh, gladly, Father," cried Cosette, "but what will you do with them?"
"That's my business."
"I understand, Father. They're for the poor."
"Yes," he replied, "they're for the poor."
Jean Tréjean retired early that night. He took "those horrors" into his room, and when he was alone, he took the poor merino dress and the poor plush hat, those horrors, spread them out on his pallet with a painful smile, and kissed them, then his white head fell on these cast-offs, and if there had been somebody in the room at that moment, he would have heard the good old man sobbing. His heart was bursting: he could not have said what it was... He felt as one would feel in front of the clothing of his dead child.
He locked this dress and hat in an armoire which he never opened, and when he had put away the key to this armoire, it seemed to him that it was a tomb he had just closed, and that he had put his happiness inside it.

—

Victor Hugo had at first thought about making known to Cosette's father, whom he had called Lebotelier before calling him Tholomyès, his child's marriage. This was found in the Les Misérables dossier:

We believe it necessary to inform M. Gustave Lebotelier, solicitor in Evreux, that his daughter, the child of Fantine, is now called Mme la baronne Telbon, possesses an income of twenty-five thousand francs, and lives in the rue du Hanovre, no. 17, on the first floor. An honorable citizen may admit to and fulfil the duties of paternity towards a person thus placed.

—

The Cougourde of Aix, which "was being outlined," must still have had very few members [in 1828]. Under the July monarchy it comprised about eighty, its president at that time was named Prives, and it was "the most advanced" of the republican societies of the Bouches-du-Rhone.
-Allem

—

Around Courfeyrac, who had all the qualities of a center, roundness and radiance, were found several young men who, as we will see later, had furthermore another bond: Combeferre, characterized as the furious one; Joly, pronounced 'Jolly'; Grangé who signed his name with the rebus G.; Enjolras, cold, fanatical, and sad, with the complexion of a woman, the smile of a virgin, and the sweetest blue eyes that could have existed in the world; finally Lègle, who was from Meaux, and whom they called Bossuet. Except for Bossuet, they were all from the south.

—

Without doubt it is Enjolras that Victor Hugo, in his notes, made the following remark belong to:

"He cried out:
"'Long live France! there is nothing but France! Spain is a monk's frock, Italy is a burial shroud. London is built up of ennui; the Russian monarchy is winter made into government.'"

—

Combeferre's song (J'aime mieux ma mère / "I love my mother more") recalls a song that Alcestis sings on the banks of the Orontes, in "The Misanthrope" (Act I, sc. II).

If the king had given me
His great city of Paris
And I were obliged to leave
The love of my sweetheart
I would say to King Henry,
"Take back your Paris!
I love my sweetheart more, alas!
I love my sweetheart more."

—

Grantaire's verses, which form two lines, are to the same tune as Vive Henri IV, which Collé composed for his comedy "Henry IV's Hunting Party." Here is the whole happy quatrain:

I loves the girls
And I love good wine
Of our fine games
Here's the whole refrain.

—

Another version of the chapter where Marius meets the friends of the ABC:

Courfeyrac, at the door, sees a cabriolet pass by in the square, walking, and as though undecided. "Hullo! why is the cabriolet going at a walk?" He looks and thinks he recognizes a face.

"Monsieur?"

"If you please?"

"Aren't you the one named Marius Pontmercy?"

"Yes."

"Well, I'm in the same class as you. Three days ago the professor called roll, and marked you absent. You know that they are strict now, and that after three absences they strike out your name. As for me, I could care less, I never go. They've struck out my name from the roll, but I'm still a student. I was signed up under your name by a friend who is in the café."

"Thank you, monsieur."

"My name is Courfeyrac. Where do you live?"

"In this cabriolet."

"Bah!"

"I'm in the street for the moment. It's a long story. I don't know where to go."

"Come home with me," said Courfeyrac.

Marius got out and entered the café.

"I'm going to present you to the Friends," said Courfeyrac.

"Who are the Friends?"

"Look and you will see, listen and you will hear."

Marius entered the back room. Everyone there was talking and seemed to be debating heatedly. But before Courfeyrac could have said a word and presented Marius, E..., seeing a stranger, had furrowed his brow and made a signal. Everyone turned around towards the newcomer. Marius listened, according to Courfeyrac's advice, and this is what he heard:

(Here, the part about the game of dominoes.)

Marius had not consented to encumber Courfeyrac's room, but he was living in the same building as him, having found him friendly. (The day after next, conversation about resources. The day after, about politics.)

—

"Hullo!" said Laigle de Meaux, "you'll catch cold. No umbrella!"

Courfeyrac shrugged. The romantic school, to which he belonged, has always hated and scorned umbrellas.

"An umbrella!" he cried, "never! I'd sooner die!"

"You're wrong," said Bossuet, "they're elegant. Don't you know the great English fashion, an enormous parasol?"

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