ean Still Wears His Arm in a Sling
III. The Inseparable
IV. The Immortal Liver

BOOK SEVENTH.--THE LAST DRAUGHT FROM THE CUP

I. The Seventh Circle and the Eighth Heaven
II. The Obscurities Which a Revelation Can Contain

BOOK EIGHTH.--FADING AWAY OF THE TWILIGHT

I. The Lower Chamber
II. Another Step Backwards
III. They Recall the Garden of the Rue Plumet
IV. Attraction and Extinction

BOOK NINTH.--SUPREME SHADOW, SUPREME DAWN

I. Pity for the Unhappy, but Indulgence for the Happy
II. Last Flickerings of a Lamp Without Oil
III. A Pen Is Heavy to the Man Who Lifted the
Fauchelevent's Cart
IV. A Bottle of Ink Which Only Succeeded in Whitening
V. A Night Behind Which There Is Day
VI. The Grass Covers and the Rain Effaces

LES MISERABLES

VOLUME I.--FANTINE.

PREFACE

So long as there shall exist, by virtue of law and custom, decrees of
damnation pronounced by society, artificially creating hells amid the
civilization of earth, and adding the element of human fate to divine
destiny; so long as the three great problems of the century--the
degradation of man through pauperism, the corruption of woman through
hunger, the crippling of children through lack of light--are unsolved;
so long as social asphyxia is possible in any part of the world;--in
other words, and with a still wider significance, so long as ignorance
and poverty exist on earth, books of the nature of Les Miserables cannot
fail to be of use.

HAUTEVILLE HOUSE, 1862.

FANTINE

BOOK FIRST--A JUST MAN

CHAPTER I--M. MYRIEL

In 1815, M. Charles-Francois-Bienvenu Myriel was Bishop of D---- He was
an old man of about seventy-five years of age; he had occupied the see
of D---- since 1806.

Although this detail has no connection whatever with the real substance
of what we are about to relate, it will not be superfluous, if merely
for the sake of exactness in all points, to mention here the various
rumors and remarks which had been in circulation about him from the very
moment when he arrived in the diocese. True or false, that which is said
of men often occupies as important a place in their lives, and above all
in their destinies, as that which they do. M. Myriel was the son of a
councillor of the Parliament of Aix; hence he belonged to the nobilit