Les Miserables: Volume 1, Book 2 Summary & Analysis

Chapter 1 In early October, 1815, a man travelling on foot enters D----, and the inhabitants stare out their windows at him uneasily because of how wretched he looks (though he’s strong and robust, a little younger than 50 years old). He carries only a soldier’s knapsack, wears a long beard, and is dusty all over. No one knows where he came from. He looks like he’s been walking all day, and seems exhausted. He walks past the town hall, where he salutes the gendarme stationed outside. The gendarme watches him pass and then enters the town hall himself.

The man continues to an inn owned by the wealthy Jacquin Labarre, whose partner hotel in Grenoble was well-known and acclaimed. The man asks for food and lodging, and says he has money to pay for it. As he is warming himself by the fire, Jacquin Labarre scribbles a note and sends a servant child off to the town hall with it. The child returns with a reply, and Jacquin stands up and tells the man he cannot serve him. The man protests, and after a back-and-forth, Jacquin says that the man is Jean Valjean, and that he had suspected something upon his arrival. “Go away!” he says. Jean Valjean, head down, walks down the street, with all the passersby behind him looking on with fascination and disgust.

Jean Valjean approaches a public house, where men are drinking. He’s initially welcomed in to the fire, but one of the men at the table is a fishmonger who had been at Labarre’s inn earlier. He makes a sign to the tavern-keeper and they exchange a few words. Then the tavern-keeper lays his hand on Jean Valjean’s shoulder and tells him to leave. Valjean knocks at the prison door, but is told he must leave unless he gets himself arrested.

At one little street, he peers through the bright-lit pane of a single-story house, and sees a merry-looking man dancing a child on his knees, while a young woman next to him is nursing another child. Jean Valjean pauses, perhaps hoping he’ll find some pity here. He knocks and asks if he could pay for a bit of food and lodging. The peasant says he wouldn’t refuse, but asks why he hasn’t been to either the inn or Labarre’s. Suddenly, he asks if he’s the man—and the woman rises and cowers with her children behind her husband. He tells Valjean to clear out and violently closes the door.

As night falls, Valjean catches sight of a hut in one of the gardens bordering the street. He climbs over the fence and finds a bed of straw within the hut, but then hears a growl and realizes it is a dog’s kennel. He turns back into the street and continues, his head drooping, towards a black horizon framed by a whitish arc of clouds atop the sky, which creates a gloomy, foreboding, effect. He passes through the Cathedral Square and shakes his fist at the church.

As Valjean rests at a street corner, an old woman comes out of the church. She asks what he’s doing, and he answers angrily that he’s sleeping. He says he has been a soldier, and in response to her question, he says he can’t go to the inn since he has no money. The woman gives him the four sous in her pocket, and, pointing to a small, low house down the street, asks if he’s knocked at that door. It’s the Bishop’s home.

Chapter 2 That evening, the Bishop of D--- is working on a manuscript about religious and personal duty. Meanwhile, Madame Magloire and Mademoiselle Baptistine prepare the table for dinner. Madame Magloire is small, plump, and looks more like a peasant, whereas Mademoiselle Baptistine is regal-looking, gentler, and calmer. Madame Magloire has heard rumors about a suspicious vagabond wandering about the town. As the Bishop comes into the room for dinner, she begins the entire story over again, saying that there will surely be some kind of catastrophe in town tonight. At the moment she is saying that they need to start locking their doors, they hear a loud knock. The Bishop says, “Come in.”

Chapter 3 Jean Valjean enters, lit up by the fire on the hearth and frightening the two women. He declares that he is a convict who has spent the past 19 years in the galleys. He’s been walking for four days on the way to Pontarlier. He’s been turned out everywhere because of his yellow passport. He details how he’s been treated and then says he has money and is very hungry: he asks if he may stay. The Bishop immediately tells Madame Magloire to set another place. The man advances and repeats that he’s a convict, showing his yellow passport, and saying he had been imprisoned 5 years for burglary and 14 for multiple attempted escapes. He is a dangerous man, he says, but the Bishop merely tells Madame Magloire to make the bed in the alcove, and he tells Valjean to warm himself by the fire.

Jean Valjean’s face is filled with doubt and joy. He stammers that he hasn’t slept in a bed in 19 years, and he was sure he’d be expelled. The Bishop says he won’t charge him anything, but asks how much he’s made in 19 years: at the answer, 119 francs, 15 sous, he sighs. Jean Valjean says he once saw a bishop in the galleys, but he said Mass far off, and it was difficult to hear or understand. He says the Bishop doesn’t despise him, though he didn’t conceal who he was. The Bishop says this isn’t his house, but that of Jesus Christ, and that anyone who suffers is welcome.

The Bishop tells Jean Valjean that he is deserving of pity, and that God rejoices at a repentant sinner. As they sit down to dinner, the Bishop notes that something is missing—Madame Magloire hadn’t laid out the whole six sets of silver, as was usual for them when they had guests. She immediately does so.

Chapter 4 The narrator transcribes a passage from one of Mademoiselle Baptistine’s letters to explain what happened at the table. Jean Valjean says that this is too good for him, but notes that others who refused to host him would eat better than the Bishop. Valjean cannot see how his host could be a bishop. The Bishop merely tells him that Pontarlier, Valjean’s destination, is good country. The Bishop had found work there when his family was ruined during the Revolution. He describes the cheese-dairies of the place, while Valjean seems to perk up as he eats. The Bishop is careful not to mention anything that might remind Valjean of his past.

Chapter 5 The Bishop leads Valjean into the alcove, crossing through his bedroom first, as the house’s layout makes necessary. After thanking him, Valjean suddenly exclaims at how the Bishop isn’t afraid to lodge him in his house, and he laughs horribly. The Bishop says it’s the concern of God. He blesses Valjean and descends to the garden, walking and meditating on mysteries.

Chapter 6 Jean Valjean awakens in the middle of the night. He is originally from a poor peasant family in Brie. His parents had died when he was young, and he was brought up by an older sister, who had seven children before her husband died. Valjean then spent his life working to support his sister and her children, often going without food so that the children could eat. He worked as a laborer, but one particularly difficult winter he was without work and even bread. One Sunday evening in 1795, Valjean broke the window of a bakery and ran off with a loaf of bread. He was pronounced guilty at trial and condemned to five years in the galleys. He wept as he was led off to Toulon with a chain around his neck.

In Toulon, Jean Valjean became only “number 24,601,” and no one troubled himself about his sister or the children. Even Valjean gradually forgot them. In his fourth year of captivity, he heard a rumor that someone had seen his sister in Paris with only her youngest child with her. She was a folder and stitcher at a printing office working long hours, and since the child wasn’t allowed in, he had to stand in the cold winter air in the school courtyard for an hour each day, unless an old porter took pity on him and allowed him to catch some sleep in her den. Valjean never again heard anything about his family.

Near the end of the fourth year, Jean Valjean’s comrades helped him escape. He wandered for two days before being captured. He escaped three more times, and had years added to his sentence each time. He was finally released in October 1815 after 19 years—just for stealing a loaf of bread. He had entered sobbing, and emerged gloomy and impassive.

Chapter 7 The narrator states that it’s important to look into Valjean’s soul, since society creates such men. He was not perfect, but withdrew into himself and put himself on trial. He recognized that he was not innocent, and should not have stolen, but he also asked himself whether the law hadn’t been abused in the severity of his judgment. He wondered how society could have the right to keep the poor forever between not enough work and too much punishment. Ultimately, he condemned society and began to hate it. Human society had only harmed him, and he had come to believe that life is war and full of hate. He attended the school in the galleys, believing that he could strengthen his hate through intelligence. Thus the more he learned, the darker his soul became.

But the narrator stresses that Valjean was not evil, and asks if man, created good by God, can be turned wicked by man. Some might, in studying Valjean, do away with all hope that his soul might be good deep down. The narrator notes that Valjean himself had little idea of how he arrived at a point of such darkness. His multiple attempts at escape were impetuous, not based on reason.

Jean Valjean had enormous physical strength, the strength of four men, and became notorious for this, as well as for his ability to climb vertical surfaces. He grew glum and quiet in prison, vaguely aware that there was such a thing as civilization, a distant splendor that only made his own life blacker. In general, through his time in the galleys, he became slowly capable of evil action, both instinctive and premeditated—a very dangerous man. Upon his release he had not cried for nineteen years.

Chapter 8 The narrator compares Valjean to a man fallen overboard, sinking and rising again to the surface, his shouts and suffering going unheeded. He feels he is being pulled into the abyss, but continues to struggle and swim, his strength slowly ebbing. God and men seem to be nowhere, and he is paralyzed by the cold of the sea. The sea is the “social night” created by unfair justice. The sea is full wretchedness.

Chapter 9 Jean Valjean had been overwhelmed by the idea of liberty, but soon realized that a convict’s yellow passport is no guarantee of true liberty, and he felt deeply bitter. The 171 francs he had calculated that he had earned in the galleys were reduced for taxes and days off to 109, and he felt robbed. He attempted to join various labor teams, but was denied each time once he handed over his yellow passport.

Chapter 10 We return to the Bishop’s house, where Jean Valjean is awakened by his overly comfortable bed—he isn’t used to it. He feels troubled, and his thoughts continually return to the six sets of silver forks and spoons placed on the table. They haunt him, and he knows they’re worth double what he made in nineteen years in the galleys. After remaining still and thoughtful, he suddenly sits up and puts his shoes on. After a few more moments, he takes them off again. Then the clock strikes half past three. He rises again, listens for any noise, and then grabs his knapsack and slips downstairs, through the Bishop’s open door.

Chapter 11 Valjean slowly pushes open the door, shuddering at the noise of the hinge. His blood pumping, he imagines the household descending on him. But all is silent, and he slips into the Bishop’s bedroom. The Bishop’s face is illuminated and seems satisfied, hopeful, and content—almost divine. These emotions terrify Valjean and his uneasy conscience. He is vaguely aware of something sublime about the Bishop’s face, and he seems torn. But after a few moments, taking off and then replacing his cap, Valjean steps rapidly past the bed, opens the cupboard, seizes the silverware basket, and returns to the oratory. He opens the window and jumps into the garden, then leaps over the wall and flees.

Chapter 12 The next morning, Madame Magloire rushes into the garden to inform the Bishop that the silverware has been stolen. The Bishop calmly tells her that he had been wrong to keep the silver for so long; it belonged to a poor man far more than to him. As he eats breakfast, a group of gendarmes arrive with Jean Valjean, who is hanging his head. But the Bishop asks why they’ve brought him back: he had given the silverware to Valjean as a gift. He tells the gendarmes to release Valjean, but before they do, he tells Valjean that he’d forgotten the silver candlesticks: the Bishop hands them to Valjean, who’s trembling. Then he tells Valjean that he must never forget that he’s promised to use this money to become an honest man. He’s bought back his soul and now gives it to God, he says.

Chapter 13 Jean Valjean hurries out of town, feeling vaguely angry. He is simultaneously touched and humiliated. In the midst of his raging thoughts, he sees a small Savoyard (from Savoy) boy singing and walking along the path, playing with coins in his hand, including a 40-sou piece. He tosses up the coins and that piece rolls towards Valjean, who places his boot over it. The child, who says he’s named Gervais, asks for his money. Valjean drops his head and remains silent, and Gervais grows increasingly distraught. Troubled, Jean Valjean doesn’t respond to his pleas, until suddenly he yells at the boy to take off. The boy runs off, sobbing.

The sun has just set, and Jean Valjean begins breathing irregularly. He steps forward mechanically and catches sight of the 40-sou piece shining on the ground. He asks himself what it is and recoils, finally seizing it and standing back up, shivering like a terrified wild animal. Valjean runs after the child and shouts out his name. The landscape is deserted and an icy wind is blowing. Valjean sees a priest on horseback, and asks if he’s seen a small child. Valjean gives the priest several five-franc coins, saying it is for the poor, and then asks wildly again about Gervais before declaring that he’s a thief and must be arrested. The priest merely sets off again in alarm.

After running off in Gervais’ direction, Valjean wanders all night calling out to him, and finally breaks down and cries for the first time in 19 years. When he had first left the Bishop’s house, he had hardened himself against the priest’s words, perceiving indistinctly that the words were the greatest attack of his life, and if he yielded he would have to renounce the hatred that had defined him for so long. This possibility filled him with anxiety. He could not have said why he robbed Gervais, except that it was the part of him that remained an instinctual beast, while his intelligence was still struggling. Only afterward did he realize that he had just done something of which he was no longer capable.

Now Valjean sees himself properly, and he is horrified. He compares the vision of himself to that of the Bishop, and he himself seems to shrink and then vanish in the Bishop’s magnificent light. As Valjean weeps, light enters into his soul, and he is able to examine his life that now seems to him horrible. No one knows where he goes after this, but the narrator confirms that someone did see him later that night kneeling in front of the Bishop’s residence in prayer.