Les Miserables: Volume 2, Book 5 Summary & Analysis

Chapter 1 The narrator notes that he has been absent from Paris for many years, though he adores the city, and in those years it has been transformed. He asks permission to speak about this old Paris of his youth as though it still existed, for, he says, you are indifferent to your native city as long as you are no longer there, but as soon as you are forced to leave its details become precious.

Valjean and Cosette move through the streets at night. Cosette asks no questions, having grown used to Valjean’s peculiarities. Both of them trust in God. Valjean has no plan, just a suspicion that he shouldn’t return to the Gorbeau house. They cross the labyrinthine streets of the Mouffetard quarter. Near 11:00, they reach the Rue Pontoise opposite the police commissary. Valjean sees three policemen pass under the lantern, and he hastily leaves the street, reaching a square where the Rue des Postes, a 13th-century street, begin. He hides in a doorway. At that moment, four policemen with large cudgels in their hands halt in the middle of the square and point in the direction that Valjean had gone. One of them is Javert .

Chapter 2 Valjean and Cosette slip away towards the Jardin des Plantes. Valjean begins to carry Cosette. He reaches the Pont D’Austerlitz, a bridge where he must pay 2 sous to cross. Entering a small street, he looks back and sees four shadows enter the bridge.

Continuing on, Valjean reaches a fork and takes the right path, which leads towards the open country. He arrives at a wall. To the right the road leads to a blind alley, while to the left a more welcoming street beckons. But at the end of that lane he suddenly sees a large black form. At the time of writing there are brand-new, wide streets in Paris but at the time of this tale, the roads are unpaved and winding. All four guards are blocking the possible exits.

Chapter 4 Valjean looks up at the wall and realizes that he might be saved if he can get on the other side of it. On the side of the Rue Droit-Mur, there are a number of pipes on the walls, but Valjean doesn’t see how he can hoist Cosette up in addition to himself. There are two locked doors abutting one of the walls, and he cannot force either of them.

Chapter 5 Valjean glances around the corner and sees 7 or 8 soldiers advancing behind Javert. From his time as a convict, Valjean had learned to mount walls and climb obstacles—a skill he prefers not to use as an honest man. But he’s desperate. Suddenly he sees a rope attached to a gas-lantern, and rushes to fetch it. Cosette says she is afraid, but he tells her to be quiet: he says it’s Madame Thenardier. He fastens the rope to Cosette, climbs up the wall himself, and then hoists her up the wall. As they duck under a linden tree, he hears Javert’s voice from below telling the soldiers to search the alleys.

Chapter 6 The two find themselves in a vast garden beside a building in a sort of ruin at the corner of the Rue Droit-Mur and Rue Petit-Picpus. It is wild and solitary. Valjean leads Cosette into the garden shed. Suddenly he hears women’s voices singing a hymn. Both of them feel a need to kneel in awe. They enter a garden shed, and Valjean puts Cosette to sleep.

Chapter 7 In the middle of the night, Cosette awakens, shivering. Valjean wraps his coat around her and slips outside. He creeps along the large building and peeks in through the windows, where he sees a vast hall; a human form is lying on the ground, covered in a sheet. Sweating and breathing heavily, Valjean continues to stare at the form, transfixed, not knowing if it’s dead or alive, and confused as to the nature of the place. He flees back to the shed.

Chapter 8 As Valjean watches Cosette sleep, he feels calmer. But then he looks out and sees someone in the garden. He picks up Cosette and hides her behind a heap of old furniture. When he touches her hands they’re icy cold; she’s pale. He rushes back out, vowing he’ll find her a bed and fire within the hour.

Chapter 9 Valjean walks up to the man he had seen in the garden, and cries out, “100 francs!”, the amount he’ll pay for shelter. The man cries out that it’s Father Madeleine. He removes his cap, trembling, and remarks on Valjean’s wretched state. He turns to the light, and Valjean recognizes Fauchelevent. He had come out to cover his melons from the cold, he says. He wears a bell on his knee so that he might be avoided, since there are only women in this house: it is the Petit-Picpus convent, where Fauchelevent, crippled by the fall from his cart, had entered to work two years earlier. Valjean asks if Fauchelevent could save his life, as he once saved Fauchelevent’s. Fauchelevent says it would be a blessing. Valjean asks him not to tell anyone about him, and asks him to lodge him and Cosette in his hut behind the convent.

A few minutes later, Cosette is lying asleep in the gardener’s bed, and Fauchelevent remarks that it is bad that Valjean forgets those whose lives he saves.

Chapter 10 The narrator explains things from Javert’s perspective. When Valjean had escaped from the town jail, the police assumed he went to Paris. Javert had gone there immediately, and had proved central to Valjean’s recapture. In December 1823, he saw news of Valjean’s death in the newspaper. But not long afterwards, he saw a police report about the abduction of a child in Montfermeil: a small child named Cosette, the daughter of a woman named Fantine, had been stolen away by a stranger. Javert recognized the name Fantine, and remembered that Valjean was going to Montfermeil when he was arrested.

Javert had then gone to Montfermeil, where multiple people told him different versions of the tale. But Thenardier, whom he questioned, realized it is never smart to stir up a prosecutor’s interest, so he refused to speak anymore about the subject. Thenardier just told Javert that Cosette’s “grandfather,” Guillaume Lambert, had taken her away. Javert returned to Paris, convinced Valjean was really dead.

However, in March 1824 he heard about the “beggar who gives alms” in Paris, a man who had come from Montfermeil. Javert dressed up as a beggar, and believed he recognized Valjean when he stooped to give him money. But Valjean was supposedly dead. After Valjean and Cosette had fled, Javert asked for backup, without explaining his suspicions. At the time, the police had a reputation of interfering with individual liberty: he didn’t want to make a mistake. He was sure that this time Valjean wouldn’t escape.

Still, it was only in the Rue Pontoise that Javert positively recognized Valjean, thanks to a lamplight. He then asked for more reinforcements and followed the pair across the bridge, surrounding him around the Rue Petit-Picpus like a spider surrounds its prey. When he failed to find Valjean at the center of his web, Javert was enraged with himself for being too cautious. He returned to the police prefecture, his pride wounded.