Les Miserables: Volume 4, Book 15 Summary & Analysis

Chapter 1 At that moment, Jean Valjean is experiencing interior convulsions comparable with the external convulsions of Paris. Cosette had resisted leaving the Rue Plumet, and the two had gone to bed at their new address in silence. That evening, Toussaint told Valjean that people were fighting in Paris, but he hadn’t fully heard her, thinking rather of Cosette’s happy future in London, and the safety they’d have abroad. Suddenly, in the mirror facing him, he saw the reflection of Cosette’s blotting-book, where she had drafted her letter to Marius before copying out a final version to send to him.

Now, Valjean—who has lost and sacrificed everything, and remained calm and stoic in every circumstance—seems finally, definitively blown over. He now experiences the loss of another kind of beloved. He can’t imagine existing without Cosette. He begins to piece together certain circumstances and dates, and has no doubt that they all involve Marius (whose name he still doesn’t know). He feels hate for the man—a feeling he hasn’t known for so long. In his despair, he asks Toussaint if she hadn’t said there was fighting going on. She says it’s around Saint-Merry. A few minutes later, Valjean is in the street.

Chapter 2 Valjean pauses at his doorpost in despair, and is only shaken out of it by hearing the distant discharge of guns. Then he sees young Gavroche, apparently in search of something. Valjean asks what the matter is, and Gavroche says he’s hungry. Gavroche then flings a stone at a street-lantern, and says that this is against regulations. Valjean lays a 100-sou piece in Gavroche’s hand. Gavroche is astonished. He gazes at the coin, and then tells Valjean that he prefers to smash lanterns. Valjean tells him to keep the money for his mother, and Gavroche is touched, realizing that he wasn’t being paid off to stop breaking lanterns.

Warming to Valjean, Gavroche asks him where No. 7 is. An idea coming to him, Valjean asks if he’s bringing the letter he is expecting—a letter, rather, for Mademoiselle Cosette. Gavroche says he must know that the letter came from the barricades, and Valjean says he does. Valjean asks for the letter, as well as where the answer is to be sent. Gavroche tells him it’s the barricade of the Rue de la Chanvrerie, and then he wanders away into the darkness.

Chapter 3 Valjean goes inside with Marius’ letter and reads only “I die. When thou readest this, my soul will be near thee.” He feels a sudden joy at the death of this man that he hates—a death in which he’s had no part. He only has to let things take their course. But having said this to himself, Valjean feels gloomy. An hour later, Valjean goes out in the costume of the National Guard, with a loaded gun under his arm.

Chapter 4 Meanwhile, Gavroche heads back to the barricades, singing. Suddenly he stops short, seeing a hand-cart by the side of the street and a drunken man from Auvergne sleeping within it. He thinks how perfect the cart would be for the barricade, and slowly tips the Auvergnat out. He writes a note saying that the French Republic received the cart, sign it Gavroche, and places it in the man’s pocket.

Gavroche races off to the Halles, pushing the cart before him, which makes a great deal of noise. The National Guard squad wakes up, and the sergeant suggests that a whole band is out there. As he turns a street, he finds himself face to face with an armed man in uniform. Gavroche quickly recovers his pluck and starts to answer saucily to the guard’s questions, finally saying that he’s on his way to look for a doctor for his wife in labor. This infuriates the sergeant, who calls for his men to fire. Gavroche hurls the cart at him and races back down the street, now only concerned about how to reach the barricade in time.