Join Host Bree Carlile as she reads the one hundred nineteenth chapter of Les Miserables.

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>> Brie Carlisle: Take a look, in the book and let's see

what we can find.

Take it chapter by chapter. One

fight M at a time

so many adventures and

mountains we can climb

to give word for word, line by

line, one bite at a time.

>> Brie Carlisle: Welcome to bite at a time books where we read you your

favorite classics one byte at a time. my name is

Bre Carlisle and I love to read and wanted to

share my passion with listeners like you. If you

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today well be continuing.

>> Brie Carlisle: Les Miserable by Victor

Hugo Book

six Le Petit picpus

chapter one number 62

rue petite picpus

nothing half a century ago

more resembled every other carriage gate than the carriage

gate of number 62 rue Petite picpus.

This entrance, which usually stood ajar in the most

inviting fashion, permitted a view of two

things, neither of which have anything very

funereal about them. A courtyard

surrounded by walls hung with vines and the face of

a lounging porter. Above the wall at the

bottom of the court, whole trees were visible

when a ray of sunlight enlivened the courtyard.

When a glass of wine cheered up the porter, it was difficult to

pass no. 62 little pickpocket

without carrying away a smiling impression of it.

Nevertheless, it was a somber place of which one had had a

glimpse. The threshold

smiled, the house prayed and

wept. If one succeeded in passing the

porter, which was not easy, which was even

nearly impossible for everyone, for there was an open

sesame, which it was necessary to know. If

the porter once passed, one entered

a little vestibule on the right on which opened a

staircase shut in between two walls, and so

narrow that only one person could ascend it at a time.

If one did not allow oneself to be alarmed by a daubing

of canary yellow with a dado of chocolate

which clothed this staircase, if one

ventured to ascend it, one crossed a first

landing, then a second, and arrived on the

first story at a corridor where the yellow wash and the

chocolate hued plinth pursued one with a

peaceable persistency. Staircase

and corridor were lighted by two beautiful windows.

The corridor took a turn and became dark.

If one doubled this cape, one arrived a few paces

further on in front of a door, which was all the more mysterious

because it was not fastened. If one

opened it, one found oneself in a little

chamber about 6ft square,

tiled while scrubbed clean,

cold, and hung with nincken paper with green

flowers. At, 15 suits the roll.

A white dull light fell from a large window

with tiny panes on the left, which

usurped the whole width of the room. One

gazed about, but saw no one.

One listened. One heard neither a

footstep nor a human murmur. The walls

were bare. The chamber was not

furnished. There was not even a chair.

One looked again and beheld on the wall facing the door, a

quadrangular hole about a foot square, with

a grating of interlacing iron bars,

black, knotted, solid, which

formed squares, I had almost said

meshes of less than an inch and a half in diagonal

length. The little green flowers of the nankin paper

ran in a calm and orderly manner to those iron

bars, without being startled or thrown

into confusion by their funereal contact.

Supposing that a living being had been so wonderfully

thin as, to essay an entrance or an exit through the square

hole, this grating would have prevented it.

It did not allow the passage of the body, but it did allow the

passage of the eyes, that is to say, of the

mind. This seems to have occurred to

them, for it had been reinforced by a sheet of

tin inserted in the wall, a little in the

rear, and pierced with a thousand holes more

microscopic than the holes of a strainer. At the

bottom of this plate an aperture had been

pierced exactly similar to the orifice of a

letterboxdehenous. A bit of tape attached to a

bell wire hung at the right of the grated opening.

If the tape was pulled, a bell rang,

and one heard a voice very near at hand, which made one

start. Who is there?

The voice demanded. It was a womans

voice, a gentle voice,

so gentle that it was mournful.

Here again there was a magical word which it was necessary to

know. If one did not know it. The

voice ceased. The wall became silent once

more.

>> Brie Carlisle: As though the terrified obscurity of the.

>> Brie Carlisle: Sepulcher had been on the other side of it. If

one knew the password, the voice

resumed. Enter on the

right. One then perceived on the

right, facing the window, a glass door surmounted by a frame

glazed and painted gray. On raising the

latch and crossing the threshold, one

experienced precisely the same impression. As one

enters the theater into a graded beignoir. Before

the grating is lowered and the chandelier is lighted.

One was in fact in a sort of theater

box, narrow, furnished with two

old chairs and a much frayed straw matting.

Sparely illuminated by the vague light from the glass

door. A regular box with its front just

of a height to lean upon, bearing a tablet of

black wooden. This box was

grated. Only the grating of it was not of gilded

wood as at the opera. It was a monstrous lattice

of iron bars. Hideously interlaced and

riveted to the wall by enormous fastenings which resembled clenched

fists. The first minutes

passed when ones eyes began to grow used to

this cellar like half twilight. One tried to pass the

grating but got no further than six inches beyond

it. There he encountered a barrier of black

shutters. Reinforced and fortified with

transverse beams of wood. Painted a gingerbread

yellow. These shutters were

divided into long, narrow slats. And they

masked the entire length of the grating. They were

always closed at the expiration of a few

moments. One heard a voice proceeding from behind these shutters and

saying, I am here. What do you wish with

me? It was a beloved,

sometimes an adored voice. No one was

visible. Hardly the sound of a breath was

audible. It seemed as though it were a

spirit which had been evoked that was speaking to you across

the walls of the tomb. If one

chanced to be within certain prescribed and very rare

conditions. The slot of one of the shutters opened

opposite you. The, evoked spirit became an

apparition. Behind the grating,

behind the shutter. One perceived, so far as the grating

permitted sight. A head of which only

the mouth and the chin were visible. The rest was

covered with a black veil. One

caught a glimpse of a black gamp and a form that was barely

defined, covered with a black shroud.

That head spoke with you but did not look at you and never

smiled at you. The light which came from

behind you was adjusted in such a manner that you saw her in the

white, and she saw you in the black.

The light was symbolical.

Nevertheless, your eyes plunged eagerly through that opening

which was made in that place, shut off from all

glances. A profound vagueness enveloped

that form. Clad in mourning, your

eyes searched that vagueness and sought to make out the

surroundings of your apparition. At the

expiration of a very short time, you discovered that you could see

nothing. What you beheld was night,

emptiness, shadows. A

wintry mist mingled with the vapor from the tomb.

A sort of terrible peace, a

silence from which you could gather nothing, not

even sighs. A gloom in which you could

distinguish nothing, not even phantoms.

What you beheld was the interior of a cloister.

It was the interior of that severe and gloomy edifice

which was called the convent of the Bernardines, of the perpetual

adoration. The box in which you stood

was the parlor. The first voice which

had addressed you was that of the portress who always sat, motionless and

silent on the other side of the wall, near the square

opening screened by the iron grating in the

plate with its thousand holes, as by a double

visor. The obscurity which

bathed the grated box arose from the fact that the

parlor, which had a window on the side of the world,

had none on the side of the conventional

profane eyes, must see nothing of that sacred

place. Nevertheless, there

was something beyond that shadow. There

was a light. There was life in the midst of

that death. Although this was the most

strictly walled of all convents, we shall endeavor to make our way

into it and to take the reader in and say,

without transgressing the proper bounds,

things which storytellers have never seen and have

therefore never described.

Thank you for joining Bite at a time books today while we

wrote a bite of one of your favorite classics.

Again, my name is Brie Carlisle, and I

hope you come back tomorrow for the next bite

of Les Miserables.

>> Brie Carlisle: Dont forget to sign up for our

newsletter@biteadatimebooks.com comma and

check out the shop. You can check out the show notes

or our website, biteadittimebooks.com,

for the rest of the links for our show, wed love

to hear from you on social media as well.

>> Brie Carlisle: Take a look and a broken let's

see what we can find

take it chapter by chapter, one

night at a time

so many adventures and

mountains we can climb.

>> Brie Carlisle: Line by line, one bite at a time.