Join Host Bree Carlile as she reads the one hundred fourth 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

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>> Brie Carlisle: Values today well be

continuing.

Les Miserable by Victor

Hugo Book

four the Gorbeau Havel

chapter one master Gorbeau

40 years ago, a rambler who had

ventured into that unknown country of the

Salpetriere and who had mounted to the

barriere d'atly by way of the boulevard,

reached a point where it might be said that Paris

disappeared. It was no longer

solitude, for there were passersby.

It was not the country, for there were

houses and streets. It was not the

city, for the streets had ruts like highways, and the grass

grew in them. It was not a village.

Houses were too lofty. What was

it, then? It was an inhabited

spot where there was no one. It was a desert

place where there was someone. It was a boulevard

of the great city, a street of Paris,

more wild at night than the forest, more

gloomy by day than a cemetery. It was

the old quarter of the marche aux Chevaux.

The rambler. If he risked himself outside the four decrepit

walls of this march aux Chevaux, if he consented

even to pass beyond the rue du Petit banquier

after leaving. On his right a garden protected by high

walls. Then a field in which tanbark

mills rose like gigantic beaver huts. Then

an enclosure encumbered with timber, with a heap of

stumps, sawdust and shavings,

on which stood a large dog barking. Then

a long, low, utterly dilapidated

wall with a little black door in mourning, laden

with mosses, which were covered with flowers in the spring.

Then, in the most deserted spot, a

frightful and decrepit building on which ran the

inscription in large letters, post no

bills, this daring rambler would have

reached little known latitudes at the corner of the rue des Vignes Saint

Marcel. There, near a

factory and between two garden walls, there

could be seen at that epoch a mean building

which at the first glance seemed as small as a thatched

hovel, and which was in reality

as large as a cathedral. It presented

its side and gable to the public road,

hence, its apparent diminutiveness. Nearly

the whole of the house was hidden. Only the door

and one window could be seen. This

hovel was only one story high. The first

detail that struck the observer was that the door could never have

been anything but the door of a hovel, while the

window, if it had been carved out of a dressed stone

instead of being in rough masonry, might have been the

lattice of a lordly mansion. The door

was nothing but a collection of worm eaten planks roughly

bound together by cross beams, which resembled roughly hewn

logs. It opened directly on a steep

staircase of lofty steps, muddy,

chalky, plaster stained, dusty steps

of the same width as itself, which could be seen from the

street, running straight up like a ladder and

disappearing in the darkness between two walls.

The top of the shapeless bay, into which this door

shut, was masked by a narrow scantling, in the center of which

a triangular hole had been sawed, which served

both as wicket and air hole. When the door was

closed on the inside of the door,

the figures five two had been traced with a couple of strokes of

a brush dipped in ink, and above this

scantling, the same hand had daubed the number

50, so that no one hesitated.

Where was one? Above the door, it said.

Number 50, the inside replied

no. 52. No one knows

what. Dust colored figures were suspended like draperies from the

triangular opening. The window was

large, sufficiently elevated,

garnished with venetian blinds, and with a frame and large

square panes. Only these large panes

were suffering from various wounds which were both concealed and

betrayed by an ingenious paper bandage,

and the blinds, dislocated and

unpasted, threatened passersby rather than screened

the occupants. The horizontal slats

were missing here and there, and had been naively replaced with

boards nailed on perpendicularly. So what

began as a blind ended as a shutter.

This door with an unclean, and this

window with an honest, though dilapidated air, thus

beheld on the same house produced the effect of

two incomplete beggars walking side by side with

different means beneath the same rags, the one

having always been a mendicant and the other having

once been a gentleman. The staircase

led to a very vast edifice, which resembled a shed which had

been converted into a house.

This edifice had for its intestinal

tube a long corridor on which opened to right and

left sorts of compartments of varied

dimensions, which were inhabitable under stress of

circumstances, and rather more like

stalls than cells. His

chambers received their light from the vague waste grounds in the

neighborhood. All this was dark,

disagreeable, wan, melancholy

sepulcher traversed according as the crevices lay in

the roof or in the door by cold rays

or by icy winds. An

interesting and picturesque peculiarity of this sort

of dwelling is the enormous size of the spiders.

To the left of the entrance door, on the

boulevards side, at about the height of a man from the

ground, a small window, which had been walled up,

formed a square niche full of stones, which the children had

thrown there as they passed by. A

portion of this building has recently been

demolished. From what still remains of

it, one can form a judgment as to what it was in former

days. As a whole, it was not over

100 years old. 100 years is youth

in a church and age in a house.

It seems as though mans lodging partook

of his ephemeral character in Gods House

of his eternity. The postman called

the house number 5052, but it was known

in the neighborhood as the Gorbeau house.

Let us explain whence this appellation was derived.

Collectors of petty details, who become herbalists

of anecdotes and prick slippery dates into their memories

with a pen, know that there was in Paris

during the last century, about

1772, attorneys at the

chatelet named one Corbo

raven, the other Renard Fox.

The two names had been forestalled by

Lafontaine. The opportunity was too fine

for the lawyers. They made the most of it.

A parody was immediately put in circulation in the galleries of

the courthouse, in verses that limped a

little. Matre corbeau su un dacier

perche tene dans sonne bec un

ce executeur maitre Reynard,

parleur d'ur, l'fait a pio

pra cette ros et

bonjour, etcetera. The

two honest practitioners, embarrassed by the

jests and finding the bearing of their heads interfered with by the

shouts of laughter which followed them, resolved to get

rid of their names and hit upon the expedient

of applying to the king. Their

petition was presented to Louis XV on the

same day, when the papal nuncio on the one hand,

and the cardinal de la Roche aemon on the other,

both devoutly kneeling, were each engaged in

putting on in his majestys presence a

slipper on the bare feet of Madame du Barry, who had

just got out of bed. The king, who was

laughing, continued to laugh, passed gaily

from the two bishops to the two lawyers, and

bestowed on these limbs of the law their former names,

or nearly so by the kings

command. Maitre Corbeau was permitted to add, a tale to his

initial letter and to call himself Gorbeau.

Matre Renard was less lucky.

All he obtained was leave to place a p in front of his

r and to call himself Prenard,

so that the second name bore almost as much resemblance as the

first. Now, according to

local tradition, this maitre Gorbeau

had been the proprietor of the building numbered 5052

on the Boulevard de la April. He was even the

author of the monumental window. Hence the

edifice bore the name of the Gorbeau house.

Opposite this house, among the trees of the

boulevard, rose a great elm which was three

quarters dead. Almost directly facing it

opens the rue de la barriere des goblins,

a, street, then, without houses, unpaved,

planted with unhealthy trees, which was green

or muddy according to the season, and which

ended squarely in the exterior wall of Paris.

An odor of copperas issued in puffs from the roofs of the

neighboring factory. The barrier was close at

hand. In 1823, the city wall

was still in existence. This

barrier itself evoked gloomy fancies in the

mind. It was the road to Bisenthri.

It was through it that under the empire and

the restoration, prisoners condemned to death

re entered Paris on the day of their execution.

It was there that about

1829 was committed that mysterious

assassination called the assassination of the Fontainebleau

barrier, whose authors justice was never able to

discover. A melancholy problem

which has never been elucidated, a

frightful enigma which has never been unriddled.

Take a few steps and you come upon that fatal rue

Craboarbe where Olbach stabbed the goat

girl of ivory to the sound of thunder, as in the

melodramas. A few paces more

and you arrive at the abominable pollarded elms of the barrier

Saint Jacquis, that expedient of the

philanthropist to conceal the scaffold, that

miserable and shameful place to grieve of a

shopkeeping and burgois society,

which recoiled before the death penalty,

neither daring to abolish it with grandeur, nor to uphold

it with authority.

Leaving aside this place, Saint Jacques, which

was, as it were, predestined, and which

has always been horrible. Probably the most

mournful spot on that mournful boulevard seven

and 30 years ago, was the spot which even today

is so unattractive. Where stood the building

number 5052. Bourgois

houses only began to spring up there 25 years

later. The place was

unpleasant. In addition to the gloomy

thoughts which assailed one there, one was conscious of

being between the salpetriere, a glimpse of whose

dome could be seen, and bicentraire, whose

outskirts one was fairly touching,

that is to say, between the madness of women

and the madness of Mendez. As far as

the eye could see, one could perceive nothing but the

abattoirs, the city wall and the fronts of a few

factories resembling barracks or monasteries.

Everywhere about stood hovels,

rubbish, ancient walls blackened like

cerecloths, new white walls like winding

sheets. Everywhere, parallel

rows of trees, buildings erected on a

line, flat constructions, long,

cold rows, and the melancholy sadness of right

angles. Not an unevenness

of the ground, not a caprice in the

architecture, not a fold. The

ensemble was glacial, regular,

hideous. Nothing oppresses the heart like

symmetry. It is because symmetry is

enui, and enui is at the very foundation of

grief. Despair yawns.

Something more terrible than a hell where one suffers, may be

imagined, and that is a hell where one is bored.

If such a hell existed, that bit of the

boulevard de la apital might have formed the entrance to

it. Nevertheless, at

nightfall, at the moment when the daylight is

vanishing, especially in winter,

at the hour when the twilight breeze tears from the elms

their last russet leaves, when the darkness

is deep and starless, or when

the moon and the wind are making openings in

the clouds and losing themselves in the shadows,

this boulevard suddenly becomes frightful.

The black lines sink inwards and are lost in the

shades, like morsels of the infinite.

The passerby cannot refrain from recalling the innumerable

traditions of the place which are connected with the gibbet.

The solitude of this spot, where so many

crimes have been committed, had something

terrible about it. One

almost had a presentiment of meeting with traps. In that

darkness, all the confused forms of

the darkness seemed suspicious, and the

long, hollow square of which one caught a glimpse between each

tree seemed graves. By

day, it was ugly. In

the evening, melancholy by night, it was

sinister. In summer, at

twilight, one saw here and there

a few old women seated at the foot of the elm

on benches moldy with rain. These

good old women were fond of begging. However,

this quarter, which had a superannutated rather

than an antique air, was tending even then to

transformation. Even at that time,

anyone who was desirous of seeing it had to make

haste. Each day, some

detail of the whole effect was disappearing.

For the last 20 years, the station of the Orleans Railway

had stood beside the old Faubourg and distracted it

as it does today. Wherever

it is placed on the borders of a capital, a

railway station is the death of a suburb and the birth of a

city. It seems as though

around these great centers of the movements of a people,

the earth, full of germs, trembled and

yawned to engulf the ancient dwellings of men

and to allow new ones to spring forth at, the rattle

of these powerful machines. At the breath of

these monstrous horses of civilization, which devour

coal and vomit fire, the old

houses crumble and new ones rise.

Since the Orleans railway has invaded the region of the

Salpetriere, the ancient narrow streets

which adjoin the moat St. Victor and the garden

des plantes tremble as they are

violently traversed three or four times each day by those

currents of kochfirkers and

omnibuses which, in a given time,

crowd back the houses to the right and the left.

For there are things which are odd when said that are

rigorously exact. And just

as it is true to say that in large cities, the sun makes the

southern fronts of the houses to vegetate and grow,

it is certain that the frequent passage of vehicles in

largest streets, the symptoms of

a new life are evident in this

old provincial quarter. In the wildest

nooks, the pavement shows itself, the

sidewalks begin to crawl and to grow longer,

even when there are, as yet no pedestrians.

One morning, a memorable morning in July

1845, black pots of

bitumen were seen smoking there. On

that day, it might be said that civilization had arrived in the rue

de Lord Chien and that Paris had entered the

suburb of Saint Marceau.

Thank you for joining bite at a time books today while

we read 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 Miserable.

>> Brie Carlisle: Ah, dont forget to sign up

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

notes or our website,

byeeditimebooks.com, for the rest of the links

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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