Join Host Bree Carlile as she reads the one hundred forty-sixth chapter of Les Miserables.

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

what we can find

to take it

chapter by chapter one fight

at a time

so many adventures and mountains

we can climb

take it word for word, line by

line, one bite at a time.

>> Brie Carlisle: Welcome to.

>> Brie Carlisle: Byte at a time books, where we read you your favorite

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>> Brie Carlisle: Today well be continuing Les

Miserable by Victor Hugo,

chapter nine cloistered

Cosette continued to hold her tongue in the convent.

It was quite natural that Cosette should think herself Jean

Valjean's daughter. Moreover, as she knew

nothing, she could say nothing, and then she would

not have said anything. In any case, as we

have just observed, nothing trains children to silence

like unhappiness. Cosette had

suffered so much that she feared everything. Even

to speak or to breathe a single word

had so often brought down an avalanche upon her.

She had hardly begun to regain her confidence since she had been with

Jean Valjean. She speedily became

accustomed to the convent. Only she

regretted Catherine, but she dared not say

so. once, however, she did say to Jean Valjean,

father, if I had known, I would have brought her away

with me. Cosette had been obliged on becoming

a scholar in the convent to don the garb of the pupils of the

house. Jean Valjean succeeded in getting

them to restore to him the garments which he laid aside.

This was the same morning suit which he had made her put on when

she had quitted the Thenardiers inn. It was not

very threadbare. Even now, Jean,

Valjean locked up these garments, plus the stockings and

the shoes with a quantity of camphor and all the

aromatics in which convents abound. In a little

valise which he found means of procuring.

He set this valise on a chair near his bed, and

he always carried the key about his person.

Father Cosette asked him one day,

what is there in that box which smells so

good? Father Fauchelevent received other

recompense for his good action, in addition to the glory

which we just mentioned, and of which he knew nothing.

In the first place, it made him happy.

Next, he had much less work, since it was

shared. Lastly, as he was very fond of

snuff, he found the presence of Monsieur Madeleine an

advantage in that he used three times as much as he

had done previously, and that in an infinitely more

luxurious manner, seeing that Monsieur Madeleine paid for

it. The nuns did not adopt the name of

old time. They called Jean Valjean the other

fauvur. If these holy women

had possessed anything of Javerts glance, they would eventually have

noticed that when there was any errand to be done outside in the

behalf of the garden, it was always the elder

Fauchelevert, the old, the infirm,

the lame man who went, and never the

other. But, whether it is that eyes constantly

fixed on God know not how to spy, or whether

they were, by preference occupied in keeping

watch on each other, they paid no heed to this.

Moreover, it was well for Jean Valjean that he kept

close and did not stir out.

Javert watched the quarter for more than a month.

This convent was for Jean Valjean like an

island surrounded by gulfs. Henceforth,

those four walls constituted his world.

He saw enough of the sky there to enable him to preserve his

serenity and Cosette enough to remain

happy, a very sweet life began for

him. He inhabited the old hut at the end of the

garden in company with vocal of aur.

This hovel, built of old rubbish, which was still in

existence in 1845, was

composed, as the reader already knows, of three

chambers, all of which were utterly bare

and had nothing beyond the walls. The

principal one had been given up by force version.

Valjean had opposed it in vain to Monsieur Madeleine by

Father Fauchelevert. The walls of this

chamber had for ornament in addition to the two

nails, whereupon to hang the kneecap in the basket,

a royalist banknote of 93 applied to

the wall over the chimneypiece, and of which the

following is an exact facsimile. This,

specimen of indian paper money had been nailed to the wall by

the preceding gardener, an old chuun

who had died in the convent and whose place Fauchelevert had

taken. Jean Valjean worked in the garden

every day and made himself very useful.

He had formerly been a pruner of trees, and

he gladly found himself a gardener once more.

Ilby remembered that he knew all sorts of secrets and receipts

for agriculture. He turned these to

advantage. Almost all the trees in the orchard were

ungrafted and wild. He budded them and

made them produce excellent fruit. Cosette, had

permission to pass an hour with him every day. As the

sisters were melancholy and he was kind. The

child made comparisons and adored him.

At the anointed hour, she flew to the hut.

When she entered the lily cabin, she filled it with paradise.

Jean Valjean blossomed out and felt his happiness

increase with the happiness which he afforded Cosette.

The joy which we inspire has this charming

property that far from growing

meager like all reflections, it

returns to us more radiant than ever. At

recreation hours, Jean Valjean watched her running and playing

in the distance, and he distinguished her laugh from

that of the rest, for Cosette laughed

now Cosettes face had even undergone a

change. To a certain extent, the gloom had

disappeared from it. A smile is the same as

sunshine. It banishes winter from the human

countenance. Recreation over. When

Cosette went into the house again, Jean Valjean

gazed at the windows of her classroom, and at night he rose

to look at the windows of her dormitory.

God has his own ways. Moreover, the

convent contributed, like Cosette, to uphold

and complete the bishops work in Jean Valjean.

It is certain that virtue adjoins pride. On one side,

a bridge built by the devil exists there.

Jean Valjean had been unconsciously,

perhaps tolerably, near that side in that

bridge when Providence cast his lot in the convent

of the petit Picpus. So long as he had compared

himself only to the bishop, he had regarded himself as

unworthy and had remained humble. But

for some time past, he had been comparing himself to men in

general, and pride was beginning to

spring up. Who knows?

He might have ended by returning very gradually to

hatred. The convent stopped him, on that

downward path. This was the second

place of captivity which he had seen in his

youth, in what had been for him the beginning of his life.

And later on, quite recently again, he had beheld

anothera frightful place, a

terrible place whose severities had always appeared to him. The

iniquity of justice and the crime of the law.

Now, after the galleys, he saw the

cloister. And when he meditated, how he had formed

a part of the galleys, and that he now, so to

speak, was a spectator of the cloister, he

confronted the two in his own mind, with anxiety.

Sometimes he crossed his arms and leaned on his hoe. And

slowly descended the endless spirals of reverie.

He recalled his former companions. How

wretched they were. They rose at dawn and

toiled until night. Hardly were they permitted

to sleep. They lay on camp beds where nothing was

tolerated but mattresses two inches thick. In

rooms which were heated only in the very harshest months of the

year. They were clothed in frightful red

blouses. They were allowed, as a great favor,

linen trousers in the hottest weather. And a woolen

carters blouse on their backs when it was very cold.

They drank no wine and ate no meat, except when they

went on fatigue duty. They lived

nameless, designated only by numbers,

and converted, after a manner, into ciphers

themselves. With downcast eyes, with

lowered voices, with shorn heads beneath the

cudgel and in disgrace. Then

his mind reverted to the beings whom he had under his eyes.

These beings also lived with shorn heads, with

downcast eyes, with lowered voices. Not in

disgrace, but amid the scoffs of the world.

Not with their backs bruised with the cudgel, but with

their shoulders lacerated with their discipline.

Their names also had vanished from among men.

They no longer existed, except under austere

appellations. They never ate meat and

they never drank wine. They often remained until

evening without food. They were attired

not in a red blouse, but in a black shroud of woolen,

which was heavy in summer and thin in winter,

without the power to add or subtract anything from

it, without having, even according to

the season, the resource of the linen garment or the woolen

cloak.

And for six months in the year they wore serge

chemises, which gave them fever.

They dwelt not in rooms warmed only during rigorous

cold, but in cells where no fire was ever

lighted. They slept not on

mattresses two inches thick, but on

straw. And finally, they were not even allowed

their sleep. Every night, after a day of

toil, they were obliged in the weariness of their first

slumber. At the moment when they were falling sound

asleep and beginning to get warm, to rouse

themselves, to rise and to go and pray in an

ice cold and gloomy chapel, with their knees on the

stones. On certain days, each of these

beings, in turn had to remain for twelve successive hours

in a kneeling posture or prostrate

with face upon the pavement and and arms

outstretched in the form of a cross. The

others were men. These were

women. What had those men done?

They had stolen, violated, pillaged,

murdered, assassinated. They were bandits,

counterfeiters, poisoners, incendiaries, murderers,

parricides. What had these women

done? They had done nothing

whatever. On the one hand, highway

robbery, fraud, deceit, violence,

sensuality, homicide, all sorts of

sacrilege, every variety of crime.

On the other, one thing only.

Innocence. Perfect

innocence, almost caught up in the heaven in a

mysterious assumption attached to the earth

by virtue, already possessing something of

heaven through holiness. On the one

hand, confidence is over crimes which are exchanged in

whispers. On the other, the confession of

faults made aloud. And what

crimes? And what faults?

On the one hand, miasms. On the

other, an ineffable perfume. On the one

hand, a moral pest, guarded from sight, penned up

under the range of cannon and literally devouring

its plague stricken victims. On the

other, the chaste flame of all

souls on the same hearth, their

darkness here, the shadow,

but a shadow filled with gleams of light and of gleams full of

radiance. Two strongholds of

slavery. But in the first, deliverance possible,

a legal limit always in sight and then

escape. In the second,

perpetuity, the sole hope at the

distant extremity of the future, that faint

light of liberty which men call death.

In the first, men are bound only with chains,

in the other, chained by faith. What

flowed from the first, an immense

curse, the gnashing of teeth,

hatred, desperate viciousness, a cry of

rage against human society, a sarcasm against

heaven. What results flowed from the

second? Blessings and

love. And in these two places

so similar, yet so unlike, these two

species of beings who are so very unlike, were undergoing

the same expiation.

Jean Valjean understood thoroughly the expiation of the

former, not personal, expiation,

the expiation of oneself.

But he did not understand that of these last, that of

creatures without reproach and without stain. And he

trembled as he asked himself. The expiation of

what? What

expiation? A voice within

his conscience replied, the most divine of

human generosities, the expiation for

others. Here, all personal

theory is withheld. We are only the

narrator. We place ourselves at Jean Valjean's point of

view and we translate his impressions

before his eyes. He had the sublime summit of

abnegation, the highest possible pitch of

virtue, the innocence which pardons men their

faults. And which expiates in their

stead servitude. Submitted to

torture. Accepted punishment claimed by

souls which have not sinned for the sake of sparing it. To

souls which have fallen. The love of

humanity swallowed up in the love of God.

But even there, preserving its distinct and

mediatorial character. Sweet and

feeble beings. Possessing the misery of those who are punished. And

the smile of those who are recompensed.

And he remembered that he had dared to murmur.

Often in the middle of the night. He rose to

listen to the grateful song of those innocent creatures. Weighed down with

severities. And the blood ran cold in his

veins. At the thought that those who were justly chastised.

Raised their voices heavenward only in

blasphemy. And that he,

wretch that he was. Had shaken his fist

at Goddesse.

There was one striking thing which caused him to meditate

deeply. Like, a warning whisper from providence

itself. The scaling of that wall.

The, passing of those barriers. The adventure accepted

even at the risk of death. The painful and

difficult descent. All those efforts,

even which he had made to escape from that other place of

expiation. He had made in order to gain

entrance into this one.

Was this a symbol of its destiny?

This house was a prison likewise. And bore a

melancholy resemblance to that other one. Whence he had

fled. And yet he had never conceived an

idea of anything similar. Again

he beheld gratings, bolts, iron bars

to guard whom

angels. These lofty walls

which he had seen around tigers. He now beheld once more

around lambs. This was a

place of expiation and not of punishment.

And yet it was still more

austere, more gloomy and more pitiless

than the other. His virgins were even

more heavily burdened than the convicts.

A cold, harsh wind.

That, wind which had chilled his youth. Traversed

the barred and padlocked grating of the vultures.

A still harsher and more biting breeze. Blew in the cage of

these doves. Why, when he

thought on these things. All that was within him was lost in

amazement. Before this mystery of sublimity. in these meditations,

his pride vanished. He scrutinized

his own heart in all manner of ways.

He felt pettiness. And many a time he

wept. All that had entered into

his life for the last six months. Had led him back toward the

bishops holy injunctions.

Cosette through love, the

convent through humility. Sometimes

it even tied in the twilight. At an hour when

the garden was deserted. He could be seen on his

knees in the middle of the walk which skirted the chapel

in front of the window through which he had gazed on the night of his

arrival. And turned towards the spot

where, as he knew, the sister was making

reparation, prostrated in prayer.

Thus, he prayed as he knelt before the sister.

It seemed as though he dared not kneel directly before God.

Everything that surrounded him, that

peaceful garden, those fragrant

flowers, those children who uttered joyous

cries, those grave and simple women, that

silent cloister slowly

permeated him. And little by little,

his soul became compounded of silence, like the

cloister of perfume, like the

flowers of simplicity, like the women

of joy, like the children. And

then he reflected that these had been two houses of God

which had received him in succession at two critical moments in his

life. The first, when all doors were closed

and when human society rejected him.

Second, at a moment when human society had again

set out in pursuit of him. And when the galleys were again

yawning. And that had it not been for

the first, he should have relapsed into

crime. And had it not been for the second, in the torment,

his whole heart melted in gratitude. And he loved

more and more. Many years passed in this

manner. Cosette was growing

up. The end of volume

two. Cosette,

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 Le Miserable.

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

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>> Brie Carlisle: Take it chapter by chapter, one

at a time

so many adventures and

mountains we can climb

take it word for word line by line,

one bite at a time.