Join Host Bree Carlile as she reads the twenty-second chapter of Les Miserables.

Come with us as we release one bite a day of one of your favorite classic novels, plays & short stories. Bree reads these classics like she reads to her daughter, one chapter a day. If you love books or audiobooks and want something to listen to as you're getting ready, driving to work, or as you're getting ready for bed, check out Bite at a Time Books!

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>> Speaker A: Take a look, in the book.

>> Speaker B: And let's see what we can

find.

Take it chapter by chapter.

>> Speaker A: One fight m at a time

so.

>> Speaker B: Many adventures and mountains

we can climb.

>> Speaker A: To give word for word, line by.

>> Speaker B: 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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youd also like to hear what inspired your favorite classic

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>> Brie Carlisle: Today well be continuing.

les miserable by Victor Hugo

chapter eight billows and

shadows a man

overboard. What matters it

the vessel does not halt. The wind

blows. That somber ship has a

path which it is forced to pursue. It

passes on. The man disappears,

then reappears. He plunges. He

rises again to the surface. He calls.

He stretches out his arms. He has not

heard. The vessel, trembling under the

hurricane, is wholly absorbed in its own workings.

The passengers and sailors do not even see the drowning

man. His miserable head is but a speck

amid the immensity of the waves.

He gives vent to desperate cries from out of the

depths. What a specter is that retreating

sail. He gazes and gazes at

it frantically. It

retreats. It grows dim.

It diminishes in size. He was there,

but just now he was one of the crew.

He went and came along the deck with the rest.

He had his part of breath and of sunlight. He was a

living man. Now. What has taken

place? He has slipped.

He has fallen all is at an end.

He is in the tremendous sea

underfoot. He has nothing but what flees and

crumbles. The billows, torn and

lashed by the wind, encompass him hideously.

The tossings of the abyss bear him away.

All the tongues of water dash over his head. A

populace of waves spits upon him.

Confused openings half devour him.

Every time that he sinks, he catches glimpses of

precipices filled with night. Frightful and

unknown vegetation sees him not about. His

feet draw him to them. He

is conscious that he is becoming an abyss, that he

forms part of the foam. The waves

toss him from one to another. He

drinks in the bitterness. A cowardly ocean

attacks him furiously to drown him. The

enormity plays with his agony. It

seems as though all that water were hate.

Nevertheless, he struggles.

He tries to defend himself. He tries

to sustain himself. He makes an

effort. He swims.

He, His petty strength, all exhausted,

instantly combats the inexhaustible.

Where then, is the ship?

Yonder, barely visible in the pale

shadows of the horizon. The wind blows in

gusts. All the foam overwhelms him.

He raises his eyes and beholds only the lividness of the

clouds. He witnesses amid his

death pangs the immense madness of the sea.

He is tortured by this madness. He

hears noises strange to man, which seem to come from

beyond the limits of the earth. And from one

knows not what frightful region beyond.

There are birds in the clouds, just as there are angels above.

Human distresses. But what can they do for

him? They sing and

fly and float. And he. He rattles in the

death agony. He feels himself

buried in those two infinities. The

ocean and the sky. At one and the same time.

The one is a tomb, the other is a shroud.

Night descends. He has been swimming

for hours. His strength is

exhausted. That ship,

that distant thing in which there were men, has

vanished. He is alone in the formidable

twilight Gulf. He sinks.

He stiffens himself. He twists himself. He

feels under him the monstrous billows of the invisible.

He shouts, there are no

more men. Where is God?

He shouts, help. Help. He still shouts.

On nothing on the horizon,

nothing in heaven. He

implores the expanse, the waves, the seaweed, the

reef. They are deaf.

He beseeches the tempest. The

imperturbable tempest obeys only the infinite

around him. Darkness, fog,

solitude. The stormy and non

sentient tumult. The undefinable curling

of those wild waters in him.

Horror and fatigue. Beneath him,

the depths, not a point of

support. He thinks of the gloomy adventures of the

corpse in the limitless shadow.

>> Brie Carlisle: The bottomless cold paralyzes him. His

hands contract convulsively. They

close and grasp nothingness.

Winds, clouds, whirlwinds,

gusts, useless stars. What is to be

done? The desperate man gives

up. He is weary.

He chooses the alternative of death. He

resists not. He lets himself go. He

abandons his grip. And then he

tosses forevermore in the lugubrious, dreary depths of

engulfment. O implacable

march of human societies. Oh, losses

of men and of souls on the way. Ocean into

which falls all that the law let slip.

Disastrous absence of help, oh, moral

death. The sea is the

inexorable social night into which the penal laws

fling their condemned. The sea is the

immensity of wretchedness. The soul

going downstream in this gulf may become a

corpse. Who shall resuscitate

it? Thank you for joining bite at a

time books today while we read a.

>> Brie Carlisle: Bite of one of your favorite classics.

>> Brie Carlisle: Again, my name is Brie Carlisle, and

I hope you come back tomorrow for.

>> Brie Carlisle: The next bite of le miserable.

dont forget to sign up for our

newsletter@biteaudatimebooks.com and check

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

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the rest of the links for our show. wed love to hear from you on

social media as well.

>> Speaker A: Take a look and let's

see what we can find.

>> Speaker B: Take it chapter by chapter.

>> Speaker A: One.