Join Host Bree Carlile as she reads the ninety-fourth chapter of Les Miserables.

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>> Speaker A: 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.

>> Brie Carlisle: So.

>> Speaker A: 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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while we try to keep the text as close to the original as

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>> Brie Carlisle: Values today well be

continuing.

>> Brie Carlisle: Les Miserable by Victor

Hugo chapter

two two complete

portraits so far in

this book, the St. Noiriers have been viewed only

in profile. The moment has arrived

for making the circuit of this couple and

considering it under all its aspects.

>> Brie Carlisle: Thenardier had just passed his 50th birthday.

>> Brie Carlisle: Madame, Thenardier was approaching her forties,

which is equivalent to 50 in a woman,

so that there existed a balance.

>> Brie Carlisle: Of age between husband and wife.

>> Brie Carlisle: Our readers have possibly preserved some recollection.

>> Brie Carlisle: Of this thenardier woman ever since her first

appearance.

>> Brie Carlisle: Tall, blonde, red,

fat, angular, square, enormous.

>> Brie Carlisle: And agile, she belonged, as

we have.

>> Brie Carlisle: Said, to the race of those colossal wild women

who contort themselves at fairs with paving stones

hanging from their hair.

>> Brie Carlisle: She did everything about the house, made.

>> Brie Carlisle: The beds, did the washing, the cooking, and

everything else.

>> Brie Carlisle: Cosette was her only servant, a

mouse in the service of an elephant.

Everything trembled at the sound of her voice,

windowpanes, furniture, and people.

>> Brie Carlisle: Her big face dotted with red blotches presented the

appearance of a skimmer.

>> Brie Carlisle: She had a beard.

>> Brie Carlisle: She was an ideal market porter. Dressed in womens

clothes. She swore

splendidly. She boasted of being able to crack

a, nut with one blow of her fist.

Except for the romances which she had read.

>> Brie Carlisle: And which made the affected lady peep through the ogress at

times in a very queer way.

>> Brie Carlisle: The idea would never have occurred to.

>> Brie Carlisle: Anyone to say to her, that is a woman.

This thenardier female was like the product.

>> Brie Carlisle: Of a wench engrafted on a fishwife.

When one heard her speak, one said.

>> Brie Carlisle: That, is the gendarme.

>> Brie Carlisle: When one saw her drink, one said.

>> Brie Carlisle: That is a carter.

>> Brie Carlisle: When one saw her handle Cosette, one.

>> Brie Carlisle: Said, that is the hangman. One of

her teeth projected when her face was in repose.

>> Brie Carlisle: Thenardier was a small, thin, pale, angular,

bony, feeble man who had a sickly air and who was

wonderfully healthy. His cunning

began here. He smiled habitually

by way of precaution. And was almost polite to

everybody. Even to the beggar to whom he.

>> Brie Carlisle: Refused half a farthing.

>> Brie Carlisle: He had the glance of a polecat and the bearing of a man of

letters.

>> Brie Carlisle: He greatly resembled the portraits of the abbe

Delille.

>> Brie Carlisle: His coquetry consisted in drinking with the

carters. No one had ever

succeeded in rendering him drunk. He

smoked a big pipe. He wore a blouse,

and under his blouse an old black coat.

He made pretensions to literature and

materialism.

>> Brie Carlisle: There were certain names which he often pronounced to support

whatever things he might be saying.

>> Brie Carlisle: Voltaire, Raynald, Parney. And

singularly enough, Saint Augustine.

>> Brie Carlisle: He declared that he had a system.

>> Brie Carlisle: In addition, he was a great swindler.

>> Brie Carlisle: A philosophy, a, scientific thief.

>> Brie Carlisle: The species does exist.

It will be remembered that he pretended to have served in the

army. He was in the habit of relating with

exuberance how being a sergeant in the 6th

or the 9th light something.

>> Brie Carlisle: Or other at Waterloo he had alone.

>> Brie Carlisle: And in the presence of a squadron of death dealing hussars,

covered with his body and saved from death

in the midst of the grape shot a general.

>> Brie Carlisle: Who had been dangerously wounded.

>> Brie Carlisle: Thence arose for his wall the flaring

sign, and for his inn the name which it bore in

the neighborhood of the cabaret of the sergeant of Waterloo.

He was a liberal, a classic and a

Bonapartist.

>> Brie Carlisle: He had subscribed for the Champ d'Assyl.

>> Brie Carlisle: It was said in the village that he had studied for the

priesthood.

>> Brie Carlisle: We believe that he had simply studied.

>> Brie Carlisle: In Holland for an innkeeper. This

rascal of composite order was in all probability,

some Fleming from Lille in Flanders, a

Frenchman in Paris, a belgian.

>> Brie Carlisle: In Brussels, being comfortably astride

of both.

>> Brie Carlisle: Frontiers as, for his prowess at

Waterloo, the reader is already acquainted with

that.

>> Brie Carlisle: It will be perceived that he exaggerated.

>> Brie Carlisle: It a trifle ebb, and Flo

wandering adventure was the leaven of his

existence. A tattered conscience

entails a fragmentary life, and

apparently, at the stormy epoch of.

>> Brie Carlisle: June 18, 1815,

thenardier belonged to that.

>> Brie Carlisle: Variety of marauding settlers of which we.

>> Brie Carlisle: Have spoken, beating about the country,

selling to some, stealing from others,

and traveling.

>> Brie Carlisle: Like a family man with wife and children in a rickety

cart in the.

>> Brie Carlisle: Rear of troops on the march, with.

>> Brie Carlisle: An instinct for always attaching himself to the victorious

army.

>> Brie Carlisle: This campaign ended, and

having, as he.

>> Brie Carlisle: Said, some quibis, he had come to Mont

Fermier and set up an inn there.

This quibis, composed of purses and

watches, of gold rings and silver

crosses gathered in harvest time in furrows sown with

corpses, did not amount to a large

total, and, did not carry the.

>> Brie Carlisle: Settler turned eating housekeeper very far.

Thenardier had that peculiar

rectilinear, something about his

gestures which, accompanied by an oath.

>> Brie Carlisle: Recalls the barracks and by a sign of the cross,

the seminary. He was a fine

talker.

>> Brie Carlisle: He allowed it to be thought that.

>> Brie Carlisle: He was an educated man. Nevertheless,

the schoolmaster had noticed that he pronounced

improperly. He composed the

travelers tariff card in a superior manner,

but practiced eyes sometimes.

>> Brie Carlisle: Spied out orthographical errors in it.

Thenardier was cunning, greedy,

slothful and clever.

>> Brie Carlisle: He did not disdain his servants, which caused his wife

to dispense with them. The giantess was

jealous. It seemed to her that

that thin and yellow little man must be an.

>> Brie Carlisle: Object coveted by all.

Thanardier, who was above all, an

astute and well balanced man, was, was a.

>> Brie Carlisle: Scamp of a temperate sort.

>> Brie Carlisle: This is the worst species.

Hypocrisy enters into it.

>> Brie Carlisle: It is not that thenardier was not.

>> Brie Carlisle: On occasion capable of wrath to quite.

>> Brie Carlisle: The same degree as his wife, but.

>> Brie Carlisle: This was very rare.

>> Brie Carlisle: And at such times, since he was.

>> Brie Carlisle: Enraged with the human race in general.

>> Brie Carlisle: As he bore within him a deep furnace of hatred,

and since he was one of those people who are

continually.

>> Brie Carlisle: Avenging their wrongs, who accuse everything

that.

>> Brie Carlisle: Passes before them of everything which has.

>> Brie Carlisle: Befallen them, and who are always

ready.

>> Brie Carlisle: To cast upon the first person who comes to hand as a

legitimate grievance, the sum, total

of the deceptions.

>> Brie Carlisle: The bankruptcies and the calamities of their.

>> Brie Carlisle: Lives, when all this leaven was

stirred up in him and boiled forth from his mouth

and eyes.

>> Brie Carlisle: He was terrible woe to the

person.

>> Brie Carlisle: Who came under his wrath at such a time.

>> Brie Carlisle: In addition to his other qualities, Thenardier.

>> Brie Carlisle: Was attentive and penetrating, silent

or talkative according to circumstances,

and always highly intelligent.

He had something of the look of sailors who were accustomed

to screw up their eyes to gaze through marine glasses.

>> Brie Carlisle: Thenardier was a statesman.

>> Brie Carlisle: Every newcomer who entered the tavern sat.

>> Brie Carlisle: On, catching sight of Madame Thenardiere.

>> Brie Carlisle: There is the master of the house. A

mistake. She was not even the mistress.

The husband was both master and mistress.

>> Brie Carlisle: She worked, he created,

he directed everything.

>> Brie Carlisle: By a sort of invisible and constant magnetic

action. A word was sufficient for

him, sometimes a sign.

>> Brie Carlisle: The mastodon obeyed. Thenardier was

a sort of special and sovereign being in Madame

Thenardier's eyes, though.

>> Brie Carlisle: She did not thoroughly realize it. She was

possessed of virtues after her own kind.

>> Brie Carlisle: If she had ever had a disagreement as to any detail with

Monsieur Thenardier.

>> Brie Carlisle: Which was an inadmissible hypothesis by the

way, she would not have blamed her.

>> Brie Carlisle: Husband in public on any subject whatever.

>> Brie Carlisle: She would never have committed before strangers. That,

mistake so often committed by women, and

which is called, in parliamentary language, exposing the

crown, although their concord.

>> Brie Carlisle: Had only evil as its result. There was

contemplation in Madame Thenardiers submission to her

husband.

>> Brie Carlisle: That mountain of noise and of flesh moved under the

little finger of that frail despot. Viewed

on its dwarfed and grotesque side.

>> Brie Carlisle: This was that grand and universal thing,

the adoration of mind by matter. For

certain ugly features have a cause in the very depths of

eternal beauty. There was an

unknown quantity about thenardier.

>> Brie Carlisle: Hence the absolute empire of the man over that

woman. At certain moments, she

beheld him like a lighted candle. At

others, she felt him like a claw.

>> Brie Carlisle: This woman was a formidable creature who loved no one

except her children and.

>> Brie Carlisle: Who did not fear anyone except her husband.

>> Brie Carlisle: She was a mother because she was mammiferous.

>> Brie Carlisle: But her maternity stopped short with her.

>> Brie Carlisle: Daughters, and, as we shall see,

did not extend to boys.

>> Brie Carlisle: The man had but one thought how

to enrich himself. He did not

succeed in this.

>> Brie Carlisle: A theater worthy of this great talent was

lacking. Thenardier was ruining himself at

Montremille.

>> Brie Carlisle: if ruinous, possible to zero in.

>> Brie Carlisle: Switzerland or in the Pyrenees. This penniless scamp would

have become a millionaire. But an innkeeper must

browse where fate has hitched him. It will be

understood that the word.

>> Brie Carlisle: Innkeeper is here employed in a restricted.

>> Brie Carlisle: Sense and does not extend to an entire

class. In the same

year, 1823.

Thenardier was burdened with about 1500 francs.

>> Brie Carlisle: Worth of petty debts, and this rendered him anxious,

whatever may have been the obstinate injustice of destiny.

>> Brie Carlisle: In this case, Thenardier was one of.

>> Brie Carlisle: Those men who understand best with the most profundity

and in the most modern.

>> Brie Carlisle: Fashion, that thing which is virtue among

barbarous peoples.

>> Brie Carlisle: And an object of merchandise among civilized

peoples.

>> Brie Carlisle: Hospitality. besides, he was an admirable

poacher.

>> Brie Carlisle: And quoted for his skill in shooting.

>> Brie Carlisle: He had a certain, cold and tranquil laugh

which was particularly dangerous.

>> Brie Carlisle: His theories as a landlord sometimes burst forth in lightning

flashes. He had professional aphorisms

which he inserted.

>> Brie Carlisle: Into his wifes mind. The duty of the

innkeeper, he said to her one day,

violently and in.

>> Brie Carlisle: A low voice, is to sell to the first

comer. Stews, repose, light, fire, dirty

sheets, a servant lies and a smile. To

stop passersby. To empty small purses. And to

honestly lighten heavy ones.

>> Brie Carlisle: To shelter traveling families respectfully. To

shave the man.

>> Brie Carlisle: To pluck the woman.

>> Brie Carlisle: To pick the child clean, to quote the window

open, the window shut, the.

>> Brie Carlisle: Chimney corner, the armchair, the chair, the ottoman, the stool, the

featherbed, the mattress and the truss of straw.

To know how much the shadow uses up the mirror.

>> Brie Carlisle: And to put a price on it.

>> Brie Carlisle: And buy 500,000 devils. To make the traveler pay for

everything, even for the flies which his dog

eats. This man and

this woman were rused and rage wedded.

>> Brie Carlisle: A hideous and terrible team. While

the husband pondered and combined.

>> Brie Carlisle: Madame Thenardier thought not of absent

creditors, took no heed of yesterday nor of

tomorrow. And lived in a fit of anger.

>> Brie Carlisle: All in a minute. Such were these two

beings. Cosette was between them,

subjected to their double pressure.

>> Brie Carlisle: Like a creature whos at the same.

>> Brie Carlisle: Time being ground up in a mill.

>> Brie Carlisle: And pulled to pieces with pincers.

The man and the woman each had a different method.

>> Brie Carlisle: Cosette was overwhelmed with blows.

>> Brie Carlisle: This was the womans. She went barefooted

in winter. That was the mans

doing.

>> Brie Carlisle: Cosette ran upstairs and down,

washed, swept.

>> Brie Carlisle: Rubbed, dusted, ran, fluttered about,

panted, moved, heavy articles. And weak as she was,

did the coursework.

>> Brie Carlisle: There was no mercy for her.

>> Brie Carlisle: A fierce mistress and a venomous master.

>> Brie Carlisle: The Thainardier hostelry was like a spider's

web.

>> Brie Carlisle: In which Cosette had been caught.

>> Brie Carlisle: And where she lay trembling. The

ideal of oppression was realized by the sinister

household.

>> Brie Carlisle: It was something like the fly, serving the

spiders.

>> Brie Carlisle: The poor child passively held her peace.

>> Brie Carlisle: What takes place within these souls when.

>> Brie Carlisle: They have but just quitted.

>> Brie Carlisle: God find themselves thus at the

very dawn of life, very

small and in the midst of

men all naked.

>> Brie Carlisle: Thank you for joining bite at a time books today while

we read a bite of one of your favorite classics.

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

>> Brie Carlisle: I hope you come back tomorrow,

>> Brie Carlisle: For the next bite of Le

Miserable.

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

newsletter@biteoutimebooks.com, dot. And

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

our website, byteaditimebooks.com, for

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

social media as well.

>> Speaker E: Take a look at a book and let's

see what we can find.

Take it chapter by chapter,

one at a time

pictures and mountains we can

climb

take your words go word line.

>> Speaker A: By line one bite at a time.