Join Host Bree Carlile as she reads the one hundred 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.

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.

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while we try to keep the text as close to the original as

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>> Brie Carlisle: Some words have been changed to honor.

>> Brie Carlisle: The marginalized communities whove identified the words as

harmful and to stay in alignment with Byte

at a time books brand.

>> Brie Carlisle: Values today well be

continuing.

Les Miserable by Victor

Hugo chapter

three two misfortunes make one

piece of good fortune on

the following morning at daybreak,

Jean Valjean was still by Cosette's bedside.

He watched there, motionless, waiting for her to wake.

Some new thing had come into his soul.

Jean Valjean had never loved anything.

For 25 years he had been alone in the world.

He had never been father, lover,

husband, friend. In the prison he had been

vicious, gloomy, chaste, ignorant, and

shy. The heart of that ex convict

was full of virginity. His sister and

his sisters children had left him only a vague and far off

memory, which had finally, almost completely,

vanished. He had made every effort to

find them, and not having been able to find

them, he had forgotten them. Human

nature is made thus. The other

tender emotions of his youth, if he had ever had

any, had fallen into an abyss.

When he saw Cosette, when he had taken

possession of her, carried her off, and delivered

her, he felt his heart moved within

him all the passion and affection

within him awoke and rushed towards that

child. He approached the bed where she lay

sleeping. And trembled with joyous.

He suffered all the pangs of a mother. And he

knew not what it meant. For that great and

singular movement of a heart which begins to

love. Is a very obscure and a very sweet thing.

Poor old man with a perfectly new heart.

Only, as he was five and 50. And Cosette,

eight years of age. All that might have been love in the whole course of

his life. Flowed together into a sort of ineffable

light. It was the second white

apparition which he had encountered. The

bishop had caused the dawn of virtue to rise on his

horizon. Cosette caused the dawn of love

to rise. The early days passed.

In this dazzled state. Cosette, on her

side, had also, unknown to herself. Become another

being. Poor little thing. She

m was so little when her mother left her. That she no

longer remembered her. Like all children

who resemble young shoots of the vine. Which cling

to everything she had tried to love,

she had not succeeded. All had

repulsed her. The thenardiers, their

children, other children. She had loved

the dog, and he had died. After which

nothing and nobody would have anything to do with her.

It is a sad thing to say, and we have

already intimated it. That at eight years of

age her heart was cold. It was not

her fault. It was not the faculty of loving that she

lacked. Alas, it was the

possibility. thus, from the very first

day, all her sentient and thinking powers

loved this kind man. She felt that which she

had never felt before. A sensation of

expansion. The man no longer

produced on her the effect of being old or poor.

She thought Jean Valjean handsome, just as

she thought the hovel pretty.

These are the effects of the dawn of

childhood, of joy.

The novelty of the earth and of life counts for something

here. Nothing is so charming as the

coloring reflection of happiness on a garret.

We have in our past a delightful

garrethen nature. A

difference of 50 years had set a profound gulf between Jean

Valjean and Cosette. Destiny

filled in this gulf. Destiny suddenly

united and whetted with its irresistible power. These two

uprooted existences. Differing in

age alike, in sorrow. One, in

fact completed the other. Cosettes

instinct sought a father as, ah, Jean Valjean's

instinct sought a child. To meet was to

find each other. At the mysterious moment

when their hands touched, they were welded

together. When these two souls

perceived each other, they recognized each other as

necessary to each other. And embraced each other

closely taking the words

in their most comprehensive and absolute sense,

we may say that separated from everyone by the

walls of the tomb, Jean Valjean was the

widower and Cosette was the orphan.

This situation caused Jean Valjean to become

cosettes father after a celestial fashion.

And in truth, the mysterious impression produced on

Cosette in the depths of the forest of chells by the hand of Jean

Valjean, grasping hers in the dark, was not

an illusion but a reality. the

entrance of that man into the destiny of that child had been the

advent of God. Moreover, Jean

Valjean had chosen his refuge well. There

he seemed perfectly secure. The

chamber with the dressing room which he occupied with Cosette,

was the one whose window opened on the boulevard,

this being the only window in the house. No

neighbors glances were to be feared from across the way or at

the side. The ground floor of number

5052, a sort of dilapidated

penthouse, served as a wagon house for market

gardeners, and no communication existed

between it and the first story.

It was separated by the flooring, which had neither traps nor

stairs and which formed the diaphragm of the building, as

it were. The first story contained,

as we have said, numerous chambers and several

attics, only one of which was occupied by the old

woman who took charge of Jean Valjean's housekeeping.

All the rest was uninhabited. It was

this old woman ornamented with the name of the principal

lodger and in reality, entrusted with the functions of

portress, who had let him the lodging on Christmas

Eve. He had represented himself to her as a

gentleman of means who had been ruined by spanish

bonds, who was coming there to live with his little

daughter. He had paid her six months in

advance and had commissioned the old woman to furnish the

chamber and dressing room. As we have seen,

it was this good woman who had lighted the fire in the stove

and prepared everything on the evening of their arrival.

Week followed week.

These two beings led a happy life in that hovel.

Cosette laughed, chattered, and sang from

daybreak. Children have their morning song

as well as birds. It

sometimes happened that, Jean Valjean clasped her tiny red

hand, all cracked with chilblains, and

kissed it. The poor child who was

used to being beaten did not know the meaning of this and ran away in

confusion. At times she became

serious and stared at her little black gown.

Cosette was no longer in rags. she was in

mourning. She had emerged from misery, and

she was entering into life. Jean Valjean

had undertaken to teach her to read.

Sometimes, as he made the child spell. He remembered that it

was the idea of doing evil that he had learned to read in

prison. This idea had ended

in teaching a child to read a. Then

the ex convict smiled with the pensive smile of the

angels. He felt in it

a premeditation from on high the, will of someone

who was not a man.

And he became absorbed in reverie.

Good thoughts have their abysses as well as evil

ones. To teach Cosette to read and tell

at her play. This constituted nearly

the whole of Jean Valjean's existence. And then he

talked of her mother, and he made her pray.

She called him father and knew no other

name for him. He passed hours in

watching her dressing and undressing her doll. And in

listening to her prattle. Life henceforth appeared

to him to be full of interest. Men seemed

to him good and just. He no

longer reproached anyone in thought. He saw no reason why

he should not live to be a very old man. Now that this child loved

him, he saw a whole future

stretching out before him, illuminated by Cosette

as by a charming light. The best of us are not

exempt from egotistical thoughts.

At times he reflected with a sort of joy that

she would be ugly. This is only a

personal opinion. But to utter our whole thought

at the point where Jean Valjean had arrived, when he began to love

Cosette, it is by no means clear to us that he

did not need this encouragement. In order that he might persevere in

well doing. He had just viewed the malice of men

and the misery of society under a new aspect,

incomplete aspects which, unfortunately, only

exhibited one side of the truth. The fate

of woman as summed up in Fantine

and public authority as personified in

Javert. He had returned to

prison. This time for having done

right. He had quaffed fresh bitterness,

disgust and lassitude were overpowering him.

Even the memory of the bishop probably suffered a temporary

eclipse, though sure to reappear later on,

luminous and triumphant. But after

all, that sacred memory was growing

dim. Who knows whether Jean

Valjean had not been on the eve of growing discouraged into

falling once more. He loved and grew

strong again. Alas, he walked with no

less indecision than Cosette. He protected her,

and she strengthened him. Thanks to him, she could

walk through life. Thanks to her, he could

continue in virtue. He was that child's

stay, and she was his prop.

Oh, unfathomable and divine mystery of the balances

of destiny.

Thank you for joining Byte 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 Le Miserable.

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

newsletter@byteadatimebooks.com and check

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

our website, byteadatimebooks.com, for

the rest of the links for our show. Wed love to

hear from you on social media as well.

>> Brie Carlisle: Many adventures and mountains

we can climb

take your word for word, line by

line, one bite at a time.