Free Les Miserables (abridged) (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) by Victor Hugo

(considered a violent but legitimate protest) or riot (undiscriminating mob violence).
    Fiacre: Cab; see above.
    Francs, livres: Units of money; see above.
    Laurence M. Porter has published twelve books and a hundred articles and book chapters on Francophone studies, comparative literature, critical theory, French culture, and every period of French literature. These include a comprehensive book, Victor Hugo (1999), and several other articles and chapters on Hugo, including one on Hugo’s novels published by Legenda, the Humanities Research Institute at Oxford University, England. He was an NEH Senior Research Fellow in 1998, and has held other grants from the Ford Foundation, NEH, and USIS. He teaches French at Michigan State University; he won the Distinguished Faculty Award in 1995. He serves on the Editorial or Advisory Boards of Nineteenth-Century French Studies, Studies in Twentieth Century Literature, and Women in French Studies.

Acknowledgments
    I gratefully acknowledge the permission from the Gale Research Company of Detroit, Michigan, to reproduce elements of Chapter Eight, “The Masterpiece,” from my book Victor Hugo (New York: Twayne/Macmillan, 1999), which form a portion of the preface to this edition of Les Misérables. Marjorie Porter helped substantially to clarify my writing, and John Rauk, the current Chair of Romance and Classical Languages at Michigan State University, kindly allowed me to defer one course from spring 2003 to next year, which made it possible to complete this edition—as well as tracking down an allusion from Horace.

A NOTE ON THE ABRIDGMENT
    In the complex structure of Les Misérables, each of five long parts is divided into several books, and each book into several chapters. Hugo wrote simultaneously as an idealist who used a classical dramatic progression and as a realist who digressed into sociological essays. The idealist composed a vast drama of redemption in five acts, which correspond with the five parts of the novel. Part I presents the initial situation: society scornfully rejects two potentially virtuous, self-sacrificial characters, the former convict Jean Valjean and the prostitute Fantine. Part II introduces the complication that initiates the main action: Jean Valjean tries to protect Fantine’s orphaned daughter, Cosette, while fleeing the police. Part III, the moment of resolve, depicts the young Marius, who will learn to work for the political liberation of society through collective effort, after Valjean has been shown trying to achieve economic progress to be shared by all. Part IV, the climax, shows Marius risking his life behind the revolutionaries’ barricade, while Valjean knowingly sacrifices his happiness to save Marius’s life, allowing the youth to marry Cosette. Part V, the denouement, traces Valjean’s spiritual apotheosis, which will inspire Marius and Cosette. As a realist, Hugo shows how the glorious spiritual motivations mentioned above become entangled with selfish impulses, and he grounds his depiction of character in serious historical and sociological research.
    In this abridged edition, the following long sections have been cut: the history of a religious order (part II, books six and seven); a linguistic examination of the secret languages of thieves (part IV, book seven); and the historical background of the 1832 insurrection in Paris (part IV, book ten). The titles of omitted books are enclosed in square brackets in the table of contents on pages 5—6 below.
    Some entire chapters and opening sections of chapters have been cut. Chapter names come from the unabridged version, but chapters have been numbered to preserve an uninterrupted sequence. Above a chapter title, a larger number in parentheses, following a smaller number, is the chapter number in the unabridged version: for example, 5 (7).
    Within the text, plain prose summaries in italics for chapters or other pieces of text that have been cut allow the reader to follow the action