Thenardier Knew Marius' Grandfather
One of the most difficult things for me to get through whenever I read this book is the Waterloo section. Victor Hugo treats us to a description of the battle that belongs in a history textbook, not a novel. It tells us the type of wall on the battlefield, the shrubbery around the church nearby and the position of the troops. One of the funniest things in the book is where Hugo quotes a French general as having said the s-word (or in the French case, the m-word), but censors it out. What I find funny is that every version I've read has put a footnote in to tell us what was censored out. Michael Shaara, the author of
The Killer Angels, could get away with this kind of long-winded explanation, but I only read it all the way through out of respect for the crazy author who felt I needed to know all about this battle. Finally, after a couple dozen (I kid you not) pages of discussion of Napoleon's tactics, he mentions a company of men who arrived late. The musical on stage boils this down to a half-verse in the prelude to "Master of the House": "My host, Thenardier, he was there so they say at the fields of Waterloo... Crawling through the mud So I've heard it said Picking through the pockets of the English dead He made a tidy score From the spoils of war." Well, sort of, actually. This report of picking through the pockets of the English dead doesn't mention that he was also robbing the French corpses. Thenardier was trying to steal one officer's ring when the officer stirred and Thenardier wound up saving his life. That man was Marius' grandfather. This comes into significance later when Thenardier finds a supposedly-dead Marius in the Paris sewers. In the musical, he takes a ring from Marius, but in the book, Marius recognizes a tear in his clothing.