Part I, Book 2, Chapter 4
About the Cheese Dairies of Pontarlier
Ngl, when I saw the title of this chapter, I went, oh crap is this one of the famed Hugo digressions? Luckily for me, this was not a chapter educating the reader about the ins and outs of French dairy farming, but is another epistolary chapter featuring another letter Mademoiselle Baptistine writes to her friend the countess. I kind of love the implication here that the countess is getting the beginning of Les Misérables told to her by letter.
It’s also a really interesting aspect of Hugo’s storytelling decisions; I’ve noticed that, so far, he chooses not to present himself as an omniscient narrator. Instead, he works with the conceit that he’s piecing the story together by finding notes and letters and asking people who were present to recount what happened. (There are all sorts of little explanatory lines for events, like “So-and-so, who was walking by, remembers that such-and-such happened, even years later.”)
Hugo takes the framework so far that if there isn’t a plausible way that Just Some Guy could have found out what happened (e.g. an event occurs with no witnesses), he simply says that information can never be known. It’s a surprising, but nice, self-imposed boundary on his storytelling that adds realism to this sprawling work.
Anyway, Mademoiselle Baptistine’s letter is treated here as a primary source (within Hugo’s framework) for what transpired over the dinner that the bishop serves to Valjean, which gives Hugo a way to pack loads of character insight into the story.
For example, when Valjean asks the bishop who he is, Myriel just identifies himself as a priest (sneaky humble man) and Valjean concludes that he must be a very poor priest with no parish, because just look at the humble food on the table and the way he lives. Weird shade coming from a guy who slept on a plank for 19 years on the chain gang, but okay. From this comment we learn both that Valjean is missing a crapload of information here, and also that he has no tact whatsoever.
The bishop nonchalantly brings up Pontarlier, as Jean Valjean said that’s where he was going, and starts talking about the cheese dairies there. Baptistine observes that he’s talking about the dairies in a very casually instructional way, like he’s suggesting them as a job opportunity to Valjean without being too bossy or paternalistic. I kind of love that they’re trying to act like the bishop is just a guy who is really enthusiastic about dairy farming.
Baptistine expresses mild surprise, in her letter, that her brother doesn’t take a single opportunity to give Valjean a moral lecture or tell him to behave better—in fact, he doesn’t ever mention the fact that Valjean is an ex-con or ask him anything about his past. Ma’am, do you know your brother at all?
She then concludes that, in the bishop’s mind, Valjean is likely all-too-aware of his “wretchedness” and that it’s the good and respectful thing to treat him as a normal person (what a concept!). Glad we got there!
(To be fair to Baptistine, I’m not sure that she actually thinks these things so much as she’s writing in an almost defensive vein, anticipating any potential criticism by her countess friend of her brother’s choices.)
She then finishes the letter by saying that, because it was so cold, she sends down the deerskin from her own room for Valjean’s bed. Awwww!
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