Part II, Book 4, Chapter 1
The Gorbeau Tenement
To kick off Book 4, we get a classic “setting the scene” chapter—Hugo paints the setting and backstory for the next part of the story. I am really hoping this is a direct continuation of Valjean and Cosette’s storyline, and isn’t another Waterloo situation.
We, the reader, are dropped into a moldering, decrepit building in a ramshackle neighborhood on the outskirts of Paris. This building is a shabby tenement with only one door and one window facing the street. We are given many details about this building, but my favorite is that there is lettering on the building saying “POST NO BILLS”—I am just so tickled that this has always been an eternal problem, apparently.
There are long, detailed descriptions of the door, the stairs the door opens onto, the window, the shutters, etc. The TL;DR of it all is that every aspect of this building is old, shabby, and barely maintained.
Officially the house is 50-52 (which I assume is the street number), but it’s referred to in the neighborhood as “Gorbeau’s House.” We get a whole backstory: basically, it was once owned by a lawyer named Corbeau who got permission from the king to change his name to “Gorbeau” because the other lawyers were teasing him. French lawyers had the energy of third grade bullies, apparently.
Hugo then zooms out on the neighborhood: it’s where violent crimes happen, is adjacent to some insane asylums, and the vibes are incredibly bad.
One time, early in our house hunt, my husband and I found a very reasonably priced apartment that we asked our realtor to add to our tour list, and she didn’t say anything but gamely agreed to drive us there. When we got to the very, ah, shady neighborhood the apartment was in, she just stopped the car on the street and said, “Go on in, I’m not going to park, I’m just going to be right here.” We bravely made it inside the murdery building and halfway down an even more murdery hallway before we went NOPE we don’t need to see this place! and ran back out, where our realtor was waiting with the engine still running.
Gorbeau’s house is in the type of neighborhood where your realtor would wait on the street with the engine running, is what I’m saying.
Hugo tells us, with the air of the omniscient narrator-from-the-future, that eventually this neighborhood will get the gentrification treatment: a major railway station will be built nearby, and development will spring up around it. Ah, the classic cycle of urbanity.
But why are we being told about this old shabby building in a bleak neighborhood? You don’t mean to tell me that this is where Valjean and Cosette are coming, right?
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