Part I, Book 7, Chapter 5
Spokes in the Wheels
Oh boy, another chapter about travel logistics! I know the primary point of these detail-intensive chapters is to depict what a character is up against, their internal struggle, intent, etc. and they’re great examples of how to build tension and lead up to a reveal, but I am really enjoying learning the minutiae of how people got around in the 19th century.
Hugo starts off with an explanation of how the post service works and how mail coaches are set up (one seat for the postman, one seat for any potential passengers, and a box for mail in the back). Around 5 AM one morning, one such mail coach entering the town of Montreuil-sur-mer collides with a tilbury which doesn’t stop after the crash and continues off into the darkness in a hurry.
Obviously, this is Mayor Madeleine, and I’m not a fan of the fact that he has just committed a hit-and-run. If stealing a tiny amount of food gets you locked up for five years, what’s the penalty for fleeing a crash, huh??
I guess we have to cut Madeleine some slack, as he’s gripped in deep emotional turmoil and is, even as he speeds towards Arras, unsure of what he’s going to do.
After the first leg of the trip, Madeleine stops at an inn to rest and feed the horse. For some reason Hugo gives us an unnecessary paragraph about how weird this little white horse looks: it’s “ugly but robust,” he says. Wtf, why are we bodyshaming horses now??? Why is this very good horse catching strays like this?
Even though the horse is soooooo ugly, Hugo says, it’s so well-suited to its task (speeding anxious mayors across France) that there is “not a drop of sweat on its rump.” As someone who has had to rinse the sweat out of a horse’s buttcrack after one (1) hour of work in the ring, this actually means something to me and I’m very impressed.
While the very good horse is eating its oats, the stablehand sees the tilbury and tells Madeleine, with some alarm, that one of the wheels is badly damaged from the crash and is not going to make it much further. He calls over the wheelwright (I am learning so much about old-timey jobs), who examines the wheel.
What follows is a classic “rich guy tries to throw money at a problem but the problem can’t be solved by money” kind of exchange. The wheel is so badly damaged that there’s no way it can be repaired before the next day (this is where I want to play Shitty Armchair Therapist and ask Madeleine, “Do you think you crashed into the mail coach on purpose?”), the wheelwright doesn’t have a spare wheel of the same size, and he doesn’t have a pair of wheels that would fit the axle. There are no other vehicles to be hired out, and all the horses in the area are at work because it’s ploughing season. No one in town hires out carriages, and the post horses won’t get to Arras before the next day.
It is amazing, when you think about it, how reliant on horses this era of civilization is. Respect horses, you guys! Don’t overwork them! And don’t call them ugly!
This is one of those primally frustrating binds that should feel familiar to anyone who has missed a flight, had no other options, and felt entirely helpless.
But Madeleine is not frustrated or enraged or despairing. “He felt an immense joy.”
All of this—the impossibility of the task, every option blocked—is clearly a sign from above that he was simply never meant to go, and it’s not for lack of trying: “He had made every possible effort to continue his journey.” There’s nothing he could have done; God just doesn’t want him to be at the trial. Having made an effort in good faith to do the right thing, and been stopped through no fault of his own, Madeleine thinks, he can just go home having done his duty. It is exactly the same vibe as Frodo telling Sam they can go home now that they’ve brought the One Ring to Rivendell in Fellowship.
Just as we, the audience, are fully aware that Frodo has two and a half movies more to go, we the reader can see that there is SO MUCH BOOK left and, unfortunately for Madeleine, this is not where the story ends.
For you see, while he was trying to buy his way out of his transportation predicament, some looky-loos stopped to see what was going on, one of whom was a young boy who ran off and brought back an old woman, who steps forward to announce that she has a gig to rent out.
Madeleine is despondent. “The fateful hand had seized hold of him again.” This poor guy has never been able to catch a break.
The old lady’s gig is a crappy, rattly old thing made out of wicker, but Madeleine pays for it, harnesses the little white horse to it, and heads out of town. On the way out he’s stopped by the little boy who basically asks for a tip for saving Madeleine’s day.
This is not Madeleine’s finest moment. He is outraged, says, “[Y]ou shall have nothing,” and drives off. It is extremely understandable (this man is dealing with an impossible moral dilemma, and this boy unknowingly kept him from escaping it) but is also a really tough look for a man who technically has a history of robbing little boys.
This is already the worst trip ever, but it gets even worse 13 miles from Arras. The poor little white horse is exhausted, and a road-mender stops Madeleine to tell him that 1) his horse needs a break (thank you!!!) and 2) the road is blocked for repair work, and if he wants to get to Arras he needs to double back and take an alternate, longer road.
I gotta say, at this point it does kind of feel like God is making this so hard that Madeleine really would be forgiven for going, you know what, this just isn’t meant to be! But nevertheless, he persisted, and following the road-mender’s advice, he leaves the little white horse at an inn to rest (whew) and hires a new horse and a guy to take him the rest of the way.
At the end of the chapter, Madeleine is almost there, and the guy who is basically his Lyft driver tells him they’ll be in Arras around 8 in the evening. It is at this point that Madeleine realizes that the trial would have started in the morning and that by the time he gets there it will have been long over and he’ll have missed it completely. All of this trouble has been for nothing, he thinks.
Is it? We’ll just have to see!
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