This past week in the Les Misérables Chapter-a-Day Read-along featured one of the most famous scenes in the novel, and perhaps in all of literature: The Bishop’s Candlesticks. The twitter chat at #LesMisReadalong was abuzz with reactions to it, along with a host of other thoughts and favorite quotes. Here are a few highlights:
For him the external world had scarcely an existence. It would almost be true to say that for Jean Valjean there was no sun, no beautiful summer days, no radiant sky, no fresh April dawn. Some dim window light was all that shone in his soul. #LesMisReadalong V1 B2 C7
— Rick Barry 📚 (@RickBarry44) January 21, 2018
https://twitter.com/MissCarrieLA/status/955447964146610176
https://twitter.com/MissCarrieLA/status/955524217818238976
https://twitter.com/KS_scribbles/status/955623049276964864
V1B2C8 is totally magnificent. ALL of it quotable. He, this puny force, immediately exhausted, combats the inexhaustible. #LesMisReadalong
— AStrongBeliefWicker She/her 5 x VAXX 📚🤷♀️ (@AStrongBelief) January 23, 2018
https://twitter.com/bronasbooks/status/955767769567391744
https://twitter.com/bronasbooks/status/955769551672586241
Liberation is not deliverance. One gets free from the galleys, but not from the sentence. #lesmisreadalong Bk. 2 Ch. 9
— Tom Arceneaux (@TomArceneaux) January 23, 2018
"Release is not freedom. You are let out of prison, but you continue to serve your sentence." Volume 1, Book 2, Chapter 9 #lesmisreadalong See Responsibility, Rehabilitation, and Restoration: A Catholic Perspective on Crime and Criminal Justice https://t.co/79mzsDwsnw
— Nick Senger (@nsenger) January 23, 2018
https://twitter.com/bronasbooks/status/955943082041602049
Exactly 100 years apart, Victor Hugo and Ray Bradbury described the same phenomenon: excerpts from LES MISÉRABLES (1862 – Vol. 1, Book 2, Ch. 10) and SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES (1962 – Ch. 14). #LesMisReadalong #LesMiserables #VictorHugo #RayBradbury pic.twitter.com/9u6v6t8yhR
— Rick Barry 📚 (@RickBarry44) January 24, 2018
Only two chapters to go in V1B2, not sure if I can hold myself back. #LesMisReadalong
— AStrongBeliefWicker She/her 5 x VAXX 📚🤷♀️ (@AStrongBelief) January 24, 2018
"The moral world has no greater spectacle than this: a troubled and uneasy conscience on the brink of an evil action, contemplating the sleep of a good man." V1, Bk2, Ch11 #lesmisreadalong pic.twitter.com/mwwBSwsru7
— Nick Senger (@nsenger) January 25, 2018
https://twitter.com/bronasbooks/status/956650680789250048
"Sometimes nature mingles her effects and spectacles and our acts with a serious, intelligent appropriateness, as if she wanted us to reflect." V1, B2, C11 #lesmisreadalong
— Denise Gorss (@Denise205) January 26, 2018
It took restraint to stop reading tonight. Ch. 25 #lesmisreadalong
— Melisa Milholland (@GrettalAnne) January 26, 2018
"Now first, did this silver belong to us?"
Madame Magloire did not answer; after a moment the bishop continued:
"Madame Magloire, I have for a long time wrongfully withheld this silver; it belonged to the poor. Who was this man? A poor man evidently."
V1 B2 C12 #LesMisReadalong— Rick Barry 📚 (@RickBarry44) January 26, 2018
"'Jean Valjean, my brother, you no longer belong to evil, but to good. It is your soul I buy from you; I withdraw it from black thoughts and the spirit of perdition, and I give it to God.'" Bk. 2, Ch.12. #lesmisreadalong
— Tom Arceneaux (@TomArceneaux) January 26, 2018
"The bishop went up to him and said quietly, ‘Don’t forget, never forget, you promised to use this money to become an honest man.’" V1, Bk2, Ch12 #lesmisreadalong pic.twitter.com/oZCmTS01aK
— Nick Senger (@nsenger) January 26, 2018
https://twitter.com/bronasbooks/status/957012293568552961
#LesMisReadalong My thoughts on V1B2 The Fall/La Chutehttps://t.co/6PQa3GT4cp
— AStrongBeliefWicker She/her 5 x VAXX 📚🤷♀️ (@AStrongBelief) January 27, 2018
He beheld his life, and it seemed to him horrible; his soul, and it seemed to him frightful. There was, however, a softened light upon that life and upon that soul. It seemed to him that he was looking upon Satan by the light of Paradise.
V1 B2 C13 #LesMisReadalong— Rick Barry 📚 (@RickBarry44) January 27, 2018
https://twitter.com/bronasbooks/status/957408034652737537
#LesMisReadalong V1B3C1Seemingly five pages of trivial details (although some most delicious) and then- Yet these details, wrongly called trivial- there is no trivial fact in the affairs of man, no trivial leaf in the vegetable world-do serve a purpose.
— AStrongBeliefWicker She/her 5 x VAXX 📚🤷♀️ (@AStrongBelief) January 28, 2018
#LesMisReadalong V1B3C1 Dupuytren and Récamier had an argument in the amphitheatre at the School of Medicine and threatened to come to blows over the divinity of Jesus Christ. Sexist me was not expecting Madame Récamier! pic.twitter.com/EVfIpVpWqa
— AStrongBeliefWicker She/her 5 x VAXX 📚🤷♀️ (@AStrongBelief) January 28, 2018
Such was the confused mass of events that floated pell-mell on the surface of the year 1817, and is now forgotten. History neglects almost all these peculiarities, nor can it do otherwise; it is under the dominion of infinity.
V1 B3 C1 #LesMisReadalong pic.twitter.com/hG5Czmu1VQ— Rick Barry 📚 (@RickBarry44) January 28, 2018
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