Some Random Names :)

After Marius discovers the love his father had for him, he become immersed in studying the Revolution.
"He had seen... shining stars-- Mirabeau, Vergniaud, Saint-Just, Robespierre, Camille Desmoulins, Danton..." (pg 631)

Mirabeau: Honoré-Gabriel Riqueti, comte de Mirabeau, (born March 9, 1749, Bignon, nearNemours, France—died April 2, 1791, Paris), French politician and orator, one of the greatest figures in the National Assembly that governed France during the early phases of the French Revolution. A moderate and an advocate of constitutional monarchy, he died before the Revolution reached its radical climax.

Vergniaud: Pierre-Victurnien Vergniaud, (born May 31, 1753, Limoges, France—died Oct. 31, 1793, Paris), eloquent spokesman for the moderate Girondin faction during theFrench Revolution.
... Although he was a capable lawyer, he was so indolent that he refused to take cases unless he was in need of money.
Vergniaud greeted the outbreak of the Revolution with enthusiasm. In 1790 he attracted widespread attention by pleading the case of a soldier who had been involved in a riot against a landlord. Elected to the administration of the Girondedépartement (1790), he looked on with approval as the revolutionary National Assembly in Paris abolished France’s feudal institutions and restricted the hitherto absolute powers of King Louis XVI. Vergniaud took a seat with the other Girondindeputies in the Legislative Assembly, which succeeded the National Assembly on Oct. 1, 1791, and he spoke with eloquence in favour of war with Austria. After war was declared (April 20, 1792), he exposed Louis XVI’s counterrevolutionary intrigues and suggested (July 3) that the King should be deposed. Nevertheless, unlike their Jacobin rivals, Vergniaud and the other Girondins were unwilling to form ties with the disenfranchised lower classes. Faced with the threat of popular insurrection in Paris, Vergniaud attempted secretly to come to terms with the King in late July. The populace of Paris rose against Louis on August 10, and Vergniaud, as president of the Assembly, was forced to propose the suspension of the King and the summoning of a National Convention.
In the Convention, which met on Sept. 20, 1792, Vergniaud avoided attacking the Montagnards (as the Jacobin deputies were called) until they revealed (Jan. 3, 1793) his previous negotiations with the King. During the trial of Louis XVI, Vergniaud at first sought to save the monarch’s life, but he finally joined the majority in voting (January 1793) for the death sentence. On June 2, 1793, Parisian insurgents, in alliance with the Montagnards, forced the convention to place Vergniaud and 28 other Girondin leaders under house arrest. Vergniaud continued to defy his opponents but made no attempt to escape from Paris. Imprisoned on July 26, he was condemned by the Revolutionary Tribunal on October 30 and guillotined the following day.

Saint-Just: Louis de Saint-Just, in full Louis-Antoine-Léon de Saint-Just (born August 25, 1767, Decize, France—died July 28, 1794, Paris), controversial ideologue of theFrench Revolution, one of the most zealous advocates of the Reign of Terror (1793–94), who was arrested and guillotined in the Thermidorian Reaction.

Robespierre: Maximilien Robespierre was a leader of the French Revolution during the Reign of Terror. He was part of the radical group known as the Jacobins. There are many biographies and references to him. Here's a link to one.

Camille Desmoulins: Camille Desmoulins, in full Lucie-Simplice-Camille-Benoist Desmoulins (born March 2, 1760, Guise, France—died April 5, 1794, Paris), one of the most influential journalists and pamphleteers of the French Revolution.
...After the outbreak of the Revolution in 1789, he suddenly emerged as an effective crowd orator, urging a Parisian crowd to take up arms (July 12, 1789). The ensuing popular insurrection in Paris was climaxed with the storming of the Bastille on July 14. ...(he wrote many pamphlets and started a newspaper)... After Louis XVI’s abortive flight from Paris in June 1791, Desmoulins intensified his campaign for the deposition of the king and the establishment of a republic. The assembly retaliated by ordering his arrest on July 22, 1791, but he went into hiding until he was granted amnesty in September.
Meanwhile, Desmoulins had formed close working relations with Georges Danton... he was made secretary-general under Danton in the Ministry of Justice. ... (He started a feud with another party and attacked them through his newspaper. He also criticized the Committee in his newspaper that led to it being burned)...
Robespierre had the leading Hébertists (Desmoulins' enemies) guillotined on March 24, and on the night of March 29–30 he acquiesced to the arrest of Desmoulins, Danton, and their friends. Charged with complicity in a “foreign plot,” the Dantonists were guillotined on April 5.

Danton: Georges Danton, in full Georges-Jacques Danton (born October 26, 1759, Arcis-sur-Aube, France—died April 5, 1794, Paris), French Revolutionary leader and orator, often credited as the chief force in the overthrow of the monarchy and the establishment of the First French Republic (September 21, 1792). He later became the first president of the Committee of Public Safety, but his increasing moderation and eventual opposition to the Reign of Terror led to his own death at the guillotine

M. Gillenormand and Daughters

To summarize, M. Gillenormand is Marius's grandfather. He forced Colonel Pontmercy to give Marius up to M. Gillenormand. M. Gillenormand loved Marius, but showed it to him be arguing with him and being rough. He is strongly against Napoleon, which is at the core of the argument between himself and Colonel Pontmercy, and in an argument about Napoleon Marius leaves (much to M. Gillenormand's dismay and sorrow).
The entire second book of "Marius" is dedicated to M. Gillenormand, and can be read here.
(it tells some stories and characterizes him)

M. Gillenormand only had two children--both girls. One was by his first wife who later died. Ten years later, by his second wife, he had another daughter; Marius's mother.

"In their youth they had borne very little resemblance to each other, either in character or countenance, and had also been as little like sisters to each other as possible. The youngest had a charming soul, which turned towards all that belongs to the light, was occupied with flowers, with verses, with music, which fluttered away into glorious space, enthusiastic, ethereal, and was wedded from her very youth, in ideal, to a vague and heroic figure. The elder had also her chimera; she espied in the azure some very wealthy purveyor, a contractor, a splendidly stupid husband, a million made man, or even a prefect...—all this had created a whirlwind in her imagination. Thus the two sisters strayed, each in her own dream, at the epoch when they were young girls. Both had wings, the one like an angel, the other like a goose.No ambition is ever fully realized, here below at least. No paradise becomes terrestrial in our day. The younger wedded the man of her dreams, but she died. The elder did not marry at all."

Fauchlevent

Fauchlevent is one of those minor characters that is so important he's even in the musical :). He is the man who talked meanly and disrespectfully about Jean Valjean when he was the mayor, but when he was trapped under a cart Jean Valjean risked his life and discovery to save him.
After Fauchlevent recovers he is lame (you know what I mean, he foot doesn't work very well). Jean Valjean helps him to find work in a convent.

Jean Valjean is ultimately rewarded for this service. When he is running from Javert with Cosette, he ends up in that same convent. Fauchlevent repays his service by ensuring that he can stay at the convent-- one of the safest places he could hide from Javert.

So Jean Valjean assumes the role of Fauchlevent's brother and stays at the convent, which is where Cosette grows up. The nuns nicknamed Fauchlevent "Fauvent" which is a name Jean Valjean uses when he leaves the convent.

"...Father Fauchelevent was an old man who had been an egoist all his life, and who, towards the end of his days, halt, infirm, with no interest left to him in the world, found it sweet to be grateful, and perceiving a generous action to be performed, flung himself upon it like a man, who at the moment when he is dying, should find close to his hand a glass of good wine which he had never tasted, and should swallow it with avidity. ...We have just called him a poor peasant of Picardy. That description is just, but incomplete. ... He was a peasant, but he had been a notary, which added trickery to his cunning, and penetration to his ingenuousness. Having, through various causes, failed in his business, he had descended to the calling of a carter and a laborer. But, in spite of oaths and lashings, which horses seem to require, something of the notary had lingered in him. He had some natural wit; he talked good grammar; he conversed, which is a rare thing in a village; and the other peasants said of him: "He talks almost like a gentleman with a hat." Fauchelevent belonged, in fact, to that species, which the impertinent and flippant vocabulary of the last century qualified as demi-bourgeois, demi-lout, and which the metaphors showered by the chateau upon the thatched cottage ticketed in the pigeon-hole of the plebeian: rather rustic, rather citified; pepper and salt. Fauchelevent, though sorely tried and harshly used by fate, worn out, a sort of poor, threadbare old soul, was, nevertheless, an impulsive man, and extremely spontaneous in his actions; a precious quality which prevents one from ever being wicked. His defects and his vices, for he had some, were all superficial; in short, his physiognomy was of the kind which succeeds with an observer. His aged face had none of those disagreeable wrinkles at the top of the forehead, which signify malice or stupidity."

Discussion Questions

I've put up a page for discussion questions that I've pondered as I've read the book and wanted to share.
They aren't quizzing you on what you've read, if you've read the book good for you! They're questions that make you think if you let them.

Here are a few:
"Faith is a necessity to man. Woe to him who believes in nothing." (pg 521) Why is faith necessary? What would your life be like if you had no faith in anything? How has faith strengthened you?

"For now, Cosette laughed."Even her face had, in some measure, changed. The gloomy cast had disappeared. Laughter is sunshine; it chases winter from the human face." (pg 569) Have you noticed this with others, or with yourself? Try to go for a week smiling at yourself every chance you get. How does it make you feel?

"Suddenly" a musical moment :)

"Suddenly," sung by Jean Valjean

Reading about Jean Valjean and Cosette right now. I love this song from the movie :)

Jean Valjean's Trek from the ship Orion to Montfermiel

https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Le+Beausset,+France/Hautes-Alpes,+France/Accons,+France/Paris,+France/Montfermeil,+France/@45.9598707,-0.3945052,6z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m32!4m31!1m5!1m1!1s0x12c908ba1d3c12eb:0x83d80015e84e708f!2m2!1d5.802294!2d43.198331!1m5!1m1!1s0x12cb5acf5560d30f:0x30819a5fd8f25c0!2m2!1d6.3226072!2d44.6008723!1m5!1m1!1s0x12b4d563c5dfaafb:0x4093cafcbeb95b0!2m2!1d4.386427!2d44.886309!1m5!1m1!1s0x47e66e1f06e2b70f:0x40b82c3688c9460!2m2!1d2.3522219!2d48.856614!1m5!1m1!1s0x47e611128f9777bd:0xed34c12239b84138!2m2!1d2.570773!2d48.902029!3e2

Oh yeah. You'd better believe it. Imagine 203+ hours of walking! That's twenty 10-hr days!
Goodness, for a will like Jean Valjean's.

Thenardier and the Thenardiess

At the battle of Waterloo, Thenardier was stealing from bodies, when a hand grabs his. Thenardier pulls the man out of the pile of people. Before the man gains consciousness, Thenardier robs him. When he does wake up, the man identifies himself as Colonel Pontmercy, and promises that he or his son will repay Thenardier someday.

(in the year 1823) Thenardier had just passed his fiftieth birthday; Madame Thenardier was approaching her forties, which is equivalent to fifty in a woman; so that there existed a balance of age between husband and wife.
...Thenardier woman...—tall, blond, red, fat, angular, square, enormous, and agile; she belonged, as we have said, to the race of those colossal wild women, who contort themselves at fairs with paving-stones hanging from their hair. She did everything about the house,—made the beds, did the washing, the cooking, and everything else. ... Everything trembled at the sound of her voice,—window panes, furniture, and people. Her big face, dotted with red blotches, presented the appearance of a skimmer. She had a beard. She was an ideal market-porter dressed in woman's clothes. She swore splendidly; she boasted of being able to crack a nut with one blow of her fist. Except for the romances which she had read, and which made the affected lady peep through the ogress at times, in a very queer way, the idea would never have occurred to any one to say of her, "That is a woman." This Thenardier female was like the product of a wench engrafted on a fishwife. When one heard her speak, one said, "That is a gendarme"; when one saw her drink, one said, "That is a carter"; when one saw her handle Cosette, one said, "That is the hangman." One of her teeth projected when her face was in repose.
Thenardier was a small, thin, pale, angular, bony, feeble man, who had a sickly air and who was wonderfully healthy. His cunning began here; he smiled habitually, by way of precaution, and was almost polite to everybody, even to the beggar to whom he refused half a farthing. He had the glance of a pole-cat and the bearing of a man of letters. ... No one had ever succeeded in rendering him drunk. He smoked a big pipe. He wore a blouse, and under his blouse an old black coat. He made pretensions to literature and to materialism. ... In addition, he was a great swindler. A filousophe [philosopher], a scientific thief. The species does exist. It will be remembered that he pretended to have served in the army...
...Ebb and flow, wandering, adventure, was the leven of his existence; a tattered conscience entails a fragmentary life, and, apparently at the stormy epoch of June 18, 1815, Thenardier belonged to that variety of marauding sutlers of which we have spoken, beating about the country, selling to some, stealing from others, and travelling like a family man, with wife and children, in a rickety cart, in the rear of troops on the march, with an instinct for always attaching himself to the victorious army. This campaign ended, and having, as he said, "some quibus," he had come to Montfermeil and set up an inn there.
...He was a fine talker. He allowed it to be thought that he was an educated man. Nevertheless, the schoolmaster had noticed that he pronounced improperly.12... Thenardier was cunning, greedy, slothful, and clever. He did not disdain his servants, which caused his wife to dispense with them. This giantess was jealous. It seemed to her that that thin and yellow little man must be an object coveted by all.
Thenardier, who was, above all, an astute and well-balanced man, was a scamp of a temperate sort. This is the worst species; hypocrisy enters into it.
It is not that Thenardier was not, on occasion, capable of wrath to quite the same degree as his wife; but this was very rare, and ...when all this leaven was stirred up in him and boiled forth from his mouth and eyes, he was terrible. Woe to the person who came under his wrath at such a time!
In addition to his other qualities, Thenardier was attentive and penetrating, silent or talkative, according to circumstances, and always highly intelligent. He had something of the look of sailors, who are accustomed to screw up their eyes to gaze through marine glasses. Thenardier was a statesman.
Every new-comer who entered the tavern said, on catching sight of Madame Thenardier, "There is the master of the house." A mistake. She was not even the mistress. The husband was both master and mistress. She worked; he created. He directed everything by a sort of invisible and constant magnetic action. A word was sufficient for him, sometimes a sign; the mastodon obeyed. Thenardier was a sort of special and sovereign being in Madame Thenardier's eyes, though she did not thoroughly realize it. She was possessed of virtues after her own kind; if she had ever had a disagreement as to any detail with "Monsieur Thenardier,"—which was an inadmissible hypothesis, by the way,—she would not have blamed her husband in public on any subject whatever. ... That mountain of noise and of flesh moved under the little finger of that frail despot. Viewed on its dwarfed and grotesque side, this was that grand and universal thing, the adoration of mind by matter; for certain ugly features have a cause in the very depths of eternal beauty. There was an unknown quantity about Thenardier; hence the absolute empire of the man over that woman. At certain moments she beheld him like a lighted candle; at others she felt him like a claw.
This woman was a formidable creature who loved no one except her children, and who did not fear any one except her husband. She was a mother because she was mammiferous. But her maternity stopped short with her daughters, and, as we shall see, did not extend to boys. The man had but one thought,—how to enrich himself.
He did not succeed in this... In this same year, 1823, Thenardier was burdened with about fifteen hundred francs' worth of petty debts, and this rendered him anxious.Whatever may have been the obstinate injustice of destiny in this case, Thenardier was one of those men who understand best, with the most profundity and in the most modern fashion, that thing which is a virtue among barbarous peoples and an object of merchandise among civilized peoples,—hospitality. Besides, he was an admirable poacher, and quoted for his skill in shooting. He had a certain cold and tranquil laugh, which was particularly dangerous.
His theories as a landlord sometimes burst forth in lightning flashes. He had professional aphorisms, which he inserted into his wife's mind. "The duty of the inn-keeper," he said to her one day, violently, and in a low voice, "is to sell to the first comer, stews, repose, light, fire, dirty sheets, a servant, lice, and a smile; to stop passers-by, to empty small purses, and to honestly lighten heavy ones; to shelter travelling families respectfully: to shave the man, to pluck the woman, to pick the child clean; to quote the window open, the window shut, the chimney-corner, the arm-chair, the chair, the ottoman, the stool, the feather-bed, the mattress and the truss of straw; to know how much the shadow uses up the mirror, and to put a price on it; and, by five hundred thousand devils, to make the traveller pay for everything, even for the flies which his dog eats!"
This man and this woman were ruse and rage wedded—a hideous and terrible team.
While the husband pondered and combined, Madame Thenardier thought not of absent creditors, took no heed of yesterday nor of to-morrow, and lived in a fit of anger, all in a minute.
Such were these two beings.
(Part 2, Book 3, Chapter 2)

After relinquishing Cosette to Jean Valjean, the inn fails and the family moves to Paris, where they kick out Gavroche (who is their son). Thenardiess has two other sons whom she gives to Magnon (see Magnon).
Thenardier survives by scamming rich people. In an effort to scam a 'benevolent gentleman' he recognizes Jean Valjean, and plants an ambush, but is upset by Marius and Javert. Thenardier, Thenardiess, Eponine, and Azelma are all put in different prisons. Eponine and Azelma are released and Thenardier escapes, but the Thenardiess dies in prison.
Thenardier had heard of a wealthy recluse while in prison and sent Eponine to check it out. She'd sent back a biscuit, which meant it wasn't worth it. However, once he was free, Thenardier decided to rob it anyway.
He gathered together his buddies, but when they got to the house Eponine drove them away.
On the night of the fall of the barricades, Javert is following Thenardier around. Thenardier notices him, and to escape goes into the sewer, but Javert simply waits outside. There, Thenardier sees Jean Valjean carrying a corpse (which is actually Marius). Tearing off a piece of Marius's jacket, Thenardier pretends to be helping Jean Valjean when he lets him out of the sewer with his key. His real goal, however, is to use Jean Valjean to get Javert to leave. It works, and Thenardier leaves.
A few months later, as Thenardier and Azelma are riding in a carriage, the stop beside another carriage, which happens to be carrying Jean Valjean and Cosette on their way to the wedding. After doing some research through different magazines, Thenardier prepares to blackmail Marius.
He introduces himself as Baron Thenard, and says his has some information concerning M. Fauchelevent (the name Jean Valjean is using). However, Marius already knows the basic information Thenardier gives him, as Jean Valjean himself had confessed to Marius.
But Marius had assumed that Jean Valjean had robbed M. Madeline and killed Javert. Thenardier proved (through the newspapers) that Jean Valjean had done neither of these things. "But..." Thenardier tells Marius that he saw Jean Valjean with a corpse in the sewer on the night of the fall of the barricade. As proof, he furnishes the piece of cloth. Overjoyed, Marius recognizes it, and knows that it was Jean Valjean who'd rescued him.
Angry with Thenardier's deception, Marius still gives him an enormous sum of money on the condition that he goes to America, thus fulfilling his father's debt.
Thenardier takes Azelma to America, and there becomes a slave trader.

Quote--Saints

"To be a saint is the exeption; to be upright is the rule. Err, falter, sin, but be upright.
"To commit the least possible sin is the law for man. To live without sin is the dream of an angel. ..." ~Bishop Bienvenu (M. Myriel)

Quote-- Virtue

"Like an owl who should see the sun suddenly rise, the convict had been dazzled by virtue." (pg 95)