Les Misérables Volume 1, Chapter 5 Summary

Summary

A lone traveller, who earlier suffers convulsions, is making an urgent journey toward Arras by hired tilbury and then by a rusty calash. After colliding with a passing post-wagon at the entrance to M. sur M., his tilbury’s wheel is badly damaged though he has already covered five leagues. At the inn in Hesdin a wheelwright, Master Bourgaillard, examines the wheel and declares it cannot be repaired quickly: two spokes and the hub must be remade and the work will take until the next day. The traveller tries several alternatives—buying or hiring another vehicle, obtaining post-horses, or saddling his horse—but each option fails because of local scarcity, the season, and unsuitable animals. When a child and an old woman appear, offering an old basket spring-cart from her shed, the traveller reluctantly buys it and leaves the tilbury to be mended.

He continues slowly, presses onward despite the cart’s rickety condition, and loses much time. At Saint-Pol he pauses to feed the horse and attempts to eat but cannot; he wrestles inwardly with his purpose. A road-mender informs him that the usual road is under repair and that he must take a longer, unfamiliar route. He accepts guidance, secures an extra horse and postilion at Tinques, but the journey remains impeded: a whiffle-tree breaks and is improvised, fog and cold set in, and the traveller begins to suspect that he may reach Arras too late for the trial he hopes to attend. Still, the postilion tells him they have three leagues to go and will reach Arras around eight, and they press on into the night.

Key events

1. Tilbury collides with a mail-wagon entering M. sur M.; traveller continues at full gallop.
2. At Hesdin the wheelwright inspects a split wheel and declares repairs will take until morning.
3. Traveller struggles to find alternative transport; an old woman offers a ramshackle cart which he buys.
4. Slow, difficult progress through Saint-Pol and Tinques; breakfasted but unsettled.
5. Road under repair forces a detour; postilion and extra horse engaged but whiffle-tree breaks and is improvised.
6. Night, fog, and exhaustion close in as they approach Arras with a few leagues still to go.

Analysis

This chapter concentrates on external obstacles that mirror the traveller’s inner turmoil. The successive mechanical failures and the poverty of local resources externalize the protagonist’s sense of impotence and fate: each practical hindrance is read by the traveller as a possible sign of Providence or of destiny at work. Hugo uses concrete, detailed descriptions of vehicles, wheelwrighting, and road conditions to ground the scene in material reality while simultaneously building suspense. The crowd attracted in the street and the intervention of simple rural figures (the old woman and her boy) introduce the social world through which the traveller must pass; their ordinary gestures produce decisive consequences. The narrative voice shifts between precise technical detail and introspective commentary, blending external action with stream-of-consciousness reflection; this technique deepens characterization without explicit naming. Repeated references to time—the hours, the inns' schedules, the court sittings—heighten the theme of urgency and foreshadow the possibility that timing, not guilt or innocence, will determine outcomes. Symbols such as the broken wheel and the ramshackle cart stand for rupture and precarious passage; improvisations (tying spokes, fashioning a whiffle-tree) indicate human resourcefulness but also fragility. Structurally, the chapter functions as a delay that lengthens suspense and articulates the traveller’s wavering will: he oscillates between determination to see the trial and relief at being detained, which suggests moral ambiguity and inner conflict without explicit revelation of identity.

Important quotes

“That man is in a devilish hurry!”

PostmanThe postman shouts after the traveller immediately after the collision with the mail-wagon, introducing the traveller's frantic pace.

“It was evident that Providence was intervening.”

NarratorThe traveller interprets the wheel's failure and the subsequent delays as a sign that fate or God is preventing him from continuing.

“To travel is to be born and to die at every instant; perhaps, in the vaguest region of his mind, he did make comparisons between the shifting horizon and our human existence:”

NarratorA reflective passage where the traveller contemplates mortality and the fleeting nature of life while watching the landscape change.

Characters in Volume 1, Chapter 5

• Scaufflaire
• Master Bourgaillard
• Champmathieu
• Javert
• Brevet
• Chenildieu
• Cochepaille
• the old woman
• the child
• the wheelwright
• the stableman
• the postman
• the postilion
• the inn-keeper's wife
• the carter
• the road-mender
• the stable-boy
• the traveller