Les Misérables Volume 2, Chapter 5 Summary

Summary

The chapter gives a careful, evocative portrait of daily life in the Petit-Picpus convent where the young pupils are raised under strict rules and austere discipline. The refectory is described in detail: the faded “white Paternoster” prayer on the wall, the crucifix, two long tables, severe meals, enforced silence, and the ritualized punishments for any breach of order. Small illicit pleasures—hidden fruit, stolen morsels, secret readings of a forbidden Rule of Saint Benedict—appear as tiny rebellions against the regime. A recounted anecdote of Mademoiselle Bouchard daring to ask the archbishop for three days’ leave gives a brief, bright rupture in the convent’s austerity and shows how rare acts of boldness ripple through the community.

Hushed gossip and curiosity animate the girls’ inner lives. The chapter introduces Madame Albertine, a mute, apparently mad woman who lives on the premises and inspires rumor: pale, spectral, and treated with respect, she seems connected to high society. Her one audible outcry—“Ah! Auguste!”—during a sermon links her to M. Le Duc de Rohan and plunges the convent into conjecture. The chapter also notes visits by austere duchesses who terrify the pupils, and finally records the local mystery that enthralls the girls for months: the sound of a distant flute playing the same plaintive air. The flute proves irresistible; the girls risk punishment and even danger to try to glimpse the musician, whom they imagine as a romantic figure, until they finally discover he is an old, blind émigré gentleman playing in a garret.

Key events

1. Description of the refectory: white Paternoster, crucifix, tables, meals, and punishments
2. Secret reading of the forbidden Rule of Saint-Benoît and smuggling/eating of fruit
3. Mademoiselle Bouchard boldly asks the archbishop for leave and is granted three days
4. Introduction of Madame Albertine: mute, spectral, reputedly 'dead' and linked to high society
5. Madame Albertine cries out 'Ah! Auguste!' on seeing M. de Rohan, provoking gossip
6. The girls obsess over a recurring flute melody and risk punishment to try to see the player
7. The flutist is revealed to be an old, blind émigré playing in an attic

Analysis

This chapter functions as a concentrated social and atmospheric study: it maps the microcosm of the convent and shows how repression and ritual produce private fantasies and small acts of resistance. The detailed, almost ethnographic descriptions—furniture, prayers, meals, and punishments—establish the convent as a moral and physical enclosure, emphasizing themes of surveillance, bodily discipline, and the suppression of childhood spontaneity. Small transgressions (hidden fruit, forbidden reading) dramatize the tension between institutional order and personal desire. Madame Albertine is a compressed source of mystery and social implication; her ambiguous condition and a single verbal outburst link the cloister to the aristocratic outside world and suggest buried histories and social networks beyond the convent walls. The flute motif operates symbolically: a remote, acoustic intrusion of the world that stimulates imagination and longing among the girls. Hugo uses contrast and accumulation—stern rule versus delicate delights, motionless nuns versus flashes of feeling—to create emotional texture. Narratively, the chapter pauses plot progression to build setting and mood while foreshadowing that external forces (aristocratic visitors, the flute, Madame Albertine’s connections) reach even tightly controlled institutions. The narrator’s ironic, occasionally bemused tone produces sympathy for the girls and invites readers to see the convent’s piety as a social practice rather than a pure sanctuary.

Important quotes

“Little white Paternoster, which God made, which God said, which God placed in paradise.”

Narrator (inscription)Opens the chapter and establishes the convent’s devotional atmosphere and the faded ritual authority of the walls.

“One hides one’s pear or one’s apple as best one may.”

Narrator (quoting a former pupil)Illustrates the girls’ small rebellions and private pleasures that puncture the convent’s austerity.

““Ah! Auguste!””

Madame AlbertineHer sudden outcry in chapel momentarily connects her to M. de Rohan and ignites intense curiosity among the community.

Characters in Volume 2, Chapter 5

• M. de Quélen
• Mademoiselle Bouchard
• Madame Albertine
• M. Le Duc de Rohan
• Mesdames de Choiseul
• Madame de Sérent
• the pupils
• the archbishop
• the prioress
• the old, blind émigré (flutist)